Line crossed

Harvey's POV

Legal called at four.

"We found the source of the photo," Dana said. She sounded careful, like a woman stepping around glass. "It was sent from a device registered to your father's office."

I set my pen down. "Say that again."

"Richard's assistant forwarded it to three board members at 7:40 this morning. With a note. *Review the exposure.*"

Exposure. As if Daisy were a loose wire.

"Thank you, Dana. Tell no one."

I hung up and stood at the window for a long minute. My father hadn't leaked it to hurt her. He'd done it to protect the company, the way he did everything. He honestly believed a woman like Daisy was a risk to manage, not a person to meet. Last week that would have made me angry. Today I just felt tired.

My phone rang before I could decide what to do about it.

Unknown number. A woman's voice, fast and low.

"Mr. Carlos, it's Priya Nair, from Daisy's team. I'm sorry. She told me not to call you."

Every muscle in my body went still. "What happened?"

"She exposed Gerald Pruitt on a client call today. Fake invoices, four hundred thousand dollars. She was right. Then he emailed her." Her breath caught. "He wants her at a warehouse by the docks tonight. Nine o'clock. Alone. He told her not to tell you."

My hand tightened on the phone. "And she's going."

"She said she was. I tried to stop her. She just looked at me like..." Priya stopped. "Like she'd already decided. Like she knew something I didn't."

*She does.*

"Where is she now?"

"Still at her desk. Pretending to work."

"Don't let her leave without telling me." I was already grabbing my jacket. "And Priya? Thank you."

I called her. Three rings, and I almost hung up to try again.

"Harvey."

Just my name. Flat, tired, not warm. It still hit me in the chest.

"You're going to the docks," I said.

Silence. Then, sharply: "Priya."

"Don't be angry with her."

"I'm not angry. I'm..." She exhaled. "I told you I would handle my own work."

"You did." I made myself slow down. The agreement sat between us like a stone. *You don't speak for me. You don't make plans for my life.* "I'm not calling to forbid it. I couldn't if I wanted to."

"Then why are you calling?"

"Because Gerald Pruitt is not a man who has meetings in warehouses."

Another silence. Longer.

"I know what he is," she said quietly.

The way she said it made my skin go cold. Not *I think*. Not *I've heard*. *I know.*

"Daisy." I gripped the back of a chair. "How do you know?"

"I read the ledger, Harvey."

A lie. A good one. And we both let it sit there.

"I'm going," she said. "If I don't, he'll know I'm afraid. And then he'll know he can scare me."

"Then let me drive you."

"No."

"Let me wait outside. You won't see me. You won't hear me. If you walk out in ten minutes, I'm gone and you never have to think about it again."

"That's making a plan for my life."

"It's asking." I closed my eyes. "That's the rule I gave you. I ask every time."

I heard her breathing. I heard the hum of her office behind it, a printer, a laugh, ordinary life going on around a woman about to walk into the dark.

"Ten minutes," she said finally. "Parked far enough that he can't see your car. And if I come out and you're standing there with your arms crossed..."

"I'll be in the car."

"Harvey."

"Yes?"

"Don't make me regret saying yes."

The line clicked off.

I stood there with the phone against my ear for a long time.

*Too late for that,* I thought. *I regret everything I didn't do for you the first time.*

---

The docks at eight-forty smelled like salt and rust. I parked a block away, between two shipping containers, and cut the engine.

The rain had stopped. The air felt wet and heavy anyway, like the sky was holding its breath.

At 8:52, a taxi rolled past and stopped. Daisy stepped out in her work coat, her hair pulled back, her bag over her shoulder. She stood very still and looked at the building in front of her. A low metal warehouse, one yellow light over a side door.

She looked small against it. Then she straightened her spine and walked toward it anyway.

I'd seen her do that once before, in a ballroom. I had never stopped being afraid for her since.

I watched her reach the door. It opened before she touched it. A man's shadow. She went inside, and the door swung shut behind her.

My stomach clenched.

Eight minutes later I was still watching, still counting, when headlights swept across the far end of the dock.

A black sedan rolled slowly down the access road and parked beside the warehouse. Tinted windows. Clean, expensive, a car that didn't belong anywhere near rust and salt.

I leaned forward.

I knew that car.

I knew the license plate better than my own. I'd ridden in the back of that car as a boy, silent and scared, while the man beside me told me that feelings were a luxury other families could afford.

The driver's door opened. The driver stepped out and held the rear door.

Richard Carlos climbed out in a gray overcoat, adjusted his cuffs, and walked into the warehouse like a man arriving at his own board meeting.

My father.

I was out of the car before I understood I'd moved.

*Who you're really up against,* Priya had read to me from Gerald's message.

I had thought she meant Seth.

I'd been wrong.

And somewhere inside that building, Daisy was alone with the two men who had just decided what to do about her.