15. Talia
Talia
The airplane kit is waiting on the porch when I lock the front door for the night.
At first, I think it’s a package I forgot to bring inside. Then I notice there is no shipping label, no delivery sticker, no receipt tucked beneath the handle of the bag. Just a neatly packed box from the hobby shop two blocks from Crossridge, along with washable paints, and various stickers.
I know who left it before I even bend to pick it up. There isn't a card or a note tucked beneath the handle, no signature claiming credit for the gift. Somehow, that quiet restraint hurts more than if he'd tried to explain himself.
“Mom?” Flynn calls from the living room. “Why is the door open?”
I pick up the bag and carry it inside. “Someone left something for you.”
He appears in the hallway in pajama pants and one sock, already suspicious of bedtime and all its unfair restrictions. His eyes go wide when he sees the box through the top of the bag.
“Is that a plane?”
“It looks like one.”
He gasps as if the universe has personally delivered proof that it still believes in him. Two seconds later, he’s on the rug with the box in his lap, turning it over carefully while I sit beside him and pretend I’m not thinking about Declan standing on this porch and choosing not to knock.
Flynn studies the picture on the front of the kit with reverent concentration. “It has stickers.”
“I see that.”
“And paint.”
“Washable paint.”
He frowns at the word as though it is an unnecessary limitation on creativity. “Can I build it now?”
“It’s bedtime.”
“Planes don’t have bedtime.”
“Pilots do.”
He considers arguing, then decides the box is too precious to risk losing through poor negotiation.
“Can I look at the pieces?”
“For five minutes.”
He opens the box with the care of someone handling museum artifacts. Wooden wings, a body, wheels, a propeller, paints, and stickers slowly spread across the rug. One of the stickers is a tiny lightning bolt, and Flynn holds it up with the seriousness of a scientist discovering a new element.
“This one makes it faster.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. Lightning is fast.”
“Hard to argue with that.”
He smiles down at the pieces, then looks up. “Who’s it from?”
The question is simple, but the answer isn’t.
I look at the airplane kit again, at the absence of a note, at the careful choice of something Flynn would love without any attempt to demand recognition for giving it.
“Someone who’s learning.”
Flynn accepts this with a sleepy nod, because six-year-olds are often better than adults at taking answers as they come.
The next morning, he’s still talking about the airplane.
He talks about it while brushing his teeth, while choosing socks, while explaining to Mrs. Smith that the propeller will need “serious supervision.” By the time I pour coffee into a travel mug, he has decided the body should be blue, the wings should be silver, and the lightning bolt sticker should go near the front because “that’s where speed starts. ”
Mrs. Smith laughs from the kitchen table while he lines the pieces up like a runway.
“You have yourself quite the project,” she says.
“It’s engineering,” Flynn corrects.
“My apologies.”
I stand in the kitchen doorway for a moment longer than I need to, watching him with his head bent over the little wooden pieces and his hair sticking up in the back. For one fragile morning, the world feels almost manageable. Not fixed or safe, exactly. But softer around the edges.
Then my phone buzzes on the counter. I glance down, see Rebecca's name on the screen, and the fragile sense of peace I'd been holding onto slips quietly away.
I answer before the second ring. “Hi.”
Her voice is calm, which somehow makes my stomach tighten faster. “Talia, have you seen your email?”
“No.”
"HR and legal are already involved. We need to talk before you respond to anyone."
My hand tightens around the phone.
Flynn is still explaining propeller placement to Mrs. Smith. Paint pods sit unopened beside his elbow. The lightning bolt sticker rests near his hand, bright and harmless, and completely unaware that the world is already tilting again.
“What happened?” I ask.
Rebecca exhales. “There’s another post.”
By the time I reach Crossridge, my phone has become something I want to throw into traffic.
Rebecca has already forwarded three internal emails from Ashcroft's leadership team. The managing partners want a timeline. Legal wants copies of every agreement related to the Crossridge engagement, and someone from compliance has scheduled an emergency meeting for later that afternoon.
Mixed in with them are messages from people I haven't spoken to in months. Former colleagues, industry contacts, even two reporters pretending they "just wanted to verify a few details."
No one is asking what actually happened. They want confirmation, denial, anything they can attach to the story already spreading online. Every message points me to the same article, and when I finally open it, my stomach drops.
