32 — The List

**JASMINE POV**

"Okay, so far the suspect list includes," Ranjiv said, squinting at his own whiteboard like it had personally offended him, "literally every major competitor Montgomery Industries has ever had, which is not narrowing anything down, it is in fact the opposite of narrowing anything down."

"That's a very technical assessment," Voss said dryly, arms crossed, watching Ranjiv's whiteboard with the particular skepticism he reserved for anything not presented in a formal report.

"I contain multitudes, some of them technical." Ranjiv tapped the board. "Here's the actual problem. R&D theft this specific, this well-funded, this patient that's not opportunistic. Whoever's behind it has been planning this for a while, which means they've probably been circling for longer than Victor's eight months of involvement."

"How much longer?" I asked, pulling my chair closer to the conference table, my own laptop open to the financial records I'd been cross-referencing for the better part of two days.

"Hard to say exactly. But the shell company structure's sophisticated. Layered. Whoever built it has done this before, probably more than once." Ranjiv pulled up something on the main screen a web of connected companies, dotted lines linking entities with names like abstract art pieces. "I've been tracing the financial architecture. It loops through at least four jurisdictions before it gets anywhere near identifiable."

"Four jurisdictions," Kate repeated, appearing in the doorway with coffee for everyone, because apparently she'd appointed herself unofficial crisis-room barista somewhere in the last week. "That feels excessive for stealing some R&D documents."

"It feels excessive because it is excessive, which tells us something important," Voss said, accepting his coffee with a nod of thanks. "Whoever's funding this has real resources and real patience. This isn't a scrappy competitor trying to catch up. This is someone with deep pockets and a long game."

I stared at the web of shell companies on the screen, something nagging at the edge of my attention the way it had the day Dean first showed me that licensing document, a feeling I'd learned, slowly, painfully, to actually trust instead of talk myself out of.

"Can you pull up the jurisdiction list specifically?" I asked. "Not just the company names. Where they're actually registered."

Ranjiv obliged, scrolling through a longer document. "Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Singapore, and one in London."

"London," I repeated slowly.

"That's a pretty standard jurisdiction for this kind of structuring," Voss said. "Lots of legitimate international business runs through London entities."

"I know. I'm not saying it's definitely connected to anything. I just" I hesitated, not quite ready to say the name out loud, feeling almost silly for the direction my mind had gone. "Marcus Feld's firm is headquartered in London. He offered me a position there, months ago, before Japheth and I" I gestured vaguely, encompassing the entire trajectory of the last several months. "Before all of this."

The room went quiet.

"You think Marcus is involved in corporate espionage against the company you work for?" Kate asked, eyebrows raised.

"I don't think anything yet. I'm saying it's a coincidence worth at least checking, because I'd rather rule it out properly than ignore it because the idea makes me uncomfortable." I pulled up my own notes, cross-referencing dates. "He reached out to me again, actually, a few weeks ago. Casual. Asked how things were going, mentioned the position was still open if I ever reconsidered. I didn't think much of it at the time."

"When exactly?" Ranjiv asked, already typing something.

I checked my messages. "The fourteenth."

"Three days after the licensing document first showed up in Japheth's queue," Ranjiv said slowly, cross-referencing his own timeline on the whiteboard.

The silence that followed had a different quality than the earlier ones, heavier, more uncertain.

"That could be nothing," Voss said carefully. "Coincidental timing happens. I'd want real evidence before accusing anyone, especially someone with Marcus Feld's profile. Men like that have lawyers who enjoy expensive lawsuits against companies that accuse them without proof."

"Agreed," I said quickly. "I'm not saying accuse him. I'm saying it's worth Ranjiv quietly looking into whether his firm has any connection to the jurisdictions on that list, the same way we'd look into anyone else."

"I can do that," Ranjiv said, already making a note. "Discreetly. I know people who know people in London financial circles. I'll ask around without tipping anyone off that we're looking specifically at Marcus."

Japheth, who'd been unusually quiet through the whole exchange, finally spoke, something careful and controlled in his voice that told me he was working hard to keep an old jealousy from coloring his judgment on this.

"I don't love that it's him," he said. "Not because I think my judgment's compromised, but because if it is him, that means someone who's had access to you, to your trust, for years, might have been circling this entire time for reasons that had nothing to do with actually caring about you."

