The Night Before

Douglas didn't chase me. He didn't need to — by the time I got home that night, an email from HR was already waiting, subject line PERFORMANCE CONCERN, requesting I "make myself available" first thing Monday morning. A threat, wearing a suit.

I didn't sleep, again. I sat at my kitchen table with the flash drive, the forged transfer document, Harriet's trembling promise of a statement, and the photograph of two young men in front of a folding table, and I called my mother.

"They're trying to scare me into stopping," I told her.

"Are you going to stop?"

"No."

My mother was quiet on the line for a moment. Then: "Your father waited twenty-six years for someone to say his name out loud in that building. I'm not missing it."

"Mom, it's dangerous. Douglas basically threatened to end my career tonight."

"Your father lost everything and still got up every morning," she said. "I can survive one gala."

Harriet Voss called at eleven that night, her voice steadier than I'd heard it. "I've written it out," she said. "Signed, dated, notarized by a colleague this time, someone I trust. Everything I told you. I should have done this twenty-six years ago."

By 2 a.m., Callum and I had it all laid out on my kitchen table like evidence in a trial: the forged release, the incriminating emails, Harriet's sworn statement, the photograph, my father's real signature beside the fake one. Enough, finally, to be undeniable.

The Larkspur Creative Group gala was held in the new lobby the next evening, the one with the marble floor and the bronze plaque still hidden under black velvet, waiting to be unveiled. Investors in evening wear. A string quartet. My mother in the navy dress she'd worn to my father's funeral, sitting near the back, spine straight.

I stood near the stage with a folder pressed against my chest, my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

Warren Cassidy took the microphone first, exactly like the night at the office party, warming up the crowd. "Twenty-six years ago," he began, "a man built something from nothing—"

Gerald Thorne stepped up beside him, champagne glass raised, smiling for the cameras already flashing around the room.

I stood up.