The Diner

Odalys agreed to meet only in person, only at a diner two train stops from either of their offices, only after Naomi promised — twice — that nothing would be recorded.

She looked older than her photo, tireder, a woman who'd learned to sit with her back to the wall. "I built a fraud-flagging model," she said, turning a coffee cup in slow circles without drinking from it. "Took me a year. Graham mentored me the whole way — told everyone I was the smartest hire he'd made in a decade. Then he presented it to the board as his platform vision. My name wasn't even in the footnotes."

"What did you do?"

"I did what you're doing now. I complained. Quietly, at first — HR, my skip-level, anyone who'd listen." Odalys's mouth tightened. "Within six weeks I had two write-ups for things that never happened. Missed deadlines that weren't mine. A complaint from a client I'd never spoken to. By the time legal got involved, it wasn't about who invented the model anymore. It was about whether I was too unstable to keep around."

"So you signed."

"I signed because I had a mortgage and no lawyer and a man with twenty years of goodwill telling a room full of people I was struggling. You think anyone believes the woman who suddenly can't get her act together over the guy who mentors half the building?"

Naomi felt sick. "I have a login record. A timestamp. That's not nothing."

"It's not enough, either. Not against him alone." Odalys finally looked up, and something in her face had gone flat and warning. "Naomi. Think carefully about who knew you were meeting me tonight."

"Nobody. I told one person I even messaged you — and even that got back to him somehow."

"Then he has someone close to you feeding him information," Odalys said quietly. "He always has. Someone who looks like they're on your side. That's how he stays ahead of it every single time."

She stood, dropped a five on the table, and was gone before Naomi could ask who.