Chapter 17: Strand Moves

Sloane

It happened on a Friday.

Not two weeks. Nine days.

I was at my desk at ten forty three in the morning when my phone rang. Dara. Which was strange because Dara was three offices down and she never called when she could walk over.

I picked up.

"You need to come to the conference room," she said. Her voice was careful in the way it got when she was controlling something. "Right now. Do not stop in the hallway. Do not talk to anyone. Just come."

I was already standing up.

"What happened," I said.

"Strand called a partners meeting twenty minutes ago," she said. "I just found out what it is about."

Something cold went through me.

"Dara."

"It is about you," she said quietly. "He has something. I do not know what yet but he has something and he is presenting it this morning and Sloane you need to be in that room before it starts."

I was already moving.

The conference room was on the fifteenth floor.

I took the stairs because the elevator was too slow and because I needed the thirty seconds of movement to get my head straight.

Strand had moved.

Nine days. Not two weeks. Nine days which meant he had seen something. Noticed something. Known that we were building and decided to get there first.

I pushed through the stairwell door onto the fifteenth floor.

Six partners were already in the conference room. I could see them through the glass. Strand at the head of the table. The founding partner Kellner on a screen from wherever he was doing retirement. Four others around the table.

I opened the door and walked in.

Every head turned.

Strand looked at me.

Something moved across his face. Very briefly. Something that might have been surprise and might have been satisfaction and was probably both.

"Sloane," he said. Pleasantly. "We were just about to begin."

"Then I am right on time," I said.

I sat down at the table. The only empty chair was at the far end from Strand which meant I was looking directly at him across the full length of the room.

Good.

I wanted to look directly at him.

I wanted him to have to look directly at me.

Dara slipped in behind me and sat against the wall. Not a partner. No reason to be there. She was there because she was Dara and because she had called me and she was not leaving now.

Strand straightened the papers in front of him.

"Thank you all for coming on short notice," he said. "I will get straight to the point. It has come to my attention over the past several weeks that there are some serious concerns about the professional conduct and personal integrity of one of our junior partners." He paused. "Specifically regarding Sloane Mercer."

Nobody looked at me.

Everyone wanted to.

"These concerns relate to her current personal arrangement with Beckett Rowe of Rowe Industries," Strand continued. "And the serious conflict of interest it creates given that Rowe Industries is in active acquisition discussions with this firm."

"The acquisition discussions are not active," I said.

Strand looked at me. "I beg your pardon."

"The acquisition discussions between Rowe Industries and this firm are not currently active," I said. "They have been paused pending internal review. Which means there is no active conflict of interest under the firm's stated policy."

A brief silence.

"The discussions may be paused," Strand said carefully. "But the relationship between you and Beckett Rowe creates an appearance of impropriety that—"

"An appearance requires substance," I said. "What substance are you presenting."

He looked at me.

I looked back.

I had done this before. Sat across a table from someone who had prepared something designed to damage me and made them say it out loud in front of witnesses. Made them commit to the specific words. Made the record.

"I have documentation," Strand said. He slid a folder to the center of the table. "Regarding Ms. Mercer's arrangement with Mr. Rowe. The nature of it. The financial considerations involved. And the fact that she failed to disclose this arrangement to the firm's ethics committee as required by our conflict of interest policy."

I looked at the folder.

I did not reach for it.

"May I ask where this documentation came from," I said.

"That is not relevant to—"

"It is entirely relevant," I said. "The firm's conflict of interest policy requires that any complaint be accompanied by documentation obtained through legitimate means. If the documentation was obtained through unauthorized access to personal records it is not admissible under our own policy." I held his gaze. "So I will ask again. Where did this documentation come from."

The room was very quiet.

Strand looked at me with an expression I had never seen on his face before.

It was the expression of a man who had planned for resistance and had not planned for this specific kind.

"The source of the documentation—"

"Is something you cannot disclose without implicating yourself in how it was obtained," I said. "Which is why you are deflecting." I looked around the table. At the partners who were watching this with the careful attention of people who understood that something significant was happening. "I would like to formally request that this meeting be paused pending a review of how the documentation in that folder was obtained. If the review confirms it was obtained legitimately I will address every concern Mr. Strand has raised in full. If it was not obtained legitimately then this meeting itself constitutes a violation of firm policy and Mr. Strand's conduct will need to be reviewed."

Silence.

Complete silence.

Strand looked at me across the length of the table.

I looked back at him.

And in his eyes I saw it. The moment he understood that I had known this was coming. That I had walked into this room prepared. That whatever he had planned for this morning I had already been two steps ahead of it before I sat down.

"I second the request for a pause," said one of the partners at the table. A woman named Helena who I had always respected and who was looking at Strand with an expression that was not friendly.

"As do I," said another.

Strand looked around the table.

"Very well," he said. His voice was perfectly controlled. "We will pause pending review."

He gathered his papers.

I stood up.

I walked to the door.

Dara fell into step beside me in the hallway. She did not say anything until we were in the stairwell with the door closed behind us.

Then she said: "How did you know."

"About the conflict of interest angle specifically," I said. "I did not. But I knew he was going to use the arrangement against me and I spent three days last week going through every clause of the firm's conflict of interest policy so I knew it better than he did."

She stared at me.

"You prepared for a meeting you did not know was happening," she said.

"I prepared for the meeting I knew was coming eventually," I said. "The specific morning was the only thing I did not know."

She was quiet for a second.

"Sloane," she said. "That was—"

"Not enough," I said. "This was the opening move. He is going to escalate. What I just did bought us time. Not much. A few days." I took out my phone. "I need to call Beckett."

Beckett answered before the second ring.

"Strand moved," I said.

A pause. Brief. "What happened."

"Partners meeting. Conflict of interest angle. I shut it down for now but it was the opening move not the main event." I was already going back down the stairs. "He is going to come harder next time. We need to accelerate everything."

"I know," Beckett said. "Marcus and I have been working on something this morning. Can you come here after work."

"I will come now," I said.

"Sloane you do not have to—"

"Beckett," I said. "He moved this morning. In my building. At my table. Against my career." My voice came out quieter than I intended. "I am not sitting at my desk for six more hours while he figures out his next angle. I am coming now."

A pause.

"I will have Marcus set up the conference room," he said.

"Thank you," I said.

I hung up.

Dara was watching me from two steps up.

"Go," she said. "I will cover your afternoon."

"Dara—"

"Go," she said again. Firmly. "And Sloane." She looked at me steadily. "End him."

I looked at her for a second.

Then I went.

The Rowe Industries building was twenty minutes from the firm.

I spent those twenty minutes in the back of a cab going through everything in my head. The policy clauses. The documentation questions. The specific look on Strand's face when he understood I had been prepared.

He was going to regroup.

He was going to come back with something I had not prepared for because the thing about someone like Strand was that he had contingencies. Layers. He had been building this for years and the partners meeting was one layer and there were others underneath it and I needed to find them before he deployed them.

My phone buzzed.

A number I did not recognize.

I stared at it for a second.

Then I answered.

"Ms. Mercer." A man's voice. Older. Careful. "My name is Edward Kellner."

I went very still in the back of the cab.

Kellner.

The founding partner.

Calling me directly.

"Mr. Kellner," I said carefully.

"I watched this morning's meeting on screen," he said. "I want you to know that I am aware of how the documentation in that folder was obtained." A pause. "I am also aware that I owe you a conversation I should have had three years ago."

The cab moved through traffic.

Outside the city going past.

Inside something shifting in a way I had not expected this morning when I walked into that conference room.

"I am listening," I said.

And Edward Kellner started talking.