Chapter 201: LENA AGAIN
DAMON'S POV
She answered the second time, leading me to believe that either she was expecting my call, or at least not entirely surprised by it.
Which made me wonder if she was truly in touch with how this whole debacle since the shower was going down. Had she been anticipating someone would be coming calling, or just extremely organized? Either way, she was dialed into things.
"I need something from you," I said.
"I know," she said. "I've been thinking about it since yesterday."
I nodded; she always had this preternatural ability to predict my next move, to understand complex situations without my having to even explain. I'd always found it impressive, sometimes unsettling.
"Joel Adeyemi is still watching the house," I said, already strategizing in my mind. "We need to make him feel safe, make him feel like he's still in control for the next two weeks."
She hummed, considering the challenge. "You want me to design the information, make it look real," she said, her voice low and smooth. "I know what flies and what sticks. You need me to create a believable narrative for Seraphina's father, to tell him what we want him to believe."
I took a deep breath, relieved to hear the confidence in her voice. I knew she'd be able to navigate the details. "Yes, that's exactly it," I said.
"We need him to believe the wedding is still happening. But actually..."
I let the words hang, "the wedding will be elsewhere. Somewhere he'd never imagine."
She hummed again, her thoughts already racing. “We’ll have to be very specific,” she stated finally with the conviction of a strategist in possession of an ingenious scheme. “We’ll need to seed a trail of crumbs that Joel can verify. We want him to cross-reference everything to expose anomalies because, as you described him,Seraphina’s father will check everything”.
I inwardly admired her sharp intellect for its predictive capabilities in countering the plan that was being concocted. As we combined our abilities, I realized, the information we planned would have to stand the test of not one, but many.
"The question then becomes, what other sources did he have? