Chapter 6 — Collateral

The elevator was too bright. In the reflection, I looked like a version of myself I hadn’t met yet—one who knew how to hide a tidal wave behind a blazer.

HR pinged again.

          Subject: Routine Verification — Care Provider

          Hi Ms. Medina, for our standard third‑party risk files, please confirm yesterday’s clinic name and                    attending physician. Thanks!

Standard. Nothing about this was standard.

I typed: I’ll coordinate through Legal. Then I deleted it, closed the phone, and told my stomach to stop doing origami.

The morning was a blur of Q&A and anger disguised as questions. When the room emptied, Singh popped his head in. “Board wants your Lane B milestones by Monday. Also, heads‑up—Facilities logged two unfamiliar badges on 28 this morning.”

“Visitors?”

“Temporary hires. Reception is checking.”

“Have Security sit on them,” I said, and pressed a finger to my temples until it hurt less.

By noon I had ignored two calls from Tita Lila (I texted later, please) and one from a number that wasn’t a number; the voicemail transcription was sixty seconds of silence. I called the clinic instead.

“We don’t disclose patient information over the phone,” the woman said briskly.

“Good,” I said. “Please also don’t disclose it to anyone in person.”

“Ma’am?”

I pictured a desk with a too‑shiny bell and a receptionist who had just been promoted from helpful to dangerous. “If anyone asks about me, tell them to fax a subpoena.”

A pause. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m practicing a skill I don’t possess,” I said. “Asking for help.”

Another pause. Softer now. “I’ll note your file.”

“Thank you.”

When I hung up, Luca called. I considered letting it ring and answered anyway.

“HR?” he asked.

“And other acronyms,” I said. “I told them I’d loop Legal.”

“Do that,” he said. “And don’t go back to the clinic alone.”

“Stop managing me.”

“Collaborating,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

“You use those words like they’re synonyms.”

“Sometimes they are.” A beat. “Ari—”

“I have a meeting,” I said, and ended the call before he could say anything I wasn’t ready to hear.

At two‑thirty, I found Noah sitting at my kitchen table with his laptop open and the essay pulled up again.

“You’re home early,” he said.

“Remote afternoon,” I lied. “How’s paragraph three?”

“Worse than paragraph two.” He glanced at the counter. “There’s a… paper. Under the tea.”

I slid the pamphlet deeper beneath the tin.

“We can talk,” he said, tentative, “about anything you want. Or we don’t have to. I’m… good at holding things without dropping them.”

Something in my chest did that electrical pinch again. “Eat your sandwich,” I said, very gently. “Then we’ll write a sentence about the cutter and call it a victory.”

We were halfway through the sentence when my phone buzzed with a message from Jana in PR.

          You didn’t get this from me.

          Attach: a pixelated photo that might have been a sonogram printed and then photographed again.

The caption on the forwarded thread was two words: vale. secret.

The room tilted in a lazy, cruel way.

“Bathroom,” I said to Noah, too calm, and walked until the door clicked behind me and the tile understood every truth I didn’t have language for.

I called Jana. “Where?”

“Anonymous tip to a tabloid,” she said. “Not public yet. The image is trash quality, but context… isn’t.”

“How many have it?”

“Two editors. And whoever sent it.” A pause. “I’m scrubbing. If we’re lucky, it dies.”

“We’re not lucky,” I said.

“I know,” Jana said. “I like us anyway.”

When I came out, Noah watched my face and decided not to ask. He handed me a towel like we’d spilled something and were going to mop it together.

“Finish paragraph three,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

Back at the office, Security had already tagged the two unfamiliar badges: temp staff in Facilities and IT. Legal stood in the hall with a clipboard and the face of someone who had swallowed a lemon whole.

“We’ve got a data handling issue at the clinic,” she said. “Not breach, but sloppy. A staffer took a photo of a printout, probably for a friend.”

“Payment?” I asked.

“We’ll see what turns up when we flip the phone.”

“Flip?”

“Security is detaining them now.”

“Who asked you to—”

“Luca,” she said. “He wants this handled quietly.”

Of course he did.

The IT temp was twenty, maybe twenty‑two. Hands shook. He kept saying I didn’t know, I didn’t know, like ignorance were a defense that could hold water.

“Who sent you?” Legal asked.

“Nobody,” he lied. “It was just… a favor. For my cousin.”

“Name.”

He swallowed. “Rafe,” he said finally. “But… he spells it without the ph.”

The world narrowed to a pin.

In the next room, Rafa’s laugh rang out in my head as if the walls had a memory.

Legal’s phone buzzed. She turned the screen away, read, and then looked at me. “We’ll issue a termination letter to the clinic staffer and pass the vendor a formal warning. We’ll also put your HR file on a need‑to‑know lock.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning fewer hands touch it. Meaning anyone who touches it leaves a fingerprint.”

“And the photo?”

“Not public. Yet.”

I nodded. I didn’t trust my mouth.

When I stepped into the corridor, Luca was there like gravity. He said nothing. Neither did I. We stood in the quiet space where anger and relief overlap.

Finally: “Thank you,” I said, and it tasted like pride and salt.

“You asked me to do nothing,” he said.

“I asked you not to decide for me,” I said. “You didn’t. You decided for the clinic.”

“I’d decide for the weather if I could,” he said.

“That’s the problem.”

His mouth tipped, not quite a smile. “And the solution.”

My phone buzzed again. Jana: Tabloid holding. Another outlet poking. We have hours, not days.

I showed him the screen.

He read it, jaw tightening. “We’ll get ahead of it.”

“We won’t use it,” I said.

“Ari—”

“No weaponizing this,” I said. “Not against Rafa. Not for the board. Not for anything.”

He looked at me for a long, silent count. “Understood.”

I believed him and didn’t.

Security led the temp past us. His eyes were wet and unfocused. I hated and forgave him in the same breath, which is a thing I didn’t know a person could do.

I went back to my office and closed the door and pressed my forehead to the cool glass. The city below was doing math it wouldn’t share. Inside the room, the only thing that moved was my breath.

Another message arrived, this one from an unknown number with a smile that wasn’t.

          Congratulations.

          Attach: the same blurred image, cropped tighter.

          Caption: Tell Luca to answer his phone.

The image flickered in my hand like a tiny, malicious heartbeat.

—End Chapter 6