Chapter 66 Chapter 66

Chapter 66 Chapter 66
Nia did not sleep.
She lay in the dark in Sophia's spare room with her eyes open and the night settling around her and thought about the two things on opposite sides of the same decision. She had been lying there since eleven and it was now past two and the city outside the window was doing what cities did at this hour, moving quietly, indifferent to the things being turned over in apartments above it.
On one side: her mother's address. Not the concept of it. A clinic schedule with days and hours. Everything she had been searching for, held in Anthony's hands and deliverable in exchange for a document summary she had already read and already carried in her head.
On the other side: Xavier. The operation. The ball is now less than two weeks away. The months of careful deliberate work she had contributed to — the chronology, the legal preparation, the case they had built together piece by piece with her name attached to it at every point. And what one leaked partnership summary could do to his position at the worst possible moment.
She typed the summary. She told herself it was just information. She told herself Anthony could find it elsewhere with enough effort. She told herself she was making a practical decision in a situation that had no clean options and that the important thing was the outcome. She told herself all of this in a voice that became steadily less convincing the further into the document she got. By the time she was on the third paragraph the voice had gone almost entirely quiet.
She finished it. She attached it to the message. She sent it before she could change her mind.
She closed the laptop.
She sat at the kitchen table in the quiet with her hands flat on the surface and the kettle finished behind her and thought about what she had just done. 
Not in terms of next steps or how to manage it or what she was going to say to anyone. She just sat with it. The specific weight of having become the thing she had told herself she was not going to become.
She thought about the version of herself from a year ago. The one who had walked out of Anthony's house with a bruised body and a decision that had felt clean and uncomplicated because she had not yet had to do anything complicated with it. 
That version of herself would not have done this. She would not have known this kind of pressure existed. She would not have understood how something could be wrong at every stage and still get done because the thing being reached for was the thing you had been missing your entire life.
She sat there for a long time.
Then she got up and made the tea and drank it while it was still hot.
Sophia appeared in the kitchen doorway at half past six in a way that told Nia she had heard the kettle the first time, at four in the morning, and had been lying awake ever since.
She looked at Nia. She looked at the closed laptop on the table. She came in without saying anything and turned the kettle back on and made herself tea and sat down across from Nia and waited.
"What did you do," Sophia said.
"I sent Anthony the summary."
Sophia was quiet for a long moment. Not surprised. Absorbing.
"He had the address," Nia said. "The full address. The clinic schedule. Everything." She looked at her hands on the table. "I told myself it was just information he could find another way. I told myself that while I was typing it and I do not think I fully believed it even then."
"How long did it take you to type it?"
"Twenty minutes."
"And you did not stop."
"No."
Sophia looked at her carefully. "Why not."
Nia paused. She thought about how to say it honestly. "Because I needed the address to be real," she said. "Not theoretical. Real. And as long as I was typing I was closer to that than I had been at any point in my life." She looked at Sophia. "That is not a defence. It is just what was true."
Sophia sat with that for a moment. She wrapped both hands around her cup. "You are going to have to tell Xavier," she said.
Nia said nothing.
"Today," Sophia said. "Not tomorrow. Not after the ball. Today. Because sitting on it makes it worse and Xavier finding out another way makes it worse and you know both of those things."
"I know," Nia said.
"Then say it out loud."
"I know." She said it again. Clearly. "I know."
She picked up her cup. She finished it. She got dressed and went to work and sat at her desk and opened the chronology and tried to do the job she was supposed to be doing. She managed it for approximately two hours before the news of the competitor's move arrived on the floor.


Xavier's morning began at eight fifteen with an urgent call from the strategic partnerships team.
He listened to the briefing without interrupting. A competitor had moved on their most sensitive pending partnership renewal. He asked two clarifying questions about exactly what terms the competitor had presented and ended the call.
He sat alone in his office for a moment.
He thought about the file access Nia had told him about. He thought about Gia's confirmation at the time, one access, the specific file she had come forward about. He thought about the specific partnership this competitor had just approached and which file on the system contained those preliminary terms. He thought about the timestamp.
He called Gia.
"Pull the full internal access logs for the past seventy-two hours," he said. "Everything outside normal working parameters. I need it within the hour."
"I will have it for you," Gia said.
"Do it properly."
He set the phone down and went to the window and stood there for a moment. He thought about the sequence, the first file access, the anonymous screenshot, Gerard's dinner, and now this competitor move. He thought about each element separately and then he put all of them in the same frame and looked at what they made together.
He went back to his desk and waited for Gia.