Chapter 4: The Man Who Watched Everything
Victor Reyes agreed to meet me in person for the first time four days later.
He chose a coffee shop near the airport — neutral ground, he said, somewhere neither of us would be recognized.
He was already seated when I arrived.
Fifties, compact, with tired eyes and a careful way of holding himself, like a man who had spent years watching what he said in rooms where the walls had ears.
He stood when he saw me.
"Mrs.
Calloway."
"Lorelei," I said.
"Please."
We sat.
He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," he said.
"You sent me proof that my husband committed financial fraud using company funds to support another woman.
I was always going to come."
Something in his expression shifted.
Not quite a smile.
"I want you to know why I sent it," he said.
"It wasn't only about what happened to me.
I watched Christopher do this for two years.
I flagged the transactions.
I wrote internal reports.
Every one of them was buried." He paused.
"The last one I filed, Christopher called me into his office personally.
He told me that people who caused problems for the company had a way of finding themselves without options."
"He threatened you."
"He smiled when he said it.
That was the part I couldn't forget."
I looked at him.
"And eight months later, your position was eliminated."
"The week after I refused to sign off on the third-quarter transfer approval." He opened the bag beside him and placed a second folder on the table.
Thicker than the one he had sent me.
"This is the rest of it.
Everything I kept."
I didn't reach for it immediately.
"Victor, I need to ask you something directly.
When this moves forward — and it will move forward — your name will be part of it.
Christopher's attorneys will come after your credibility.
They will say you did this out of personal grievance."
"I know."
"Are you prepared for that?"
He met my eyes without flinching.
"Mrs.
Calloway — Lorelei.
I have a daughter.
She's twenty-four.
When I told her what I had and what I was thinking of doing with it, she said to me, 'Dad, what kind of man do you want her to remember?'" He pushed the folder across the table.
"I've made my decision."
I picked it up.
Inside the front cover was a handwritten list of dates, names, and internal reference numbers.
Eleven pages of it.
Behind that, printed email chains.
Approval documents with Christopher's signature.
A memo from eighteen months ago in which Christopher had explicitly directed the finance team to route the Cayman transfers through a vendor account to obscure the paper trail.
My hands were steady.
I was surprised by that.
"There's something else," Victor said.
I looked up.
"Gwen Vance wasn't the first.
Before her, there was a woman in the Montevideo office.
Her name was Isabela Carmo.
Christopher set up a similar arrangement for her — a business loan for her brother, funded the same way.
When he ended things with her, she signed a non-disclosure agreement.
His company's legal team drafted it."
I set the folder down on the table.
"He has done this before," I said.
"At least once that I know of.
Possibly more."
The coffee shop was warm and bright around us.
Someone at the counter was laughing at something.
A child at the next table was drawing on a paper napkin.
"Does Isabela Carmo still have a copy of that agreement?" I asked.
Victor reached into the folder and slid a single page toward me.
Her contact information.
Already printed.
Already there.
"I thought you might want to ask her yourself," he said.
I looked at the page for a moment.
Then I picked it up and folded it carefully into my bag.
"Thank you," I said.
"For all of it."
"Don't thank me yet." His voice was quiet.
"Christopher is going to find out that someone talked.
He always does.
When he does, he won't come after me first." He looked at me directly.
"He'll come after you."
May you like
I picked up my coffee.
"Let him," I said.