"We don't know that yet," I said gently, reaching for his hand.

"I know. I'm just naming the feeling before it gets to decide anything on its own." He squeezed my hand back, something steadier settling into his expression. "Ranjiv, look into it properly. Quietly. If it's nothing, it's nothing, and we move on to the next name on this depressingly long list."

"On it." Ranjiv made another note, then glanced up, something lighter crossing his face despite the tension in the room. "For the record, if it does turn out to be Marcus, I expect full credit for connecting the dots, even though Jasmine technically said the name first."

"You can have partial credit," I said.

"Sixty-forty, my favor?"

"Fifty-fifty, final offer."

"Done. I'll take it." He grinned, already turning back to his laptop, and despite the weight of everything hanging over the room, I found myself grateful, again, for the particular resilience of people who could find room for small, ordinary jokes even in the middle of something this uncertain.

Kate refilled everyone's coffee without being asked, settling into the chair beside Dean, who'd been quietly observing the whole exchange with the focused attention of a man determined to actually be useful this time, to make up, in whatever small ways he could, for the mess his own desperation had helped set in motion.

"What do we do while Ranjiv digs?" Dean asked. "Just wait?"

"We keep running the company normally," Voss said. "Whoever's behind this wants us distracted, scrambling, making mistakes under pressure. The best thing we can do is refuse to give them that satisfaction." He stood, buttoning his jacket with the particular briskness of a man returning to his actual job after a necessary detour. "I have a board meeting in twenty minutes that has nothing to do with any of this, and frankly, after the week we've had, I'm almost looking forward to the tedium."

"Never thought I'd hear you say you're looking forward to a board meeting," Japheth said.

"Desperate times, Montgomery." Voss allowed himself something almost like a smile on his way out the door. "Desperate times."

I watched him go, then looked around the room at what remained Ranjiv already deep in his research, Kate and Dean leaning into each other with the particular closeness of two people who'd survived something together and come out the other side still choosing one another, Japheth beside me, steady, present, exactly the kind of partner I'd once been too afraid to let myself imagine actually existed.

Whatever was coming, whoever was actually behind the shadows circling our lives, I found myself, despite the fear, genuinely grateful for the people in this room with me, for a version of safety that didn't depend on anyone's debt or obligation or fear just people who'd chosen, freely, to stay.

"You're doing the thinking face," Japheth said quietly, once the room had mostly emptied, Ranjiv still muttering to himself over his whiteboard, Kate and Dean having wandered off in search of actual lunch.

"I didn't know I had a thinking face."

"You absolutely have a thinking face. It's very similar to my thinking face, actually, which Kate finds extremely funny, since apparently we've started looking like an old married couple already."

"We've been dating for a few months, Japheth."

"I'm aware. Kate is not concerned with technicalities." He studied me for a moment. "What's actually going on in your head? And don't say 'nothing,' because I've gotten disturbingly good at telling when you're deflecting."

I considered how to say it honestly. "I keep thinking about how easy it would have been to just take the London job, months ago, before any of this. If I had, I wonder if I'd have ended up working for whoever's actually behind all this without ever knowing it. Being used again, just in a different shape."

"You don't know that's connected to Marcus yet."

"I know. But even the possibility of it it's making me realize how much of my life I used to hand over to other people's plans without asking enough questions first. Richard. Even you, a little, in the beginning, before we figured out how to actually do this honestly." I met his eyes. "I don't want to keep being the person things happen to. I want to be someone who sees it coming, who asks the right questions before it's too late, not after."

"You caught the valuation discrepancy before anyone else in that room did," he said gently. "You're the one who spotted the London connection just now, before Ranjiv's own research even got there. I think you're already becoming exactly that person, Jasmine. Maybe you already are her, and you just haven't fully believed it yet."

I let that settle for a moment, feeling something steady and unfamiliar take root alongside the fear not certainty, not yet, but the quiet, growing sense that maybe he was right, that the version of myself who simply absorbed whatever was handed to her was becoming, slowly, someone I used to be rather than someone I still was.

"Thank you," I said finally.

"For what?"

"For noticing. For saying it before I asked you to."

He pressed a kiss to my temple, unhurried, certain. "That's the whole point, Peach. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you. Whatever's actually out there, we're going to see it coming together, this time, with our eyes open."