Chapter 25 Sloane
Sloane
The office is quiet this early. I should be working on quarterly projections, but instead I'm hunting for the truth about Vivian Lamore.
I sink onto the couch and pull my laptop closer, opening the folder labeled "V.L." Everything I've collected since that moment at the coffee machine when Anna Reyes went white as a sheet and fled like I'd threatened her life.
The Columbus staff photo stares back at me. Anna's open smile. Vivian's guarded expression. Both of them younger, happier, before whatever happened—happened.
"I don't know what you mean."
Anna's lie was terrible. Unconvincing. But effective, because what could I do? I had timing and a photograph. I had Vivian's paranoia and Anna's terror. I had coincidence, not proof.
I need proof.
My mind drifts to that photo on Vivian's screen. The picture of her and Jake Morrison, arms around each other, both grinning at a team event. The photo she was staring at until she noticed me. The photo that meant something.
I've been circling around the timing of Vivian's departure, but I never actually investigated Morrison himself. What happened to Columbus's golden boy captain who retired at twenty-nine?
Twenty minutes of digging later, I've pieced together what the team tried to bury: Morrison's retirement coincided with whispers of infidelity and "internal restructuring.
" His ex-wife's family had major sponsor connections.
A local news article about "inappropriate conduct" has been scrubbed from the internet—but the Google cache remains.
Morrison had a scandal. Vivian left in the aftermath. Anna ran from my questions like her life depended on it.
This is the thread.
I grab my phone and check the time. 7:47 a.m. Early, but not obscenely so. I need to catch Anna before she disappears into meetings, before she has time to see me coming.
I find her at her desk, headphones in, already deep in spreadsheets. She doesn't notice me approach until I'm standing right beside her.
"Anna."
She jumps, yanking out her earbuds. The look that crosses her face—pure fear—tells me everything I need to know.
"Sloane. Hi. I didn't—"
"I need to talk to you." My voice is steady, but my hands shake. "And this time, you can't say 'nothing comes to mind.'"
Her face goes pale. "I have a meeting—"
"No, you don't. Not for another hour." I lean against her desk, lowering my voice.
"Anna, I know about Jake Morrison. I know he retired the same summer Vivian left.
I know there was a scandal—something bad enough that the team scrubbed articles from the internet. And I know it's happening to me now."
She stares at me, frozen.
"Someone is setting me up," I continue, the words tumbling out desperate and raw.
"They're going to try to make me look incompetent or worse.
And I think Vivian is using the same playbook on me that someone used on her in Columbus.
" I pause, meeting her eyes. "You have to tell me what happened. Please."
Anna's breathing goes shallow. Her fingers clench around her pen so hard I think it might snap.
"There's a conference room," she whispers finally. "Second floor. Empty until nine."
I nod and follow her there, pulse pounding in my ears.
She closes the door behind us with shaking hands, then leans against it like she needs the support.
"If I tell you this," she says, "and it gets out... if she finds out I told you..."
"Then we go down together," I say simply. "But at least we go down fighting."
Anna nods once, sealing a pact. When she speaks again, her voice is stronger but still trembling.
"I was unemployed for eight months after Columbus.
No interviews. Nothing. It was like I'd been blacklisted.
" She presses her hands flat against the table.
"I don't know everything. But people said Morrison was involved with someone.
Not Vivian—someone else. A woman whose family had big connections to our top sponsors. "
"An affair."
She nods slowly. "That's what people whispered. And when his wife found out, she didn't just threaten to expose the affair. She threatened to blow the whole thing open—financial irregularities, shady contracts, sponsor money getting funneled through back channels."
Ice floods my stomach. "Morrison needed a scapegoat."
"Vivian was young. Talented. She'd been working on his personal branding. It was easy to spin that into something inappropriate."
"But nothing happened between them."
"Nothing." Anna's voice hardens. "Vivian was married. Happy. She was building something real. But once the rumors started... who was going to believe her? He was the face of the franchise. She was a marketing girl."
The air in the room thickens. This wasn't a relationship gone bad. This was a calculated sacrifice.
"Her marriage fell apart?"
Anna nods, voice breaking. "The whispers. The looks. The way people treated her husband at events... He couldn't handle it. Filed for divorce six months after she got fired. She lost everything, Sloane. And she didn't do a damn thing wrong."
I sit back, numb as the ugly picture becomes suddenly, sickeningly clear. Vivian's glare at the gala wasn't about jealousy. It was fear. Panic. Recognition.
She wasn't seeing two colleagues in the early stages of an office romance. She was seeing herself. Watching history repeat.
"Anna?"
She takes a breath, then looks at me—really looks at me. Her voice drops to a whisper.
"Last night, I saw the way Vivian was watching you. Watching Garrett. And I recognized it."
Her eyes go glassy, full of memory.
"It's the same way she used to look at herself in the mirror. After it all fell apart." A pause. "Like she was seeing a ghost."