12 Days of Blackmail

The Mystery Begins When the first gift arrives at PR executive Victoria Hartley’s office on December 14th, she assumes it’s a client token of appreciation. But as each day brings a new present paired with a handwritten note exposing carefully buried secrets from her past, Victoria realizes someone doesn’t just know her history—they’re weaponizing it. The notes reference personal details no one should know: her teenage abortion, a financial scandal she managed to hide, a lie she told to land her biggest account. With each revelation, the threat feels more real, more calculated, and Victoria’s carefully constructed image begins to crack under the weight of exposure. She has twelve days to find whoever is behind the campaign before Christmas arrives, or everything she’s spent twenty years building will collapse under the weight of her own secrets.

The Investigation Enter Detective Marcus Webb, a single father still wearing his wedding ring three years after his wife’s death. Marcus brings both compassion and analytical precision to Victoria’s case, quickly recognizing that the gifts follow the structure of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”—each one accompanied by references that feel oddly personal and deliberately theatrical. As he spends long hours interviewing Victoria, reviewing security footage, and constructing timelines, Marcus finds himself drawn to the woman beneath the PR veneer. She’s scared in a way that a typical extortion case doesn’t warrant, and he becomes determined to protect her not just from the unknown threat, but from whatever she’s running from internally. But as Marcus investigates adoption records and connects increasingly personal revelations to Victoria’s past, he begins to wonder if this isn’t a threat at all—but something far more complicated.

The Hidden Truth Twenty-three-year-old Lily Chen has been Victoria’s executive assistant for exactly seven months, competent and quiet, existing in her boss’s consciousness as a supporting character in her own story. What Victoria doesn’t know is that Lily has spent eighteen years knowing her—through court documents, adoption records, and a closed file she wasn’t supposed to access. When Lily discovered her birth mother’s identity at eighteen, she didn’t plan revenge; she planned something far more delicate. The gifts, the notes, and the carefully orchestrated twelve days of Christmas were never meant as threats—they were an elaborate, desperate attempt to build the childhood Christmases that never happened. Each present references something from the adoption file or a detail Lily discovered: the date she was born, the hospital where it happened, the lullaby Victoria hummed to her in the delivery room. Lily is recreating—and creating for the first time—the magic of Christmas mornings they never shared, each gift an opportunity to prove that she exists in her mother’s life, and that being known might be the greatest gift of all.

The Collision of Worlds As Victoria spirals into fear and Marcus grows more invested in both the case and in her, the truth careens toward an inevitable collision. When Marcus’s investigation finally points to Lily, Victoria is forced to look at her assistant with new eyes—and to see the familiar curve of her chin, the way she tilts her head when concentrating, the inexplicable sadness that shadows her eyes. The confrontation between Victoria and Lily happens in Victoria’s office, with two days until the final gift is due, transforming from an interrogation into a breakdown, then slowly, achingly, into recognition. Lily finally reveals who she is, and Victoria faces the full weight of the choice she made eighteen years ago, now made concrete in the form of a young woman who somehow still wanted to know her, to gift her with a second chance at the Christmases they missed.