Chapter 61 Chapter 61

Chapter 61 Chapter 61
Nia arrived at Xavier's office at eight forty-five the next morning.

She had been awake since four. Not the restless half-sleep kind of awake,  fully awake, sitting up in the spare room at Sophia's apartment with the lamp on, working through what she was going to say. What order and what she was going to do if he asked a question she had not prepared for.

She had prepared for all of them. She was good at that. She had spent three years preparing for questions Anthony might ask and learning to have answers that were true without being complete. This was different. This time she was going to be complete.

She knocked once and pushed the door open.

Xavier was already at his desk. He looked up.

"Do you have a minute?" she said.

He put down his pen. "Yes. Close the door."

She closed it. She sat down in the chair across from him and looked at him directly because looking away from this was not an option she had given herself.

"I need to tell you something," she said. "Before you raise it yourself. Before anyone else does."

He said nothing. He gave her the full space.

"Two days ago I accessed a file on the system," she said. "I had no legitimate work reason to open it. It was outside my authorised parameters." She paused.

"I read it for approximately four minutes. I closed it. I did not copy it, I did not send it, I did not forward it anywhere. But I opened it and I am not here to make that sound like something it was not."

"Tell me why," he said.

"Because the pressure had been building for weeks. The mother search was close. Anthony's deadline was sitting in the background of every day even when he was not calling. 

I had said no to the photograph the week before and I had meant it and then I sat in front of the building layout that afternoon and told myself I was just orienting myself." She held his gaze. 

"And then I stopped telling myself that. I found the file and I opened it."

"And then you closed it."

"Yes."

"Without sending it anywhere."

"Yes."

"Without telling Anthony you had opened it."

"Yes." She paused. "I did not contact Anthony at all. I opened it and I closed it and I sat at my desk for the rest of the afternoon trying to decide what to do."

Xavier looked at her steadily. Outside on the floor the sounds of the day beginning filtered through the closed door.  

"Why didn't you come to me when the pressure got that bad?" he said.

"Because I had just told you no to the photograph," she said. "I had said it to Anthony and to you and to myself. I did not want you to see the one moment it got the better of me anyway." She paused. 

"I wrote out exactly what had happened in a blank document. What I did and why. I read it back. I closed it without saving, I went home and could not sleep." 

She looked at him. "This morning I decided that not telling you was the wrong thing, not because I thought you were going to find out another way  because it was wrong."

He was quiet for a long moment. The clock on his desk marked the time between his words.

"The anonymous message arrived in my inbox yesterday afternoon," he said.

She went still.

"An internal access log screenshot," he said. "Your username, the file, the timestamp. Sent anonymously."

She looked at him. "And you did not raise it."

"I was waiting to see what you would do."

She absorbed that. "Did you know I was going to come in?"

"No." His voice was even. "I was not certain of anything."

She thought about that. She thought about him sitting in this office yesterday afternoon with the screenshot in his inbox and not calling her, not confronting her, not doing anything except waiting. "What would you have done if I had not come?"

"I would have called you in," he said. "And asked you directly." He paused. "But I wanted to know first what you would choose to do with the information."

She sat with that. "And now?"

"Now I want to know one thing." He leaned forward slightly. "You came this morning. Did you know I had already received it?"

"No," she said.

"But you came anyway."

"Yes." She held his gaze. "Because not telling you was the wrong thing. Not because of what you might already know, because of what it was."

The office was quiet.

Xavier picked up his pen. He looked at it. He set it back down. "Go back to your desk," he said. "I need to make a call. I will come and find you."

She stood. She went to the door. She stopped.

"I know what it looks like," she said without turning.

"I know you do," he said. "Go."

She went.

He picked up his phone and called Gia before the door had finished closing.

"What have you got?" he said when Gia answered.

"The access is confirmed," Gia said. "The log is authentic. The timestamp is accurate. She was in the file for four minutes, no copy made, no external transmission of any kind."

"And the message source?"

"Routed through three relay points. The origin connects to a device registered under one of Anthony's shell companies." A pause. "He had it sent."

"He got the access record from his contact before her access was revoked," Xavier said. "He held it a day and then sent it anonymously so it would reach me looking like discovery."

"Yes. That is the reading."

"She came to me this morning before I raised it," Xavier said.

"I know."

"What does that change in terms of the intent picture?"

Gia was quiet for a moment. "It changes everything about the intent picture," he said. 

"Someone who accessed that file to hand information to Anthony does not walk into your office the next morning and confess before being confronted."

"No," Xavier said. "They do not." He looked at the empty chair across from his desk. "Write it all up. Authentication, source trace, full timeline. I want a complete document."

"By end of day."

"And the mother search does not slow."

"It will not."

Xavier ended the call. He stood up. He straightened his jacket. He went to find Nia.