Chapter 12: Eva Torres
The apartment was small. Clean, quiet, two floors above a laundromat that ran its machines late into the night. The mattress on the floor had been left by the previous tenant, still firm enough. She didn't mind. She hadn't come for comfort.
Heira—now Eva Torres—set her duffel down in the corner, dust trailing from the vinyl. The walls were thin. Next door, someone was coughing hard into a sink. Pipes rattled above her. She didn't unpack. Just opened the blinds enough to see the pale slant of streetlight between fire escapes.
The job started in the morning.
The firm was smaller than expected. A single-floor operation tucked between an insurance agency and a dry cleaner, with tinted windows and an old-fashioned logo: LANTRY, KIM & WYLER LLP. Three senior partners, seven junior attorneys, two admin staff. She'd already memorized their names and brief bios from the file Cole gave her.
She entered as Eva Torres, hired under a temp contract as a litigation assistant. They gave her a shared cubicle in the back, across from the copier, next to a rustling ficus. The woman she replaced had taken emergency leave, conveniently. No one asked questions beyond the usual pleasantries.
Her ID badge had her new name and photo. Slightly different makeup, hair dyed ash brown now, parted down the middle, sharp brows, simple glasses, and slacks too wide in the hips. She passed easily. Another mid-level professional quietly typing, delivering scanned contracts, and getting too many spam emails.
But the job wasn't the work.
Cole's tip had been specific. Three names tied to a corruption ring: a local judge, a city councilman, and a sitting senator's aide—all clients of Lantry, Kim & Wyler. The files were buried deep. The goal wasn't exposure—it was leverage. Something to hold. Something useful later.
Heira kept her pace slow. She offered coffee runs and took the stairs. She noticed who left early and who stayed late. She noted whose files never left their desks and who was always at the shredder. Within days, she narrowed her focus to one attorney—Cynthia Vale.
Vale had three clients that matched the profiles. She also locked her drawer every night and used a second flash drive for her case notes.
Heira waited.
Two weeks in, the rhythm became muscle memory. She arrived at 7:55, left at 6:10. She carried packed lunches in dull containers and listened during meetings. Her notes were real, clean, and dull. At night, she walked the ten blocks back to the apartment with a paper bag of groceries or nothing at all. She kept her burner phone in a sock under the mattress.
She didn't contact Cole. There was nothing yet to say.
On the seventeenth morning, the break came quietly.
Vale left her flash drive in the printer. Heira found it wedged in the tray behind a thick stack of redrafted motion memos. She slipped it into her blazer and made a second copy in the IT closet before returning it to the printer—precisely angled, undisturbed.
That night, she scrubbed through the contents. Encrypted, but Cole had trained her for this. She bypassed the lock within fifteen minutes, tunneling through dummy folders until she hit a string of email exports and unfiled client notes.
The corruption was worse than expected.
Illegal land sales. Fraudulent campaign donations. Bribed committee votes. Some names she recognized. Others she didn't, but she logged each one. She moved the files to a second drive and wiped her tracks.
She didn't sleep much that night.
The next morning, everything was the same.
Cynthia Vale arrived late, scarf trailing in the wind. Someone brought donuts. The copier jammed. Midday, as Heira typed out a set of redline edits for a junior partner, her phone buzzed softly in her pocket.
Unknown number.
She silenced it and kept typing.
Later, back in the apartment, she played the voicemail on speaker. A clipped, male voice:
"You're not from the agency, are you?"
Then static.
She replayed it twice before deleting it. No reaction. No panic. She ate leftover lentils and stared out the window. No tails. No signs anyone had traced her. She checked her devices. Clean. If anyone knew, they weren't acting yet.
Still, she slept with a blade under her pillow.
Two days later, the city turned.
BREAKING NEWS: THE DARNELLS FACING MAJOR BACKLASH AFTER A MASSIVE CASUALTY ON ONE OF THEIR PROPERTIES
The TV in the office break room buzzed low. Heira paused as the report played in the background—images of smoke rising from the east district, emergency responders, a crowd of reporters swarming a gated compound.
"…faulty wiring, authorities say… preliminary reports suggest lack of oversight may have contributed to the blaze…"
Her pulse stayed flat. She didn't flinch.
The reporters mentioned a half-dozen injured. Two dead. The Darnell estate released a curt statement. Sebastian Darnell was not seen. Public reaction was swift. Social media turned ugly. Politicians distanced themselves. A citywide probe was launched into Darnell assets.
Heira said nothing.
Back at her desk, someone leaned over and muttered, "Good riddance to that family. Surprised it took this long."
She smiled faintly.
That evening, the street felt tighter, as though the buildings leaned in closer. She ducked into a dim diner for dinner—black coffee, eggs, and toast. The waitress barely looked at her. That was good.
By the time she returned to the apartment, her body was still but her mind had not slowed.
She pulled out the file Cole gave her at the start. Everything he knew about the firm, the names, the dates, even the internal gossip. Now she added her own—paper-clipped notes written in clean, slanted handwriting. She marked who hesitated before meetings. Who made jokes too close to the truth. Who shredded too much. She layered it with care.
The flash drive Vale had misplaced sat at the corner of the table.
Tomorrow, she'd mail the copy to Cole through the usual dead drop. No contact. No signature.
But tonight, she drafted something else.
A notebook. Narrow-lined, blank, untouched since she bought it on the move.
On the top line of the first page she wrote:
Eva Torres – Business Planning: Stage 1
She listed expenses. Projected costs. Targeted timeline. It wasn't much, just the skeleton of a future, but it was hers.
The revenge could wait.
She imagined a storefront—tight space, clean counters, simple signage. Not too loud. She could start it small, expand as she built the capital. It wasn't the business that mattered so much as the ownership. The control.
No one would own her again.
By midnight, she had mapped out three separate models. Service-based. Remote. Scalable. She'd test one in six months, start with savings from the jobs Cole funneled her. And this mission—this clean, precise data—was more than payment. It was leverage she could cash in later.
At 1:03 a.m., she blew out the candle she'd lit instead of the harsh apartment light, and sat in the dark for a long time. Thinking.
About her mother.
About the years that had been taken.
And about how quietly she would take them back.
The following week, she submitted her resignation. Two weeks' notice, citing family obligations. No one blinked. Vale smiled at her politely in the hallway. One of the partners signed her exit papers with a quick nod and a joke about young people never staying put.
She shook hands. Returned her badge.
On her last day, she cleaned the cubicle slowly. Wiped the keyboard. Slid the chair back into place. Her name was still printed on a laminated label on the monitor base: Eva Torres. She peeled it off and folded it into her coat pocket.
The wind outside had a colder bite now.
She walked to the station. News crews were still lingering outside the courthouse, poking into Darnell-related lawsuits. A woman in a camel coat was yelling into a microphone. Cameras whirred. Heira kept walking.
The train was late. She didn't mind. She sat on the platform bench with her hands folded, head low, coat zipped to her chin.
Her phone buzzed once before she crossed the county line.
A message from an encrypted contact:
"Good work. Ready for next step?"
She stared at it a long time.
Then typed:
"Soon."
She leaned back into the seat, her eyes half-lidded.
She wasn't done. Not close.
But for now—Eva Torres had done her part.