Chapter 3

The next day, I didn't go to the office. It wasn't because I was scared.

I was lazy. Maybe I was a little disheartened, too.

At nine that morning, Aislinn Fisher called me. She was a veteran in the finance department, one of the old hands my dad had sent to the company years ago. She had steady hands, a tight mouth, and a sharp eye.

Most people at the company knew her only as the woman who handled the money. Few realized she understood the company's underlying structure better than many of its executives.

"Mr. Hart." That was how she always addressed me, neither familiar nor distant. "Elina held a management meeting this morning."

I leaned against the balcony railing, coffee in hand. "Did they spend the whole time cursing me out?"

Aislinn paused. "Not exactly. Lance proposed removing destabilizing elements before the press conference."

"I'm an element now?"

"You're considered a historical element."

I nearly spat out my coffee.

Aislinn continued, "He also recommended revoking all your visitor access to prevent the media from making unfounded speculations. Elina agreed."

I looked down at the traffic below. "Did she sign off on it?"

"She did."

Good. She'd been even more decisive than I'd expected.

Aislinn lowered her voice. "There are also several documents that don't look right."

I straightened. "Go on."

"An addendum to the key personnel agreements, a trademark pledge of intent, and an application to change the supply-chain entity. The most troubling item is a scanned authorization document bearing your signature."

I said nothing.

Aislinn didn't press me. She knew I understood.

Taken individually, these documents could all be explained as preparations for the upcoming financing round.

But put together? They suggested someone was trying to move everything the company could take with it into a different corporate shell.

The streamers. The people. The trademarks. The contracts.

The bones and blood of the company.

"Who handled the authorization?"

"Someone on Lance's team circulated it first. Elina's office stamped it for internal processing. It hasn't been released externally yet."

"What about the original?"

"No one has seen it."

"When are they planning to use it?"

"According to the process, they'll publicly disclose part of the restructuring plan at tomorrow's press conference. The document is already attached to the presentation deck."

I smiled.

Aislinn fell silent for a moment before asking, "Mr. Hart, should I stop it now?"

"No."

"But if they present it, things could get ugly."

"That's the point."

There was no sound from the other end of the line.

I finished the last sip of my coffee. "If we stop them now, everyone can claim it was a misunderstanding. The process isn't complete, the document hasn't taken effect, and Lance can brush the whole thing off as a work mistake."

Aislinn sighed. "You want to wait until we have all the evidence."

"Yeah."

That afternoon, someone sent me screenshots from the company's internal chat. The sender was Jamir Galindo, an operations employee I'd hired on a whim years ago.

The employees in the screenshots were having quite a lively discussion.

[That guy was back yesterday, trying to get attention again?]

[I heard he used to have a thing with Elina.]

[Mr. Compton says people like him are just historical baggage.]

[Careful. He might go crying to Elina tonight.]

A row of laughing emojis followed.

The more I read, the more I found myself laughing along.

That evening, my dad finally managed to get through to me. His first words were, "How long are you planning to keep playing dead?"

"Until tomorrow," I said.

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Watching the show."

My dad gave a cold laugh. "Have you gotten your mother's watch back?"

I paused. "Not yet."

Silence hung on the other end for two seconds.

"Bridger."

"Yeah?"

"You can be lazy. You can waste your life. You can hand the company over to someone else. But you don't get to let other people step all over your mother's belongings just to glorify themselves."

I said nothing.

Those words did more to get through to me than any amount of scolding ever could.