CHAPTER 16: TOO LATE

Temi read the text three times before the words fully registered, each pass through them making her stomach drop a little further. Camille's small sitting room, so ordinary and warm just minutes ago, now felt charged with a different kind of tension entirely, the three of them frozen in place around whatever was coming next.

Looks like you found my cousin's little hideaway. Clever girl. Too bad it's already too late to matter.

"What does he mean, too late," Camille said, reading over Temi's shoulder, her earlier anger giving way entirely to something closer to panic now. "Too late for what?" Her voice had lost all its earlier composure, the guarded, wounded woman from a few minutes ago replaced by someone genuinely afraid of what her own family member might have set in motion.

Adrian was already dialing, phone pressed to his ear before Temi had finished processing the question herself. "Naomi. Derek Whitfield. Camille's cousin, works in cybersecurity, staying at the Connecticut address the breach traced to. He's gone, car and all, and he just texted Temi directly threatening that whatever he's planning is already too late to stop. I need everything you can find on him in the next ten minutes." His voice carried none of its usual boardroom polish now, stripped down to something urgent and raw.

Temi's phone buzzed again while Adrian was still talking, another text from the same number, and her hands shook slightly pulling it up.

Check the business section. Should be live by now.

She opened her browser with fumbling fingers, Camille crowding close beside her to see the screen, and there it was, already climbing the trending headlines on three separate financial news outlets, the kind of coordinated placement that suggested someone had prepared this moment carefully in advance rather than reacting to anything in real time.

Voss Industries Board Calls Emergency Session Amid Fraud Allegations Against CEO's New Wife.

"Fraud," Temi said, the word barely making sense even as she read it aloud. "What fraud? I haven't done anything." Her hands had started trembling slightly, the accusation feeling almost surreal against everything she actually knew to be true about her own work.

Adrian grabbed the phone from her, scanning the article himself, his jaw tightening with every line. "It's citing anonymous sources alleging you falsified financial statements to secure the Whitmore contract. Inflated project estimates, misrepresented studio revenue to win the bid over competing firms." He looked up, something cold and furious burning behind his eyes now. "This isn't just embarrassing anymore. If the board believes this, even partially, it gives them grounds to question my judgment in marrying you this quickly, which plays directly into whatever my father's been building with his own legal challenge."

"It's not true," Temi said, her voice rising with something close to panic now. "None of it is true. Our bid was legitimate. Pri can show you every document."

"I believe you," Adrian said immediately, firmly, no hesitation in it at all. "But belief isn't what the board runs on. They run on optics and liability, and right now Derek has handed them both, wrapped together, with perfect timing to do maximum damage."

Camille had gone pale, sinking down onto the arm of the nearest chair. "This is my fault. He's my family. Whatever he's doing, he's doing it from my aunt's house, using access I probably should have questioned weeks ago."

"This isn't your fault," Temi said, crossing to her despite everything, some old instinct toward comforting her friend outweighing even the chaos unfolding around them. "You didn't do this. You didn't even know."

"I should have wondered why he suddenly cared so much about your finances," Camille said, her voice cracking. "I was so wrapped up in my own mess I didn't think to ask why my cybersecurity cousin was suddenly obsessed with my ex fiancé's new wife."

Adrian's phone rang before Temi could respond, Naomi's name flashing on the screen, and he answered immediately, putting it on speaker so they could all hear.

"I found him," Naomi said without preamble, her voice tight with urgency, the background noise behind her suggesting she was already moving fast through the Voss Tower halls. "Derek Whitfield. Freelance cybersecurity consultant, but here's the part that matters. Six months ago, he took on a private contract through an intermediary company. I'm still tracing the ownership structure, but the timing lines up almost perfectly with when Marcus first started making moves against the succession clause."

Temi felt the floor shift beneath her again, a new possibility clicking into place with horrible clarity. "You think Marcus hired him."

"I think it's too convenient to ignore," Naomi said. "Marcus wanted deniability. A blackmailer working independently, denying any connection to him directly, gives him exactly that. If this ever surfaces publicly, Marcus can claim total ignorance, express outrage on your behalf even, while the damage still serves his exact purpose."

"But Derek said he wasn't working for Marcus," Adrian said slowly. "In the first message. He specifically said that."

"Which is exactly what someone being paid to maintain that exact cover story would say," Naomi replied. "I'm not saying it's confirmed. I'm saying it fits too well to dismiss."

"Or Derek genuinely isn't working for Marcus at all," Temi said, thinking it through out loud even as the words formed. "What if he started this independently, purely for the fifty thousand dollars, and only later realized the damage he could do lined up perfectly with what Marcus already wanted? Two separate people pulling in the same direction without ever needing to coordinate."

Naomi was quiet for a moment on the other end of the line. "That's possible too. Opportunists don't need a conspiracy to cause damage. Sometimes chaos just happens to serve more than one master at once."

"Either way," Adrian said, "the board session is real, and it's happening in less than two hours. Whoever's behind this, the fallout lands on us regardless of the answer."

Adrian ran a hand roughly through his hair, the composed, controlled CEO from the boardroom entirely gone now, replaced by a man visibly struggling to hold together every piece of his life that was currently being pulled apart from multiple directions at once. "I need to get back to the city. If the board's calling an emergency session, I need to be in that room before Derek, or my father, or whoever is actually orchestrating this, gets to control the narrative first."

"I'm coming with you," Temi said immediately.

"Temi, if this session turns hostile, if they start asking questions about the fraud allegations directly to your face, it could get ugly fast." Adrian's voice carried real worry now, the protective instinct underneath his usual composure showing through more plainly than it had all week.

"I know. I'm still coming." She met his eyes steadily, some of the fear from the last several minutes hardening into something more determined underneath it. "I'm not going to sit somewhere safe while people decide my reputation and my marriage without me in the room to defend either one."

Adrian studied her for a long moment, something like pride flickering behind the exhaustion and worry on his face, before he nodded once, decisively.

"Then we go now," he said. "Both of us."

Camille stood abruptly, wiping at her eyes with the back of one hand. "Let me help. Whatever this is, whatever Derek's done, I want to help fix it. I still have access to some of our firm's old bid records. If there's a paper trail showing our numbers were legitimate too, comparing them honestly might help prove yours weren't falsified." Her voice steadied as she spoke, some of her old resolve returning now that there was something concrete she could actually do.

Temi hesitated only a moment before nodding, grateful in a way she didn't have time to fully express. "Send whatever you can find. Now."

They left the house in a rush, Camille already on her phone pulling records as they climbed into the car, the quiet street behind them giving no hint of the storm about to break loose in the city ahead. The drive back felt nothing like the tense, uncertain silence of the drive up hours earlier. This time urgency filled every mile, Adrian's hands tight on the wheel, Temi scrolling through the growing wave of coverage on her phone, Camille in the back seat forwarding documents as fast as her signal allowed.

Temi's phone buzzed one final time as Adrian pulled out of the driveway, and she looked down at it with a sinking, familiar dread.

A new message. Not from the unknown number this time.

From Marcus Voss.

I heard about the board session. I suggest you both come prepared. This is only the beginning of what happens when you rush into decisions you don't fully understand.

Temi stared at the screen long after the words stopped moving, the city lights blurring past the window as Adrian pushed the car faster toward the highway, and felt, for the first time since this entire nightmare began, the full weight of exactly how many people were working against them at once, each for reasons still only half understood.