16. Declan #2
For years, I knew how to win. Winning was numbers, contracts, headlines, closing the deal before someone else understood what they had lost. It was walking into a room with more information than anyone expected me to have and leaving with the terms I wanted.
None of that feels like victory now.
Victory would be Flynn walking into school without someone whispering because his picture was stolen and posted online. Victory would be Talia answering her phone without bracing for another lie. Victory would be standing beside them without becoming the reason the next attack is worse.
Marcus appears ten minutes later with the folder Graham promised and the expression of a man who’s already decided sympathy would waste everyone’s time. He doesn’t sit until he has dropped the file onto my desk.
“The board is already asking contingency questions,” he says.
“I heard.”
“They’ll remove you if they decide keeping you in place threatens the deal.”
“You mentioned that yesterday.”
“I like repeating myself when people refuse to react appropriately.”
“What would appropriate look like?”
“Less calm. More swearing. Maybe throwing something inexpensive.”
I open the folder. “I’m done reacting.”
Marcus goes still for half a second, then sits back in the chair across from me with the faintest trace of approval in his eyes.
“There you are.”
The folder is full of registrations, invoice summaries, vendor lists, media placement records, and the kind of documents most people look at only long enough to decide they don’t want to look any longer.
Marcus has already highlighted sections in three colors and marked several pages with tabs.
It is not evidence. Not yet. But it’s a map of where evidence might be hiding.
“I started with the media placement firm,” he says. “The one Sloane flagged.”
“Legitimate?”
“On paper.”
“That always means barely.”
“Exactly.”
I turn a page and scan the registered address. Virtual office. Shared agent. Multiple companies with overlapping filing dates. Nothing illegal on its own, which is usually the point.
“Julian?” I ask.
Marcus’s face tells me he’s been waiting for the question.
“Likely. Not provable.”
“That seems to be the theme of the week.”
“He wants us emotional. He wants you chasing headlines, Talia defending herself, Sloane managing optics, Graham protecting the Foundation. Everyone running in a different direction.”
“And while we do that?”
“He moves the real piece.”
I look down at the file again, and the anger that’s been looking for somewhere to go finally narrows with clairty.
This is not a gossip problem. It’s not even a public relations problem, not at the center.
It’s pressure applied through personal damage, designed to scatter us before the merger reaches the point of no return.
Marcus taps one of the payment summaries. “Follow the money. Not the posts. Not the comments. Not whatever story he wants people repeating today. Money is less emotional than people.”
“That’s Adrian’s line.”
“I stole it because it was useful.”
“Does he know?”
“He assumes everything useful eventually belongs to finance.”
I almost smile.
Marcus rises, but he doesn’t leave immediately. For all his sharp edges, he has never been careless with the people he considers his. His gaze moves from the folder to me, then back again.
“Don’t prove you’re right,” he says. “Prove he’s wrong.”
When Marcus leaves, I sit with the folder for longer than I would have six months ago.
There was a time I would have gone straight for the answer, moving through documents with the same cold efficiency I brought to every acquisition, every distressed asset, every company that thought its secrets were better hidden than they were.
Today, I need a moment first. Not because I’m uncertain.
Because, for once, the thing I am chasing isn’t leverage.
It’s a way to stop the next blow before it hurts Talia or Flynn.
The thought of them steadies me more than it should, then I look at the folder contents again and begin where Marcus told me to begin.
Money.
The first few pages are exactly what I expect.
Media placement records. Vendor summaries.
Corporate registrations printed from public databases.
Enough to suggest movement, not enough to prove it.
Sloane already traced the photo to a placement firm with a clean public face and too many empty spaces behind it.
Marcus has marked three affiliated companies in yellow, each one connected by the same registered agent, the same virtual office address, and the same habit of appearing exactly where a person would want distance between action and accountability.
On their own, none of the details mean much. Together, they begin to look deliberate.