Chapter 7: Eleanor’s Approach

The phone rang late that evening. I almost didn’t answer it; most calls these days were more bad news. But something urged me to pick up.

“Sarah Evans?” a crisp, professional voice asked. “My name is Eleanor Sutton. I’m an investigative reporter.”

I tensed, bracing myself for another journalist repeating Caldwell’s lies.

“I’ve been following the Caldwell story for years,” she continued, her voice firm. “And I don’t buy the narrative. I’ve seen this before with him.”

Hope, a feeling I hadn’t recognized in weeks, flickered inside me. She said she’d been tracking Caldwell’s career, and my case felt eerily familiar to his past exploits.

“I saw what he did to NexGen and Synergy Flow,” she explained, a hint of anger in her tone. “He’s a predator. And from what I’ve read, your story isn’t just another hit piece on a disgruntled employee.”

She sounded genuine, a beacon in the storm. She wasn’t just offering to listen; she was offering to dig, to expose the truth. Eleanor Sutton was the first person outside my family who genuinely seemed to believe me.