His jaw tightens.
He does it.
The data blooms outward like a crime scene.
Overlay after overlay.
Zoning shields.
Redevelopment vetoes.
Tax immunities.
Infrastructure repair records that list “gas main ruptures” and “sewer collapses” on dates that perfectly match undocumented construction events in the sub-basement layers under my family’s restaurant.
Blackout periods when power grids mysteriously failed across three blocks at a time.
Transit reroutes that conveniently avoided seismic scanning near our address.
My mouth goes dry.
“They weren’t protecting the restaurant,” I whisper.
Ishaan doesn’t answer.
“They were hiding something under it.”
He swallows.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “They were.”
I lean back in the chair and stare at the ceiling, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.
My grandparents.
My mother.
All those years of thinking the Fierson Grill was just unlucky real estate that nobody wanted badly enough to redevelop.
All those failed buyouts.
All those weird exemptions.
All those permits that magically cleared when others stalled.
We weren’t cursed.
We were camouflage.
My hands start shaking.
“Save all of it,” I say. “Offline copy. Air-gapped. No cloud sync.”
“Already doing it,” Ishaan replies.
I stand.
My knees feel wrong.
