A pause. "Keane was the second suspect."
"Keane was the second suspect because she had access. But if Whitfield is Kane's asset, then Keane might be a target, not a conspirator. She's my Chief Innovation Officer. If Kane acquires Morrison, the first thing he does is gut the research division. Keane loses everything."
"You want to bring her in."
"I want information. Set up an encrypted call for this afternoon."
I end the call and stand in my kitchen, barefoot, in Hayes's t-shirt, staring at the coffee machine while my company's future rearranges itself in my head.
Victor Kane. The man has a net worth of twelve billion dollars and the moral compass of a parasitic wasp. He doesn't just buy companies. He breeds chaos inside them first, poisons the host from within, and swoops in when the organism is too weak to fight.
He's been doing it to me for months. And I didn't see it because I was looking for a spy when I should have been looking for a predator.
"Hey."
Hayes stands in the bedroom doorway, shirtless, tactical pants pulled on but unbuttoned, his hair messed from sleep. He's reading my face with that focused attention that I've stopped trying to deflect.
"What happened?"
I tell him. All of it. Meridian Capital. Victor Kane. The connection between the surveillance team and Kane's security apparatus. The board member who might be compromised. The entire scope of what I'm facing, laid out with the clinical precision of a surgical plan.
He listens without interrupting. When I finish, he crosses the kitchen, pours two cups of coffee, adds two sugars to mine, and sets it in front of me.
"Get dressed," he says. "We're going to the lodge."
The briefing takes an hour.
Deck, Mace, Sully, Hayes, and me around the oak table. Elena's wooden blocks are stacked in a tower on the side table where Vivian left them. The domestic detail amid the tactical conversation is something I would have found absurd a week ago. Now it feels grounding.
Sully projects his findings onto the wall screen. Financial trails, communication intercepts, corporate filings. The pictureis comprehensive and damning. Kane has been running a multi-pronged destabilization campaign against Morrison Pharmaceuticals for at least six months, possibly longer. Whitfield was recruited eighteen months ago. The research leaks were timed to coincide with key investor meetings. The penthouse break-in happened forty-eight hours before a major institutional shareholder review.
"He's not just driving your stock down," Sully says, pushing his glasses up. "He's building a narrative. Compromised security. Unstable leadership. IP vulnerability. Every leak, every incident reinforces the story that Morrison Pharma is a company in crisis."
"And when the stock hits his target price, he makes the bid," Mace says. "Hostile takeover dressed up as a rescue."
"Timeline?" Deck asks.
Sully pulls up a chart. "Based on the stock trajectory and Kane's typical patterns, I'd estimate three to four weeks. He needs the price below forty-two dollars per share to make the acquisition math work. It's currently at fifty-one, down from sixty-eight six months ago."
Fifty-one. I built that stock from twelve dollars a share over eight years. Watching Kane carve it down has been like watching someone take a scalpel to my life's work.
"Options," Deck says, looking at me.
This is the moment I've been trained for. Not in a boardroom. Not in an operating theater. Here, at a table full of operators who understand threat neutralization in ways my corporate world never will.
"Legal first," I say. "The financial trail Sully's built gives us enough for an SEC complaint. Market manipulation, insider trading, corporate espionage. Kane's lawyers will fight it, but the filing itself creates a public record that poisons his acquisition narrative."
"Timeline on that?" Hayes asks. He's leaning forward, forearms on the table, fully engaged. Not deferring to Deck or Mace. Contributing as an equal.
"If I get Warren and my legal team moving today, we can file within a week."
"That's not fast enough," Hayes says. "If Kane knows his surveillance team was captured, he'll accelerate. He can't afford to wait for us to build a case."
He's right. The realization is immediate and uncomfortable.
"Counter-intelligence," Deck says. "Feed Whitfield false information. Let Kane's people act on bad data. It disrupts his timeline and gives us evidence of active coordination."
"Sully can build a convincing data package," Mace adds. "Fake research files that look real enough to pass initial analysis. When Kane's people distribute them, we trace the distribution network and hand everything to the FBI."
