“I don’t know.”
Miriam spoke again.
“There’s more. We found an external drive signature matching one previously connected to your home office workstation.”
The foyer seemed to tilt.
I remembered waking at three in the morning two weeks earlier and seeing light beneath my office door.
Adrian had been standing inside.
He had said he was looking for a charger.
I had wanted to believe him so badly that I had almost convinced myself the fear in his face was guilt over waking me.
“Send everything to federal counsel,” I said.
Adrian stepped forward.
“Don’t do that.”
I held up one hand.
Miriam heard him.
“Clara, are you safe?”
“Yes.”
It was the first lie I told that night.
I was physically safe.
But the life I thought I had was bleeding out around me.
“Send it,” I repeated.
“I will.”
I ended the call.
Evelyn’s voice became suddenly calm.
“You are overreacting.”
I looked at her.
“You tried to steal protected government bid data during dinner.”
“You have no proof.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
A black sedan was waiting beneath the stone portico. My driver, Thomas, opened the rear door.
Adrian followed me outside.
Cold air struck my wet dress.
Rain had begun to fall, fine and silver in the security lights.
“Clara, listen to me.”
I turned.
He stood at the top of the steps, hair disordered, face pale. For the first time since I had known him, he looked young.
Not innocent.
Preview
Young.
There was a difference.
“I love you,” he said.
The words reached me, but they had no place to land.
I searched his face for the man who had sat beside me on the kitchen floor after my mother died. The man who had held me as I cried so hard I could barely breathe. The man who had whispered, “You don’t have to be strong with me.”
I wanted him to appear.
I wanted some small piece of that tenderness to be real.
“Did you ever?” I asked.
His eyes filled.
That almost broke me.
Almost.
“Yes.”
“Then why were you smiling?”
His mouth trembled.
He looked back toward the house.
And that was when I understood.
Even now, with everything falling apart, he was checking whether his mother could hear him.
I got into the car.
He came down one step.
“Clara.”
Thomas closed the door.
As we pulled away, Adrian remained beneath the portico, framed by the light from his family’s house.
Evelyn appeared behind him.
She placed one hand on his shoulder.
He did not move away.
I watched until the rain erased them.
Only then did I allow myself to cry.
Not gracefully.
Not quietly.
The sound tore out of me with such force that Thomas raised the privacy partition without being asked.
I bent forward, pressed both hands over my mouth, and mourned a man who was still alive.
By midnight, the Harrow situation had become a corporate emergency.
My penthouse filled with lawyers, security officers, auditors, and executives carrying laptops. Screens glowed across the dining table. Coffee went cold in untouched cups. Every few minutes, another file appeared.
Harrow Infrastructure was in worse condition than we had known.
