11. Skye #2
“The night before the gala.” Miranda finally looks up, and her eyes are wet.
“She asked me to add something to your shared calendar - the update showing Adriana confirmed at Table 1 instead of your usual seat. And she was so… happy about it. This cold, satisfied happiness. Like a cat that’s cornered a mouse and wants to play with it before the kill. ”
I feel sick. All those weeks of psychological warfare, and this woman watched it happen. Helped it happen.
“That’s when I knew,” Miranda continues.
“Whatever I’d helped her do, it wasn’t paperwork.
But by then, she had everything. The emails I’d sent her.
The texts about access codes. Proof that I’d given her everything she needed.
” Her tears are flowing freely now, cutting tracks through her foundation.
“She said if I talked, I’d be the one who went to prison.
She said she’d make sure everyone knew I was the one who stole from the Foundation, that I’d forged the signatures, that I’d framed you to cover my own theft. ”
“So you stayed quiet.”
“I tried to warn you. At the gala. I tried to get you out before it happened.” Miranda’s voice cracks on a sob. “But I was too late. I’m always too late.”
I’m quiet for a long moment, watching this woman fall apart in front of me. I should hate her. Part of me does - a cold, hard part that wants to watch her suffer the way I’ve suffered.
But I think about my own mother. Healthy, alive, probably watching HGTV right now without a care in the world. I think about what I’d do if that changed. What lines I might cross if someone I loved was dying and I couldn’t afford to save them.
“Your mother,” I say finally. “How is she?”
Miranda’s face crumples completely. “She finished her third round of treatment. We’re waiting on scans. The doctors say there’s hope, but…” She can’t finish. Can’t say the words that might make it real.
“I’m not going to pretend what you did was okay.
It wasn’t. People’s lives aren’t collateral damage for your problems.” My voice is firm but not cruel.
I need her to understand the weight of what she’s done, but I also need her to keep talking.
“But I understand desperation. And I understand being used by someone smarter than you.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Miranda reaches into her bag. Her hands are shaking. She pulls out a USB drive - small, black, unremarkable - and slides it across the table toward me.
“I kept everything,” she whispers. “Insurance. I knew she’d burn me eventually.”
I stare at the drive. “What’s on it?”
“Copies of every email Adriana sent me. Screenshots of the texts from her burner phone - the instructions, the timelines, everything. The offshore deposit receipts from when she paid me.” Miranda’s voice breaks.
“And the original documents. The ones she had me forge before they were leaked. You can see the edits. The version history. It proves they were created on my workstation, but she was standing over my shoulder the whole time, telling me exactly what to write.”
“What about the texts during the gala?” I ask. “Someone sent me messages that night. While Adriana was in the ballroom performing her little shock routine.”
Miranda nods miserably. “That was me. She handed me the burner phone before the event started. Told me exactly what to send and when. I was in the bathroom, typing while she was out there gasping for the cameras.” She shudders. “She had the whole night scripted. Every moment.”
My hand closes around the drive. It’s warm from being in her bag, this small piece of plastic that contains the complete destruction of everything Adriana built.
“Why did you keep all this?”
“Because I’m not stupid.” Miranda laughs, wet and bitter.
“I knew what kind of person she was. I knew that the second I stopped being useful, she’d throw me to the wolves.
So I saved everything. Every receipt. Every message.
Every file.” She meets my eyes, and there’s something almost like defiance underneath the guilt.
“I was going to go down, but I was going to take her with me.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix this.” I hold her gaze. “But testimony might.”
I pull out my phone. Set it on the table between us. “I’m going to record this. Say yes if you consent.” Miranda nods at the phone. Her voice is small but clear. “Yes. Yes, I consent.” I hit record.
Miranda talks for almost an hour.
She tells us everything - the private meetings with Adriana in parking garages and hotel lobbies, always somewhere without cameras.
The requests for access codes and signature samples, always framed as routine administrative tasks.
