"So we cut the anchor?"
"No,"the smooth voice says."We don't want to kill her. That would make him a martyr. We want to break him. We want him to doubt his own mind."
"How?"
"Paranoia,"the voice purrs."Silas Vane has always been crazy. We just need to give him a push. Make him think the threat is everywhere. Make him tighten his grip until he crushes the thing he loves."
The audio cuts out.
I sit there, frozen.
Make him tighten his grip until he crushes the thing he loves.
It’s a psychological operation. Someone is gaslighting me. Someone fed O’Malley that line to provoke me. To make me react exactly the way I just did.
To make me fire the staff. To make me isolate Ivy. To make me the monster she fears.
They want me to destroy my own marriage. They want me to turn my home into a prison so unbearable that Ivy breaks.
Who?
Who knows me that well? Who knows my psychology?
I replay the voice.Smooth. Educated.
It sounds familiar. Like a ghost from a past life.
I open a new browser window. I search the archives of Vane Enterprises. The old board members. My father’s associates.
I find a video clip from an old shareholder meeting, ten years ago. My father is speaking. Beside him stands a man in a gray suit. His lawyer.Arthur Pendelton.
I play the clip.
"The future of this company relies on stability,"Pendelton says.
The voice.
It’s the same voice.
Arthur Pendelton. My father’sconsigliere. The man who executed my father’s will. The man I fired the day I took over.
He disappeared. I thought he retired to the Hamptons to die of liver failure.
Apparently, he has been waiting.
He knows my father beat me. He knows about the scar. He knows that my greatest fear is becoming my father.
And he is using it against me.
He wants me to become the abuser. He wants me to become the man who hits his wife and terrifies his children. Because if I become my father... I am no longer Silas Vane. I am just a broken cycle repeating itself.
I slam my fist onto the desk. The glass cracks.
"Nice try, old man," I snarl.
I won't let him win. I won't let him turn me into that monster.
But... the threat is real. O’Malleydidknow. The leak is real.
