Page 94 of Sexting My Ex’s Dad

I pace to the window, phone pressed tight to my ear. “Can I use this?”

“You can use enough to make Meredith understand she’s dealing with someone who knows where the floor is weak. Don’t wave actual documents around if you want to keep my sources friendly.”

“I won’t.”

He pauses. “Athena?”

“What.”

“If Meredith cracks, get whatever she gives you recorded or written down fast. People like that lie for sport once they start sinking.”

“I know.”

“Also,” he adds, “Cindy and Meredith exchanged personal emails off hospital systems for years. I couldn’t open all of them, but the pattern is ugly. Personal favors. Placement help. Language about ‘keeping things quiet.’”

That’s enough. When I hang up, Maya is staring at me with the kind of expression women wear right before a war.

“You’re going after her tonight,” she says.

“Tonight,” I confirm.

Ivy looks up from her drawing. “Can I come?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she says, unfazed, and goes back to adding fire behind Nate’s badly drawn body.

Meredith agrees to meet too quickly.

That tells me she’s scared before I even arrive. We meet at an expensive cafe with brass light fixtures, marble tables, and staff trained to speak softly and charge aggressively.

I get there first and take the corner banquette with the best line of sight to the door. When Meredith walks in, she spots me immediately and gives me the brittle smile of a woman who thinks composure still counts as power.

She sits without waiting to be invited. “I have very little time.”

I look her over slowly. Cream blouse, neat hair, a leather folder clutched like armor. “That’s fine,” I reply. “This won’t take long.”

Her eyes narrow. “You sounded urgent.”

“I was trying to be polite.”

That lands. She shifts slightly, and I let the silence stretch long enough to make her fill it.

“If this is about your resignation,” she says, “the paperwork is complete. There’s nothing to revisit.”

I fold my hands on the table. “I know you didn’t earn your degree.”

For the first time since she sat down, Meredith actually freezes. I keep my voice soft, conversational. “I know the certification was incomplete, I know the master’s never happened, and I know Cindy paid to sand the rough edges off your résumé and drop you into Hawthorne like a polished little land mine.”

Color drains out of her face in a visible wave. She recovers fast, but not fast enough. “That’s ridiculous.” The line would sound stronger if she hadn’t tightened her grip on the folder.

“Is it?” I ask. “Want me to walk you through the shell company. Or the consulting payments. Or the prior civil complaints you buried before you got yourself a badge and an office and started threatening women for sport.”

Her mouth parts. Closes. Opens again.

I lean in just slightly. “You tried to end my career with paperwork you weren’t qualified to file.”

She glances toward the room around us then back to me. Her voice drops. “Keep your voice down.”