15. Marcus
Marcus
By the time I walk into the boardroom, the evidence is no longer circumstantial. That should feel like progress. It doesn’t.
The room is already full. Graham stands at the head of the table with one hand braced against the polished edge, expression controlled enough that anyone who doesn’t know him would miss the strain beneath it.
Adrian is near the windows, phone in hand, speaking quietly to someone from legal.
Declan sits halfway down the table, jaw set, fingers drumming once against the arm of his chair before going still.
On the screen behind Graham, the source map is already waiting. Shell accounts, posting times, and amplification chains. Two media blogs picked up the forged email screenshots within twelve minutes of each other. One PR firm is buried beneath three layers of corporate filings.
Apex Holdings appears first, and beneath it is the name that turns the entire room colder.
Julian Pierce.
For a second, I say nothing. Not because the name surprises me.
Some part of me has been tracing the shape of this attack for days without wanting to give it form too early.
The coordination, timing, and the way every leak arrived not just to damage Crossridge, but to force us into the next mistake.
It was too personal to be random and too disciplined to be gossip.
Now there is proof. The enemy has a name. That should make the next move cleaner.
Instead, all I can see is Sloane standing in her office with headlines tearing her reputation apart, while I told her we would fix it. As if damage is ever that simple once the public has decided what story it wants to believe.
Graham looks at me. “Legal confirmed the Apex connection ten minutes ago.”
“Direct?”
“Not clean enough for court yet,” Adrian says, ending his call as he turns from the windows. “But clean enough for us to know where the money moved. Apex paid the consulting firm. The firm contracted the media distribution account. The account seeded the email screenshots.”
Declan’s expression hardens. “And Julian?”
“Still insulated,” Graham says. “But not invisible anymore.”
The board members seated along the far side of the room shift at the name. Some recognize it immediately. Others only know enough to understand that a former almost-founder of Crossridge does not appear in a source map by accident.
One of them, Whitmore, leans forward and adjusts his glasses. “For clarity, are we saying Julian Pierce is behind this?”
“We’re saying the leak originated through an entity financially tied to Apex Holdings,” Graham says. “And Apex is tied to Julian.”
“That is not the same thing as proof.”
“No,” I say, moving to the screen. “But it is enough to stop treating this as a public relations problem.”
I connect my laptop, and the source map sharpens across the display. Dana sent the final version twelve minutes ago, along with notes from IT, legal, and media monitoring. Even exhausted, she organized the data better than half the analysts in this building.
Sloane trained her well.
“The forged emails were seeded at 8:12,” I say. “By 8:24, four accounts with prior connection to the first photo leak had amplified the screenshots. By 8:31, two business blogs published nearly identical language framing Sloane as the architect of the relationship strategy.”
Whitmore looks at the screen. “And you believe that language came from Apex?”
“I believe the timing did.”
Declan leans forward. “The language was designed to turn pressure away from Crossridge and onto Sloane specifically.”
“Exactly,” I say.
Graham’s gaze shifts to me. He hears what I am not saying. Julian didn’t just attack the company. He found the person most exposed by the strategy and put the blade there.
My hands remain still at my sides, but the anger moving through me is not clean enough to use. Not yet. Anger makes people sloppy, and I have already made enough mistakes by moving too quickly when Sloane was standing in the blast radius.
Adrian crosses his arms. “This is retaliation.”
“It’s leverage,” Declan says. “Retaliation is emotional. This is useful to him.”
“Both can be true,” Graham replies.
The board absorbs that in silence.
For years, Julian has existed at the edge of Crossridge history like a closed door no one wanted reopened in front of investors.
Brilliant. Ambitious. Angry enough to burn down anything he couldn’t own.
He was almost one of us once, which makes this worse.
An enemy outside the building guesses at weak points.
Julian remembers where some of them are.
And now he has found one.
Sloane.
Whitmore taps one finger against the table. “If this is targeted, then we need to reduce exposure immediately.”
I already know where this is going before he says it. Graham does too. Declan mutters something under his breath that sounds like a warning.
