I stilled. "What do you mean?"
"Rumor is there’s a shadow vote brewing on the board. Some legacy types want to block the merger, but they’re not going through channels. They’re playing dirty."
My throat dried out. "How do you know?"
He tapped his phone. "Because half of them called me, thinking I’d be on their side. As if I’d ever vote against you." He paused, eyes softer now. "But watch your back, Liz."
I wanted to scream. Instead, I sipped my coffee and said, "I appreciate the tip."
He got up, but before leaving he said, "Don’t let Valor distract you. He’s not as bulletproof as he thinks."
The moment the door clicked shut behind him, I set about reconstructing Harrison Whitfield’s entire professional history. I built a timeline, mapped the data leaks, matched every attackon my system to one of his committee meetings. It was beautiful, in a way. Precise, methodical, almost respectful. The pattern wasn’t sabotage for profit. It was personal. Which made it so much worse.
I drafted the confrontation email six times, deleted each version. The idea of walking into his office and watching the mask slip. But the urge to see Gabriel, to just touch him, talk to him, detonated every professional instinct. I texted him:I need to see you. Conference 16A, fifteen min.
He didn’t answer. I went anyway.
The executive conference hallway was glass and steel, so every step echoed. I passed the old-timers’ portraits, every one of them male, every one of them staring down the next generation like daring us to disappoint them. My heels bit into the runner.
I was about to open the door to 16A when I heard voices inside.
"We need to be ready. If she gets proof, the board will flip," said a voice I’d recognize even through a hurricane. Gabriel. Calm, measured, not a trace of the heat he’d shown me on the plane.
"You should have shut it down when you had the chance," someone hissed back. Harrison, definitely.
A third voice, Calvin, low and hurried. "Can we at least warn her? She’s not the enemy here."
"She doesn’t have to know yet," Gabriel said. "If she does, we lose the element of surprise."
A glass of ice water dumped into my stomach.
Harrison’s voice: "The vote is Friday. If you’re going to move, it has to be before then."
A silence, then Gabriel again, colder than I’d ever heard him. "Leave her to me. I’ll handle it."
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe.
"She’s not a pawn," Calvin said, but his words landed like feathers.
"She’s your sister," Gabriel countered. "She knows the game."
If I walked in now, they’d see the crack in me. The ugly, mewling thing that still wanted Gabriel’s hand on my skin, even as he plotted to ruin me. I stayed in the shadow by the door, listening as my own love story crashed and burned on the other side of the glass.
The voices inside shifted to logistics, meetings, PR control, all the tedious mechanisms of war. I let myself drift backward, heels silent now, and disappeared down the hallway before any of them could see me.
My office was quiet and safe. I locked the door and folded in half, breath coming shallow, hands shaking so badly I knocked my phone onto the floor.
A text appeared on the shattered screen:Where are you?From Gabriel.
I wanted to smash it more. I wanted to call him and demand the truth. I wanted to hate him, and couldn’t.
I spent the next hour prepping my proof, cross-referencing logs, assembling a document so airtight it would suffocate the whole board.
Then I went to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and wept until no more tears would come.
By four p.m., the office was emptying out. I sat at my desk, pulse an angry metronome in my ears, watching the sunset melt over the buildings. I imagined what Gabriel would say if I confronted him. I imagined what I’d say back.
A knock on my door. "Eliza?" His voice, impossible to ignore.