Chapter 4: What Was on the Drive
Victor's personal assistant, Daniel, arrived within twenty minutes of the call.
He was thirty-one, precise, and had worked for Victor long enough to know that when Victor said *come now* without any other context, you came now without asking for any.
He set up his laptop on the dining room table.
Victor placed the USB drive beside it without explanation.
Daniel looked at the drive.
Then at Victor.
Then he plugged it in.
Rosa had made tea that nobody was drinking.
Lily sat across the table with Ethan in her arms — he had woken briefly, accepted a bottle, and gone back to sleep with the uncomplicated trust of a child who had found a safe place.
She held him carefully, her ribs still aching, and said nothing.
"There's a folder," Daniel said.
"Password protected." He looked up.
"Do you want me to—"
"Yes."
It took Daniel eleven minutes.
Victor stood at the window the entire time, looking out at the front drive where Serena's car had been parked two hours ago.
"I'm in," Daniel said.
Victor turned around.
"What's in it?"
Daniel was quiet for a moment.
His eyes moved across the screen in the way eyes move when they are reading something they are not sure how to summarize.
"Financial records," he said.
"Account transfers.
Some of them go back eighteen months." He scrolled.
"There are also photographs.
And what looks like a series of emails between Serena and—" He stopped.
"And who?"
Daniel looked up.
"Marcus Hale."
Victor went very still.
Marcus Hale was Victor's business partner.
Had been for nine years.
They had built the company's Asia division together.
Victor had been best man at Marcus's first wedding.
"Show me."
Daniel turned the laptop.
Victor read.
He read for a long time without speaking.
His expression didn't change in any dramatic way — no jaw tightening, no sharp intake of breath.
He just read, and his face became very quiet, the way a house becomes quiet when the last light goes out.
"How much?" he said finally.
"The transfers I can see total just over four million," Daniel said.
"But some of these accounts are layered.
There may be more underneath."
"And the emails."
"They go back two years." Daniel hesitated.
"Before you and Serena were engaged."
Victor set the laptop down on the table.
He looked at the wall for a moment.
"She was placed," he said.
It wasn't a question.
Daniel didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Lily looked up from across the table.
"Placed?"
"Marcus introduced us," Victor said.
"At a charity event.
He said she was a friend of his wife's." He almost laughed — a short, dry sound that had nothing warm in it.
"She wasn't there for Ethan.
She wasn't even there for me." He looked at the drive.
"She was there to get close enough to the accounts."
"The engagement," Daniel said carefully.
"If she'd become your wife—"
"She'd have had legal access to half of everything." Victor picked up the drive and turned it over in his hand.
"And Marcus would have had a partner on the inside."
The room was quiet.
Ethan made a small sound in his sleep.
Lily adjusted her hold on him without thinking, one hand moving to support his back.
Victor watched her do it.
"How long have you worked here?" he asked.
"Eight months," Lily said.
"Did she ever threaten you before tonight?"
Lily was quiet for a moment.
"She made it clear from the first week that my position here was at her discretion.
Not yours." She paused.
"She used to say it in front of Ethan.
Like it was a joke."
Victor set the drive down on the table.
"Daniel," he said.
"Get me Richard Chen."
Richard Chen was Victor's attorney.
It was past eleven o'clock at night.
"Now?" Daniel asked.
"Now."
Daniel reached for his phone.
Serena's voice came from the doorway.
"I wouldn't do that."
Every head in the room turned.
She was standing at the entrance to the dining room.
She had not left.
Or she had left and come back — through the side entrance, the one that used to be the staff entrance before the renovation, the one that still had a key she had never returned.
She looked at the laptop.
At the drive.
At Victor's face.
And she smiled — a small, careful smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"That drive is inadmissible," she said.
"It was found by employees on private property without a warrant.
My attorney already knows about it.
I called him from the car." She tilted her head slightly.
"Did you really think I'd walk out of here without a plan?"
Victor looked at her.
"How long have you been standing there?" he said.
"Long enough." Her eyes moved to Daniel.
"Don't call Richard Chen.
Call whoever you like.
The moment that drive enters any legal proceeding, my attorney files a motion and it disappears." She looked back at Victor.
"You have a recorder with my voice on it.
You have staff testimony.
You have a discharge summary from a doctor who noted a bruise on a toddler who falls down twice a day like every other toddler." She spread her hands.
"That's what you have."
"And the emails?" Victor said.
Something moved across her face.
Just for a second.
"What emails?" she said.
Victor turned the laptop toward her.
She looked at the screen.
She read one line.
Then she looked up, and the smile was gone, and underneath it was something harder and colder and much more honest.
"You should think very carefully," she said, "about what happens to your company if Marcus decides to talk about Singapore."
The silence that followed was different from the ones before it.
Daniel looked at Victor.
Victor didn't look back.
"What happened in Singapore?" Daniel asked quietly.
May you like
Victor said nothing.
And Serena's smile came back.
