Chapter 68 Chapter 68

Chapter 68 Chapter 68
Xavier was still at his desk when she arrived.
The floor was empty and the corridor lights had dropped to their evening setting — lower and quieter than the day. She knocked once on his open door. He looked up and gestured for her to come in.
She closed the door. She sat down across from him and looked at him directly.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"All right."
"Two days ago I accessed a second file on the system. A different one from the first." She kept her gaze on him. "I read it quickly and closed it. I did not copy it or send it anywhere. But I was in it."
Xavier said nothing.
"Anthony called me that afternoon," she said. "He told me he knew I had accessed it. He offered me the full address of the woman I have been searching for — the street, the building, the clinic schedule, everything — in exchange for a summary of what I had read."
"And?"
"I sat with it for twenty-four hours." She paused. "I got up at four in the morning and I typed the summary and I sent it to him through the secured channel before I could change my mind."
Xavier looked at her steadily. The evening building was quiet around them. The ventilation hum above them. The city below.
"You sent it," he said.
"Yes."
"Knowing what it was."
"Yes. I knew what I was doing while I was doing it." She did not soften it. "I knew it was wrong and I sent it anyway."
"And this morning?"
"I heard about the competitor's move on the floor at half past ten. I knew immediately what it was. What I had caused." She held his gaze. "That is the whole of it."
Xavier was quiet for a long moment. The clock on his desk marked the time between his words.
"Why are you telling me?" he said.
"Because not telling you is the wrong thing." She met his gaze. "Whatever it costs me — not telling you costs more."
"What do you think it costs you to tell me?"
"I do not know yet. That is the honest answer."
He looked at her steadily. "You came to me after the first file access. You came to me now."
"Yes."
"Both times without being asked."
"Yes."
"But not before you sent the summary."
"No." She held his gaze. "I knew what you would have said."
"What would I have said."
"No." She paused. "You would have been right. And I was not ready to accept that."
He was quiet. He looked at the desk for a moment and then back at her. "What did he promise you in return?"
"The full address. The clinic schedule."
"Has he sent it?"
"No."
"He took what you gave him and has not delivered."
"Yes."
"You knew that was a risk."
"Yes." She said it simply and without flinching. "I knew the risk and I sent it anyway. That is the whole of it."
Xavier sat back slightly. He gave her the specific attention he gave things that required his full consideration — without the surface expression that told people what he was thinking, with something careful underneath it.
"The competitor's move is already in motion," he said. "The partnership team knows. By tomorrow morning it will be in the industry press."
"I know."
"And you caused it."
"Yes."
"Does Anthony know you are here?"
"No."
"Does Sophia?"
"Yes."
He nodded once. He picked up his pen. He set it back down. He looked at her for another long moment.
"Nia," he said.
"Yes."
"I need you to go home tonight. I need time to think about this properly. A real decision, not a quick one."
She stood. She picked up her bag. She walked to the door and paused without turning around.
"Whatever you decide," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She left.
He sat alone in the empty office for a long time after the door closed behind her. He thought about everything she had told him and the order she had told it in. He thought about the specific gap between not before she sent it and after, what that gap said and whether it was enough and in which direction enough pointed.
He picked up his phone. He sat with it in his hand and did not call anyone.
He looked at the window and the dark city beyond it and thought until the thinking stopped producing anything new.
He had a decision to make. He was going to make it properly.
He thought about the first file access and the morning she had appeared at his office door before he could raise it. He thought about the quality of that — the specific kind of choice it was to come forward voluntarily about something that looked bad before the person who had authority over you had found out. He thought about what that choice said about a person and what it cost them to make it.
He thought about the second access she had not told him about.
He thought about the summary she had sent at four in the morning and the twenty-four hours she had spent before sending it. He thought about the competitor's move and the real damage it had caused and that the damage was real regardless of everything else.
He thought about all of it together and separately and found that it did not resolve into anything clean.
He got up and went to the window. He looked at the city below — the particular way it looked at this hour, lit in sections, moving without urgency. He had made difficult decisions before. He had made decisions about people before, in situations where the right answer was not obvious and the wrong answer was not obvious and the only thing available was thinking it through until something crystallised.
He stood at the window for a long time.
He thought about what kind of operation they had built and what they had built it for and who had been part of building it. He thought about the ball coming and what was still needed before it arrived. He thought about the woman in the eastern district that Nia had been searching for and what it meant that a person searching for their mother could be simultaneously useful and compromised by the same search.