A school photo from the beginning of the year has surfaced.
Not from the Foundation. Older. Grainier.
Flynn is holding my hand outside his school, his backpack slipping off one shoulder.
I remember that morning with painful clarity.
He had refused cereal, cried because his left shoe felt "wrong," and insisted on carrying a toy airplane in his coat pocket for courage.
Now the photo sits beside a scanned memo implying Crossridge paid my firm for “confidential reputation management services” related to Declan Ward’s undisclosed family matter.
Hush money. They don’t use the phrase, but they don’t have to.
The lobby feels louder than usual when I step inside, though it probably isn’t.
Maybe my own pulse has become too loud to let anything else sound normal.
Security is tighter today. Two additional guards stand near the front desk, and a camera crew is already positioned outside beyond the glass doors.
Carl is waiting near the elevators. His expression tells me Declan knows.
“Talia,” he says quietly. “Sloane is in Marcus’s office.”
“Where’s Declan?”
“In the board meeting.”
The elevator ride up feels twice as long as usual.
Sloane has three screens open when I arrive, and for the first time since I’ve known her, she looks angry before she looks composed.
Marcus stands behind her chair, one hand braced on the desk, while Graham speaks quietly into his phone near the windows.
Tessa is there too, pale and furious in a way that tells me she’s seen the daycare photo.
Sloane looks up as I enter.
“It’s forged,” she says immediately.
The words should bring relief.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s bad.” She turns one of the screens toward me.
“Not amateur bad. Strategic bad. The logo is pulled from an older Ashcroft template. The formatting is close enough for a screenshot, but the payment coding is wrong, the approval chain doesn’t match either company’s internal process, and the date is impossible. ”
“Impossible?”
“You weren’t assigned to the Crossridge matter yet.”
For a moment, I can only stare at the screen. The memo is an outright forgery, something Sloane can dismantle piece by piece, yet none of that stops my phone from vibrating relentlessly. The damage has already begun, and the truth is moving far more slowly than the lie.
Marcus’s voice is low. “The point wasn’t to create something that would survive legal review. The point was to create something people would share before anyone could disprove it.”
My throat tightens.
Sloane nods. “It’s the same pattern as the Foundation photo. Shell account first. Fast pickup by a gossip site. Amplification through the same media placement firm.”
“Apex,” I say.
“Not provable,” Marcus answers.
“But likely.”
His silence is answer enough.
Tessa steps closer, her voice gentler than the room deserves. “We’re already pushing back on the child privacy violation. The school is involved now too.”
“The school?” My voice cracks on the word.
“They’re not angry with you,” she says quickly. “They’re concerned. They should be.”
Everyone is concerned. Rebecca. Ashcroft. Crossridge. Flynn's school. They all mean well, I know they do, but every expression of concern feels like another weight settling onto my shoulders until I can barely remember what it felt like to stand up straight.
I look at the school photo again and feel something inside me go very still. Flynn’s hand is in mine in the picture. His little backpack strap is twisted. One shoe is untied because he had insisted he could tie it himself that morning, only to immediately forget.
Someone had taken that moment, stored it away, waited for the right opportunity, and then used it. Not against Crossridge. Against me. The realization crashes over me with a clarity that leaves no room for denial.
Julian is not just attacking the merger anymore. He’s not just prodding Crossridge to see where the company flinches. He’s attacking my credibility, my motherhood, my work, the fragile line I have drawn around Flynn’s life.
He isn't trying to make Crossridge the scandal anymore. He's making me the scandal. As if to prove the point, my phone lights up again with another call from Rebecca. I answer because ignoring it would only postpone the inevitable.
“Talia,” she says, and there’s too much kindness in her voice.
That’s how I know it is bad.
“The partners are standing behind you,” Rebecca says, “but they’re already getting questions about whether Ashcroft had any advantage through you. If people believe that memo, they’ll start wondering whether your work was ever truly independent.”
I close my eyes. "Because of one forged document."
"Because perception doesn't wait for proof."
A sharp, humorless laugh escapes me. "No. It never does."
"I know it's fake."
"Do they?"
"They say they just want reassurance."
"They want distance."
Rebecca falls silent, and that tells me everything I need to know.