My entire world restructured itself in one silent instant.
The grief Jessi had cried into my shoulder eight years ago, the endless corporate setbacks our firm had endured whenever a major acquisition approached completion, the sudden interest Wendy showed in moving into our guest cottage—it wasn’t a string of unfortunate events. It was a long, carefully planned corporate operation.
And the final piece of leverage was my seven-year-old daughter.
Inside the windowless room, Jessi pulled a digital flash drive from her purse—the drive copied from my silver-key safe twenty minutes earlier—and handed it directly to Arthur Vance.
“Ivan’s flight is currently over Indiana,” Jessi said, her voice completely devoid of the warmth she had used when she kissed me goodbye that morning. “By the time he lands in Chicago, the proxy board meeting will be over. Vance Global will own sixty percent of the voting shares.”
Arthur plugged the drive into a rugged laptop. “And the child?”
Wendy stroked Fiona’s hair with a hand that looked chillingly gentle. “Fiona knows what to say if Ivan asks questions. Don’t you, sweetheart?”
Fiona sat rigid, her eyes fixed on the side window where I stood hidden in the shadows. She didn’t cry. She didn’t flinch. My seven-year-old girl was protecting me.
That was the exact moment the fear inside me burned away, leaving behind a cold, lethal clarity.
I stepped away from the window, pulled out my phone, and tapped a private contact I hadn’t used since leaving corporate intelligence five years ago.
“Leo,” I said softly.