The offshore account where her “bonus” was deposited in three separate installments, each one large enough to be suspicious but small enough to avoid automatic reporting.
She tells us about the burner phone Adriana used to send me the fake hotel texts. About the careful timing of each message, designed to land when I’d be alone, when I’d have time to spiral. About Adriana’s satisfied smile when she checked the news alerts after the gala.
I record all of it. Every word. Every detail. Every piece of the puzzle that Adriana thought she’d hidden.
When it’s over, Miranda is shaking so hard she can barely hold her coffee cup. Her mascara is ruined, her composure completely shattered.
“What happens now?”
“Now you write everything down. Dates, times, account numbers. Everything you just told me, in writing, with your signature.” I keep my voice businesslike. Emotions can come later. “And then you wait. When the board convenes, you tell them the truth. All of it.”
“And me?” Her voice is almost gone. “My name’s on all of it. When they come for someone, it’s going to be me.”
“Not if you hand them Adriana first.” I hold her eyes.
“Cooperate from the first minute, testify, turn over everything you kept - that’s what keeps someone in your position a witness instead of a defendant.
I’ll get you a lawyer who can put it in writing before the DA files a page.
” I let it sit. “You forged those signatures, Miranda. That doesn’t wash off.
But you still get to pick which side of the table you’re on. That’s more than you left me.”
“And Adriana?”
“Let me worry about Adriana.”
Miranda nods, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know you probably don’t believe me, but… I’m glad you’re fighting. I’m glad someone’s going to stop her.”
I don’t respond. I’m not interested in Miranda’s admiration or her guilt or her complicated feelings about betrayal and redemption. I’m interested in evidence. In proof. In the ammunition I need to burn Adriana Stuart’s carefully constructed lies to the ground.
Ellen catches my eye as we leave the coffee shop, stepping out into the afternoon sunlight. The street is busy with people living their normal lives - getting coffee, checking their phones, blissfully unaware of the fraud and manipulation happening in the shadows.
“You should have been a lawyer,” Ellen says.
I shake my head. “I should have been a lot of things. I let myself forget that.”
“You’re remembering now.”
“Yeah.” I look at the recording on my phone - the evidence that will clear my name, expose Adriana, and prove to everyone who doubted me that I was telling the truth all along. “I am.”
That night, back at Ellen’s apartment, I compile everything.
Miranda’s recorded confession, complete with dates and account numbers and damning details.
The USB drive with the original forged documents, the email chains, the screenshots of burner phone texts, and the offshore deposit receipts.
Ellen organizes it all into clean folders - labeled, timestamped, ready for the board.
It’s damning. It’s comprehensive. It’s enough.
Ellen watches me organize the files into folders, each one labeled and timestamped. “Are you going to tell Jayden?”
“No.”
“He should know-”
“He should have believed me without proof.” I attach the files to an email, typing in Harrison’s address from Legal, then adding every board member whose email I can find.
“I’m not handing this to him so he can swoop in and save the day.
I’m not giving him the chance to take credit for fixing a problem he helped create. ”
“That seems-”
“What? Petty?” I look at her, and I know my eyes are hard.
“Maybe it is. But I spent eight years letting him be the hero of every story. I spent eight years standing behind him at press conferences, smiling and nodding while he took credit for things we built together. I’m done being the supporting character in my own life. ”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to save myself.” I hover my cursor over the send button. “And then I’m going to watch Adriana Stuart lose everything she tried to steal from me.”
I click send.
The email disappears into the digital void, carrying with it months of Adriana’s careful planning, Miranda’s guilty conscience, and my own determination to survive.
“There.” I close my laptop. “It’s done.”
Ellen is quiet for a moment. Then she smiles - that warm, proud smile that reminds me why she’s been my best friend for almost twenty years.
“Welcome back, Skye Bennett.”
I look at the sent confirmation on my screen. The evidence is out of my hands now. The board will see it in the morning. Adriana’s carefully constructed lie is about to collapse.
And I didn’t need anyone to rescue me. I rescued myself.