The Gala
The banner in the ballroom read THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OF PUTTING FAMILY FIRST in gold script four feet tall, and underneath it, Warren Castellan worked the room like a man who had never once doubted he belonged in every photograph he was in.
Naomi got in on a press credential Imogen had called in a favor for — local business journal, a beat nobody watched closely enough to vet her face.
She let him find her instead of the other way around. It took eleven minutes.
"You're the reporter asking Odalys about pension timing," Warren said, champagne in hand, smile settling into place like it lived there permanently. "Small industry. Word travels."
"I write for a few outlets."
"Your father worked the floor here, didn't he. Gerald. Good man. I remember him from the twenty-year photo wall." He said it warmly, like a gift he was handing her. "How is he?"
The casual cruelty of it — using her father's name like a door he could open whenever he wanted — nearly knocked the next question out of her. Nearly.
"He was let go twenty-two days before his bonus vested. Is that a coincidence, Mr. Castellan?"
"Restructuring is never comfortable. But I'd be careful building a story on one man's disappointment." His voice never rose. "This company has put more families through college, through mortgages, through hard years, than almost any employer in this state. I'd hate for one narrative to erase thirty-eight years of that."
"So you deny knowing about the cost exposure reviews."
Something flickered — small, controlled, gone in under a second. "I don't involve myself in HR line items. I have people for that."
He excused himself toward a state senator waiting by the dessert table, and Naomi watched him go, certain — the specific certainty of someone who has caught a lie mid-sentence — that he'd just told her one.
Back at the office past midnight, an email landed from an address she didn't recognize, no message, one attachment: a scanned internal memo, Q3 Legacy Pension Exposure — Approved, and at the bottom, in blue ballpoint, a signature she'd seen on three separate donation plaques around the city.
W. Castellan.
He had people for that. He'd also signed it himself.