16. Declan #3
I pull the keyboard closer and open the corporate registry database.
The first company leads to a holding entity formed eighteen months ago.
The holding entity shares an accountant with a consulting group that dissolved shortly after the last Crossridge rumor cycle.
That consulting group paid a media broker six months before the first article about Talia and me appeared online.
I write each name down on a legal pad, drawing lines between them as the office darkens around me.
Outside the windows, the city shifts from gray afternoon into evening, one building at a time catching light while the floor beyond my door slowly empties.
Carl appears once with coffee and again with food I didn’t ask for, both times saying nothing more than necessary.
He has worked with me long enough to know when silence is not neglect but support.
Halfway through the second search, my phone lights beside the laptop. Not a message. Just the screen waking when my sleeve brushes it.
Talia’s name is still near the top of my texts, untouched since the message I deleted the night before.
I pick up the phone before I can stop myself and stare at the thread, thinking of the airplane kit on her porch, Flynn’s hands sorting through wooden pieces, Talia trying to decide whether a quiet gift is kindness or complication.
My thumb moves over the keyboard.
Did Flynn get the airplane inside in one piece?
I almost send it.
The question is small enough to seem harmless, which is exactly what makes it dangerous.
It’s not really about the airplane. It’s about whether Flynn smiled today.
Whether Talia ate dinner. Whether the forged memo took something from her that I have no right to ask about until she’s ready to tell me.
She asked for space.
I delete the message and set the phone facedown beside the coffee.
Respecting her should not feel like doing nothing, but tonight it does. So I make myself useful in the only way available to me. I go back to the money.
The next hour produces more smoke than fire.
Another shell company. Another vendor. Another consultant with three titles and no clear job beyond creating distance between the person paying and the damage being done.
By the time I find the first real overlap, the legal pad is crowded with names, arrows, dates, and question marks.
The overlap is small.
A consultant listed as an adviser for one of the holding companies also appears on a dormant communications contract tied to a former Apex vendor. Different role. Different year. Same person.
I search again.
The same consultant surfaces on another filing, this time connected to an advisory group that received payments from the media broker responsible for amplifying the school photo.
That advisory group lists a board authorization from four years ago, buried in an archived disclosure most people would never bother opening because the company dissolved before it did anything useful.
Most people aren’t looking for a man who hides behind patterns.
I open the archived disclosure and read it, then read it again, slower this time.
The signature is not Julian’s. He’s smarter than that.
But the authorization traces back to an entity that once sat under Apex Strategic Holdings, routed through two intermediaries and a consulting agreement written broadly enough to cover almost anything while admitting almost nothing.
It’s not proof. Adrian’s voice cuts through before I can pretend otherwise. Certainty is not evidence. No, it isn’t. But certainty is where an investigation begins.
I keep digging.
Another filing confirms the same registered agent.
A second archived contract links the consultant to a Pierce-backed acquisition vehicle.
A third payment record shows the media broker receiving funds three days before the Foundation photo appeared online.
The amounts are small enough to avoid attention and clean enough to survive a shallow review, but they move with purpose.
By the time the final company record opens on my screen, I already know what I’m going to find. The name appears in a footnote attached to an old advisory agreement.
Julian Pierce.
I lean back in my chair and stare at it while the office hums quietly around me.
There still isn’t enough for the court. Not yet.
There may not be enough for the board, not without Sloane, Marcus, and legal pulling the thread from three different directions.
But there is enough for me to stop wondering.
Enough to stop reacting, and enough to know the man behind this is not striking blindly.
He found Talia because he knew she mattered and he used Flynn because he knew that would hurt worse.
The anger that rises this time is colder than before, and far more useful.
I turn the legal pad toward me, circle Julian’s name once, and begin making a list of what I need next. Bank confirmations. Vendor contracts. Metadata from the original uploads. The media broker’s payment history. Every person who touched the forged memo before it reached the first shell account.
For the first time since Talia walked back into my life, I’m not waiting for the next attack. I’m planning the response.
My gaze returns to the name on the screen.
It had to be you.