Chapter 17
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 the people.
"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 called Administrative 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 from Aegis, 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.
The air left my lungs in a sharp, painful rush.
"No," I breathed.
"What is it?" Stephen asked, his attention sharpening instantly.
"Illyana," I choked out pointing at the screen. "He fired her. He liquidated her contract."
"She was his headliner," Stephen argued, looking at the data. "She was the revenue stream for the entire quarter. He wouldn't cut her loose. It's financial suicide."
"It's damage control," I snapped, the guilt crashing over me like a wave of ice water. "I left her there, Stephen. I jumped in a car and I left her in the stadium with him."
I could see it. Vance, cornered and humiliated, turning on the one person he could punish. He couldn't get to me, so he dismantled the asset I was trying to protect.
"Open it," Stephen commanded.
I clicked the file. It was locked, encrypted, but Juno’s earlier brute-force attack on the server had left the back door ajar. The document loaded.
It was brutal. It was a standard separation agreement weaponized into a gag order. Mutual departure due to creative realignment... Signatory agrees to forfeit all future royalties in exchange for immediate settlement... Signatory agrees to indefinite non-disparagement clause...
"Clause 9," Stephen read over my shoulder, his voice turning to steel. "Total suppression of all events occuring on [Date Redacted]. Breach of this clause results in immediate clawback of settlement funds and litigation for damages estimated at..."
"Five million pounds," I finished, reading the number. "He put a five-million-pound gun to her head."
She was twenty-two. She supported her whole family in Manchester. She didn't have five million pounds. She barely had access to her own checking account without approval.
"He erased her," I whispered. "He paid her off to keep her from corroborating my story. If I claim the rider was predatory, and Illyana stays silent... I look like a liar."
I pushed the chair back, the legs scraping harshly against the floor.
"I need a phone."
"Rowan," Stephen warned, his hand tightening on the chair back. "Remember the protocol. No outgoing comms to unsecure lines. If you call her, you light up the grid."
"I don't care about the grid!" I stood up, turning to face him. "She’s alone, Stephen. She’s probably sitting in a hotel room convinced her life is over because she trusted me to handle the paperwork. I am not letting her think I abandoned her."
"It's a trap," Mateo’s voice rumbled from the doorway. He had been silent, but he was always listening. "Vance knows you'll reach out. He's watching her phone."
"Then we use the encrypted relay," I said, looking between them. "Juno said it bounces between Panama and Reykjavik. Let Vance trace it. By the time he gets a lock, I'll be off the line."
I grabbed the burner phone from the table, the one Juno had swapped out for my old one.
"Rowan," Stephen started, stepping into my personal space.
"Don't lawyer me, Stephen," I warned, my finger hovering over the keypad. "I'm not asking for permission. I'm informing you of my strategy."
Stephen looked at me. He looked at the fire in my eyes, the set of my jaw. Then, a small, terrifyingly distinct smirk touched his lips.
"I wasn't going to stop you," he said softly. "I was going to tell you to put it on speaker."
I blinked. "Oh."
"We need the audio," he explained, adjusting his glasses. "If she confirms she signed under duress, even if the NDA holds up in civil court, the coercion invalidates the spirit of the agreement. It's evidence."
I dialed.
I knew the number by heart. Not her business line, Vance would have confiscated that along with her social media logins. I dialed the emergency number I gave her mother three years ago.
The ring-back tone purred. Once. Twice.
Pick up. Please, pick up.
"Hello?"
The voice was tiny. Shattered.
"Illyana," I said. My voice was steady, the manager mask sliding into place even though my hands were shaking. "Don't say my name. Just listen."
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. "They said you were a terrorist. They said you worked for the anti-designation league. They showed me emails..."
"They're lying," I said firmly. "They're building a narrative to scare you. Listen to me closely. Did you sign the termination agreement?"
A pause. A sob, choked back.
"I had to," she whispered. "He said he’d sue my mum. He said he’d freeze the house assets. He said... he said if I didn't sign, he’d release the medical files from the tour last year. The ones from the clinic in Zurich."
I closed my eyes. Medical blackmail.
"Okay," I said, forcing my voice to remain calm, soothing. "You did the right thing. You protected yourself."
"I'm sorry," she wept. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't... I saw your manifesto. I wanted to help, but I can't. If I say anything, they take everything."
"You don't have to say anything," I told her. "Not yet. I just needed to know you were safe."
"I'm not safe," she whispered. "I'm erased. He told me I'd never work again. He called producers while I was sitting there, Ro—" She cut off before saying my whole name. "He put them on speaker. He told them I was 'unstable' and 'a liability.' They all agreed to blacklist me."
I looked at Stephen. His face was a mask of cold fury, his grey eyes tracking the recording waveform on the laptop.
"Illyana," I said, pitching my voice low and urgent. "You are not erased. You are in a holding pattern. Do you understand me? You take the money. You go home to Manchester. You sit in your garden and you wait."
"Wait for what?"
"For the signal," I said. "I am going to burn his house down, Illyana. Not with fire. With paper. And when the smoke clears, that NDA won't be worth the ink it's printed on because the entity that enforced it won't exist."
"Rowan..."
"Trust the mix," I said, using our old shorthand from the studio. "I'm fixing the everything. Just stay quiet. Stay safe."
"They're watching me," she whispered. "There's a car outside."
"I know," I said. "Don't look at it. Let them watch. It costs them a thousand pounds a day to keep a detail on you. Let them bleed."
"Okay," she breathed. She sounded younger than she was. "Okay."
"Hang up," I ordered. "Delete this call log."
The line rushed with static, then clicked dead.
I lowered the phone. My hand was cramping from gripping it so hard.
The silence in the safehouse was absolute.
"He threatened her family," Mateo rumbled from the corner. It wasn't a question. It was a threat assessment. "And he used medical records as leverage."
"Privacy laws don't apply to private designation clinics especially when you cross borders to get to them," Stephen noted, his voice devoid of emotion but terrifyingly sharp. "He knew that. He paid for the clinic, so he owns the data. It's monstrous, but..."
"It works," I finished.
I turned back to the screen, to the endless list of names in the spreadsheet.
"You found the paper trail," Stephen said, stepping up beside me again. He looked at the list of settlements, the column of wasted talent and silenced voices.
"Vance doesn't traffic people," I said flatly, the realization solidifying into something hard and cold in my chest. "He’s too smart for that. Trafficking is messy. It involves police and borders."
I pointed at the screen.
"He just makes sure they can never work again if they say no. He cuts their tendons with contracts. Same result. Completely legal."
I looked up at Stephen.
"That's the genius of it," I said. "He builds a prison out of their own signatures."
Stephen’s eyes gleamed behind his glasses. He reached out, his hand covering mine where it rested on the table. "And?"
"And that," I said, turning my hand to grip his fingers, "is also where we destroy him."
"How?" Mateo asked, stepping into the light.
"We don't sue him for the settlements," I said, my mind racing, connecting the dots I had missed before.
"We sue him for anti-competitive behaviour.
This isn't just abuse; it's a monopoly on labor.
He's created a cartel that systematically removes talent from the market to artificially inflate the value of his compliant assets. "
Stephen inhaled sharply. "Antitrust."
"Exactly," I said. "Settlements are private. NDAs are private. But market manipulation? That’s public. That regulates."
I looked back at the screen, at Illyana's name.
"He thought he was burying a witness," I whispered. "But he just handed me a pattern of racketeering conduct."
I pulled the keyboard closer.
"Stephen," I said. "Get the draft ready. We're adding a new plaintiff class."
"Who?"
"Everyone," I said. "Everyone he ever erased."