"We stay on encrypted channels," Juno ordered. "Nothing personal on unsecured devices. No social media logins. Bluetooth off. If it has a microphone and it isn't hardwired to this room, it’s a liability."
He looked at me. "Rowan. Keep digging. If he’s building a lie, we need the truth to be bulletproof."
I nodded. My mouth was dry.
"Understood," I said.
I turned back to my screen. The spreadsheet blurred for a second, my eyes stinging. I blinked it away. I forced the fear into a box and locked the lid.
Focus, Quill. Find the ink. Follow the trail.
SEVENTEEN
Rowan
I didn't blink. I didn't think I could afford it.
The screen in front of me was a dense thicket of alphanumerics, a forest of shell companies and offshore holdings that Stephen had scraped from the underbelly of the Vance Global server. To anyone else, it looked like noise. To me, it looked like a confession.
I wasn't looking for the money anymore. We had the money. We had the fraud. I was looking for thepeople.
"You're squinting," Stephen murmured. He was standing behind my chair, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his chest, smell the sharp, clean scent of expensive ink and bergamot. He hadn't touched me, but his presence was a heavy, persistent weight against my back.
"I'm cross-referencing," I muttered, tapping the down key. "There's a rhythm to the payroll. See this?"
I highlighted a column calledAdministrative Settlements.
"Standard severance packages," Stephen noted, leaning over my shoulder. His hand came down to rest on the back of my chair, his thumb brushing the fabric of my borrowed shirt.
"It's too high," I said. "And too frequent. Look at the dates."
I pulled up a secondary window, overlaying industry news from the last five years.
"Every time there's a 'creative difference' press release," I pointed to a jagged spike in the payout graph, "there's a corresponding deposit into a private account, followed by an immediate cessation of tax activity for that individual."
"They stop working," Stephen said, his voice dropping an octave.
"They disappear," I corrected. "Look at this one. David Hames. Beta. Lighting director. Worked every major tour from 2018 to 2020. Then he files a complaint about unsafe rigging hours. Two weeks later? Mutual departure. He gets a payout fromAegis, and he never credits on a show again."
I scrolled down. The list was a graveyard.
Sarah Linds. Omega. Choreographer. Disappeared 2021.
Matthias Madera. Beta. Sound Engineer. Gone 2019.
It wasn't random. It was a purge.
"They aren't just firing people," I whispered, the realization turning my stomach to lead. "They're buying their silence and simultaneously blacklisting them. It's a capture-and-kill strategy for talent."
I typed furiously, knowing exactly what I was looking for now. The pattern was the key. If you knew the cadence of the lie, you could find the truth hidden in the silence between the beats.
I filtered for the current quarter.Q3.
The cursor blinked. One entry. Dated yesterday.
My heart stopped.
Termination Agreement / Settlement / NDA - Illyana V.
