At 10:00 at night, Emily got in her car and drove towards Park Avenue, where the law firm was located. Ethan had been a senior partner there for three years, a position with a high salary, prestige, and the respective clients. All of it had provided their family with a comfortable life, or so she thought.
The firm occupied two floors of a modern skyscraper. Ethan’s office was on the second floor in a corner of the building. Large windows, mahogany furniture, leather armchairs. Everything looked solid and inspired confidence.
Emily parked the car on a side street and looked around. The street was empty except for an occasional passer by and the hum of cars on the main avenue. The surrounding offices were dark. The workday had ended long ago.
She took out the small silver key with a keychain in the shape of the scales of justice. She had given it to Ethan on their first anniversary.
“Justice above all else,” he had said.
“Then what a cruel irony.”
The door opened easily. “There must have been employees working overtime in their offices.” Emily silently went up to the second floor, careful that her heels did not make a sound on the marble staircase.
Ethan’s office greeted her with the scent of leather and expensive cologne. On the desk were neat piles of documents. In a corner, a safe, and along the wall, shelves full of binders. None of them read.
Emily turned on the desk lamp and began her investigation. First, she looked in the desk drawers—standard paperwork, pens, stamps. In the bottom drawer, she found a USB drive labeled personal. She took it. She might need it.
Then she went to the filing cabinet. The files were arranged alphabetically and by subject—wills, deeds of sale, inheritance cases. Many binders, but none read, “Where could it be?”
Emily searched everywhere: behind the expensive modern art painting, in the safe, under the rug.
And then her gaze fell on a small cabinet in a corner of the office. She approached and saw it was locked with a common padlock. Strange. Why lock a cabinet in your own office?
Emily tried several keys from Ethan’s keychain. The third one fit. The small cabinet door opened, and before her eyes she saw several red folders neatly stacked on a shelf.
There they were.
Her heart raced.