On the balcony later, David joined me, the city glittering below.
“You handled yourself well tonight.”
“So did you,” I said. “I owe you for that phone call.”
“Maybe it wasn’t luck,” he said quietly. “Maybe your uncle wanted you to meet someone who wouldn’t let you quit.”
I smiled. “You’re dangerously sentimental.”
“Don’t tell my partners,” he said.
The silence that followed was full—of gratitude, of something new and unspoken.
Three weeks after Nathan’s ousting, the company was thriving on paper—but inside, the air was tense.
David warned me, “You’ve made enemies. Quiet ones.”
He was right. Whispers spread. Anonymous leaks hit tabloids. They called for my resignation.
I stayed late, studying files under the hum of city lights. Every night, I remembered Mark’s words: You belong in the past.
Not anymore.
Then David came in one night, holding a manila envelope.
“You’re not going to like this.”
I opened it. My pulse spiked.
“Nathan wasn’t alone,” he said. “Three board members were in on the fraud—and a fourth signature we can’t trace.”
My jaw tightened. “Then we find it.”