Whitmore continues anyway. “Ms. Parker’s name is currently attached to the most damaging part of the leak. Until the emails are disproven publicly, her involvement creates liability.”
The room goes still, not because the argument is surprising, but because it is predictable. And because predictable things can still be dangerous.
Graham’s voice lowers. “Be careful.”
“I am being careful,” Whitmore says. “That is my point. We do not need to terminate her. But temporarily removing her from public-facing response may protect both the company and Ms. Parker herself.”
Protect. I have never hated a word more.
“Say what you mean,” I say.
Whitmore looks at me. “I mean communications should be led by someone else until this stabilizes.”
“No.”
The word leaves me before anyone else can soften the moment.
Whitmore’s mouth tightens. “Marcus—”
“No,” I repeat, calmer this time, which is better for everyone. “We are not cutting her loose because Julian built a false narrative around her name.”
“This is not about blame.”
“It is entirely about blame. You just put nicer language around it.”
A few board members shift in their seats. Graham doesn’t interrupt. Neither does Adrian. Declan has stopped drumming his fingers completely, which means he is either enjoying this or preparing to intervene if necessary.
Possibly both.
Whitmore sits straighter. “The public does not currently trust her.”
“The public currently has manipulated evidence,” I say. “That is not the same thing.”
“Markets do not care about philosophical distinctions.”
“Neither do companies that panic and sacrifice the person holding the structure together.”
The room goes quiet again, but this time, it is different. Everyone here knows exactly what that sounds like. Graham’s gaze drops briefly to the table before lifting again.
I feel the old history settle into the room. Tessa. The board. The last time Crossridge allowed pressure to define the person standing inside the fire instead of protecting her from it.
Graham made that mistake once. He has spent every day since proving he understood the cost. I am not going to repeat it with Sloane.
Not because of guilt or attraction, but because somewhere in the middle of this disaster, she became the person I look for first in every room, even when she refuses to look back.
Because she is being targeted for doing her job.
And if Crossridge cuts her loose now, Julian wins before the legal team files a single motion.
Graham finally speaks. “Marcus is right.”
Whitmore turns sharply toward him. “Graham—”
“No.” Graham’s voice is quiet, but the room adjusts around it immediately. “We are not removing Sloane from communications because someone forged evidence to make her look compromised.”
Another board member, Hensley, leans forward. “But we can’t ignore public perception.”
“No one is ignoring it,” Adrian says. “But if perception was engineered, then reacting as though the perception is organic only rewards the engineering.”
Declan nods once. “And confirms it.”
Whitmore looks between us, frustration sharpening his expression. “Then what is the recommendation?”
I turn back to the screen. “Three tracks. Legal moves against the accounts and distribution chain. IT releases forensic findings as soon as the metadata is clean enough to withstand scrutiny. Communications prepares a statement centered on evidence manipulation, not emotional denial.”
“And Ms. Parker leads that?” Hensley asks.
“Yes.”
“That may look self-serving.”
“It may,” I say. “Which is why Graham signs the statement, legal attaches the technical findings, and Sloane controls the language behind it.”
Whitmore doesn’t like that, and honestly, I don’t care.
“She is the best person in this building at reading a media cycle,” I continue. “Julian knows that. That is why he tried to damage her first.”
Saying the name out loud makes the possibility harder to dismiss.
Graham’s expression remains controlled, but something in his eyes shifts at Julian’s name. A warning. A memory. A calculation already moving forward.
Declan looks at the source map again. “He wanted her isolated.”
“Yes.”
“And if we remove her?”
“We give him exactly what he aimed for.”
Adrian exhales once. “Then we don’t.”
The simplicity of it should settle the matter. It doesn’t. Boards rarely reward moral clarity when risk is still on the table.
Whitmore folds his hands. “And if investors ask why someone accused of fabricating the relationship remains in control of the response?”
I meet his gaze. “We tell them the accusation is false.”
“That may not be enough.”
“Then we prove it.”
“And if the proof comes too late?”
The question hangs there, and for one sharp second, Sloane’s voice cuts through my memory: When this finishes destroying someone publicly, it’s not going to be you.
The truth of that festers under my ribs like something I can’t remove.