LOGINVICTORIAI didn't go straight to Serena after what Trent told me. That would have been the wrong move. I had learned a long time ago that the worst thing you could do when you suspected someone was to tip them off before you had proof. So I went back to my office, closed the door, and called Elio."I need a full audit on Serena's team," I said. "Not just Serena. Everyone who had access to the case files. Communications, transfers, the whole thing.""How discreet are we talking?" he asked."Completely," I said. "Nobody should hear about this.""I'll need to call in a favor," he said."Call it in," I told him.He called me back eighteen hours later.I was still at my desk when my phone rang, still going through documents I'd already read three times because I needed something to do with my hands. I picked up on the first ring."Serena's clean," Elio said.I let out a breath. "But?""But one of her junior associates isn't," he said. "A girl named Priya. Twenty-six. She's been on the team
VICTORIAI stared at the screen for a long time without moving.Serena.I had known her for two years. She had been my lawyer before she became my friend, and at some point, the line between those two things had blurred and I hadn’t cared too much about that.She was the one who had walked through my office door when things were still fragile and told me she knew exactly how to build a case that would hold. She had been right. She had filed the first documents, drafted the first strategy, stood in rooms, and argued for me when I wasn’t always around to argue for myself.She also knew everything.Every piece of evidence. Every witness. Every move I was planning to make in that courtroom in four days. If she had been feeding information to someone this whole time, then it wasn't just Lena who was exposed. It was all of it. Every card I had been holding.I put the phone down on the table. Then I made myself think slowly and carefully. It was late. I hadn't slept much. The last two days h
VICTORIA"I didn't leak her name," he said. No greeting, no lead-up, no warmup. Just that, straight out, like he had been holding it in for a long while and just had to say it.I didn't respond immediately. I let the silence stretch and do its work."Victoria," he said."I heard you," I replied.There was another short pause. "I need you to believe me.""You need a lot of things from me, Trent. That doesn't mean you get them."He let out a slow breath. I could hear movement on his end; the soft sound of a door closing, like he had stepped somewhere private to make this call. That small detail stayed with me."I know how it looks," he said. "The timing is as bad as it gets. The hearing gets pushed up, Lena's name goes out the same night, and I'm the first person everyone points at. I get it. But it wasn't me. And whoever did it wasn't acting on anything I said."I leaned back in my chair. "You've been working against me for months," I said. "You hired people to go through my past. You
VICTORIAI stood in the darkness of my hotel room for a moment before I turned the lights on.I set the drive down on the table by the window and stayed where I was, looking out at the city. It was late and everything below looked bright and clean from up this high. It never looked clean from the ground. I had spent enough years down there to know that.I thought about Daniel's face when he placed the drive on the table. That flat, worn-out look of a man who had stopped pretending that what he had done was something other than what it was. I had walked in expecting him to be cold and calculating, like he would negotiate or make me feel like I needed him. Instead, he had just looked tired and almost relieved to hand it over.Then I thought about Trent in the elevator.The way he had said my name in that hallway. The look on his face that I still couldn't find the right word for. I had spent three years living under the same roof as that man and I knew every expression in his collection
VICTORIADaniel Rhodes was sixty-four and lean, but he still had a kind of stillness about him that reminded me of old photographs that were taken before the subject even knew someone was watching. He was already seated when I walked in, and he didn't look like a man who had been hunting me. He looked like a man who had been running for a very long time and had finally decided to sit down.I sat across from him and left the door open behind me."You came alone," he said."Not entirely," I replied.He smiled, just slightly. "The team in the lobby.""And the one on this floor," I added.He nodded once. Then he placed a small black drive on the table between us. Nothing about it was impressive. It was the kind of thing you could buy at any store for a few dollars."Everything Trent commissioned," he said. "His instructions, his communications, the money transfers to Voss's firm. The full documentation for the duplicate program, with Trent's own signature on the authorization."I looked
VICTORIAI told Serena I was taking forty-eight hours to prepare for the hearing.I told Isabella I was resting.Neither was a full lie, but neither was the whole truth either.I flew to Geneva privately and landed in the early morning. The sky was gray and flat. It didn't look like a storm was coming but like the storm had already been there and left. The city was quiet the way only very old, very expensive cities always were.Harlan Voss received me at a property on the lake. I didn’t have a formal address, just the coordinates Clark had sent over the night before. The house was large and looked like it had been built by someone who wanted privacy more than comfort. It had stone walls and dark windows, with no neighbor visible in either direction.A man met me at the door and walked me up to a study on the third floor without a word.Voss was already seated when I came in. He was thinner than I expected, precise in his movements, the kind of man who had spent decades making sure not
CLARKVictoria called me less than five minutes after the court decision reached her lawyers.I already knew what the call was about before I even answered. News like that traveled quickly through legal circles.“Clark,” she said the moment the line connected.“I heard.”“They froze several account
TRENTThe message about Victoria meeting the duplicate reached me before the afternoon ended. My assistant sent it quietly through a secure line, the same way most updates came to me these days. It was nothing dramatic. Just information.I sat in my office with the city spread out below the tall wi
VICTORIAI stood in the doorway of my penthouse and looked at the man sitting in the chair by the window. The lights in the room were bright, but that corner stayed half dark because of the angle of the lamps. The glow from my phone lit his face from below.Daniel.Clark stopped a step ahead of me,
VICTORIAThey wanted me in a small white room with a lawyer, a recorder, and a clock ticking too loudly. I gave them a studio instead.The car stopped in front of the network building, not the police station. Cameras were already lined up. The doors opened and cool air hit my face. I stepped out sl







