“You mean asking if I’ve lost the plot,” I said quietly.
He flinched. Just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but I saw it.
“Someone talked to you,” I said.
His eyes flicked down the hall, checking the elevator, the stairwell door, as if expecting someone to step out. “Donors talk,” he said. “They always do.”
“Donors don’t send you to a reporter’s hotel unannounced,” I said. “Donors don’t make your hand shake.”
He curled his fingers tighter around the strap, as if that would still them.
“Who’s pressuring you?” I asked softly. “Is it the same people who fed me that tip? Because if they’re in your ear, too?—”
“That’s not your concern,” he cut in. “Your concern is this: you are on thin ice. The kind that cracks clean through if you misstep. One more debacle, and they will gut our investigativebudget, and I will lose my job, and you will be lucky if anyone lets you rewrite wire copy about celebrity divorces.”
The words should have scared me. Two years ago, they would’ve.
Now, all I felt was a cold, quiet anger.
“And you think the solution is to force me to burn my sources?” I asked. “To hand you unverified names and half-understood structures so you can toss them into a pitch deck for your donors?”
“I think the solution,” he said, stepping closer, “is that you remember which side you’re on.”
“I haven’t changed sides,” I said. “I’m still on the truth’s.”
“You’re on his,” he said. “Be honest.”
Levi’s face flashed in my mind. His hands on my skin. His voice saying,I don’t want you giving up too much for me.
I swallowed. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He laughed once, harsh. “Naïve. I didn’t think you had that in you anymore.”
“That’s enough,” I said. My voice was shaking now, but not with fear. “I’m not doing this with you in a hotel hallway. I’ll send you what I can. If that’s not good enough, you can pull me from the story. But you don’t get to show up here and bully me.”
I turned toward the door. His hand shot out and slammed flat against it, right next to my head. The sound cracked through the hallway.
“Don’t walk away from me,” he said.
The position was bad. Classic bad. My body remembered it before my brain did—briefings about harassment, the posture of a man blocking an exit. I felt the old, familiar rush of adrenaline and something darker, a ghost of every time I’d been pinned in a crowd, jostled too close in a riot.
“Move your hand,” I said. My voice came out low. Calm.
He didn’t.
“I’m trying to save your career,” he said, leaner now, almost pleading under the anger. “Do you understand that? They are already looking for excuses to cut us. They want you to fail so they can say we were wrong to bet on you.”
“And who are ‘they’?” I asked. “Name them.”
He swallowed. His throat worked. He couldn’t.
Of course, he couldn’t. Because it wasn’t just “the board” or “donors.” It was something else. Something he was too afraid to say out loud in a beige hotel hallway with a reporter who might still be recording.
His other hand came up, catching my forearm as I reached for the latch. His grip was too tight, fingers digging into skin.
Pain flared. My breath stuttered.
“Stop,” I said.
