Trapped In Lies Chapter 06
She was sitting in a wheelchair with a blanket draped across her knees. She was reading a book.
Her profile was thin, but her features were gentle.
As I passed by, she looked up.
“Here for treatment too?” she asked.
I stopped.
“Yeah.”
She smiled.
“I’ve been here for six months. I would’ve remembered you if I had seen you before.”
She closed the book in her lap. The title on the cover was [The Road].
“I’m Alice Light,” she said. “I used to teach piano.”
I glanced at the empty right leg of her pants and decided not to ask.
She did not seem to mind and continued, “Two years ago, I got into a car accident and lost my leg. My husband left me for another woman, and I lost my job too.”
She said it so casually that it sounded like she was talking about someone else.
“There was a time when I wanted to die too.”
She tapped the book resting on her lap.
“Then, I read this. That man lost almost everything. The world around him fell apart, and he just kept going. So, I thought, if he could keep living after all that, what excuse did I have to give up?”
She shifted slightly in her wheelchair and nodded toward the empty space beside her.
“Want to sit for a minute?”
So, I sat down.
Sunlight streamed through the window and warmed the blanket that draped across her knees.
“What about you?” she asked. “What happened?”
I sat there in silence for a long time.
It was long enough that she probably thought I was not going to answer.
“I was lied to for five years,” I said. “I lost my career, my relationship, and my family. My dad died because of me.”
She listened without interrupting.
“Now, they’re married and happy.”
I let out a hollow laugh.
“And I don’t even have a place to stay anymore.”
Alice nodded.
“Yeah. That does sound pretty awful.”
She did not tell me to stay strong or that everything would be okay.
Instead, she asked, “So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe find somewhere to disappear.”
“Disappearing is easy.”
She looked out the window.
“But you aren’t ready to let this go, are you?”
I froze.
“If you were, you wouldn’t still be here.”
She said, “Your landlady told me that while you were unconscious, you never let go of your phone. My guess is that you were holding on to the numbers of the people you hate.”
I said nothing, and she patted the back of my hand.
“Hatred is valid. If it’s due, hate away. But don’t disappear because of it. You should make them pay.
“What can I possibly do?” I murmured. “I have nothing left.”
“You’re alive.
“As long as you’re alive, there is always a chance to turn the tables,” she said.
With that, I started digging into Hayley’s past.
On paper, her resume was flawless. She attended a prestigious university, and did her graduate studies overseas. She had a fast-track career that landed her in Hill Group almost immediately after returning home.
It was all a little too perfect.
I tracked down alumni records from the university that she claimed to have attended abroad. From 2015 to 2020, there was no record of anyone named Hayley ever being enrolled there.
I dug into the projects that Hayley claimed as her own.
For the first project, the core algorithm was mine. All she had done was replace the name on the final submission.
For the second, the experimental data had been painstakingly produced by the desert field team over three months. She had only shown up to collect the award.
For the third, the patent application originally listed me as the inventor. That name had later been crossed out and replaced with hers.
I compiled all the evidence and reached out to several former colleagues whose work she had also stolen.
They were silent for a minute on the other end of the line.
“Stella, just let it go. Her husband is Dan Hill.”
“We still have careers to think about. We can’t afford to offend them.”
“You can’t win this.”
I set down the phone and stared at the stack of documents spread across
I was at a dead end.
my
desk.
Then, three days later, a package arrived.
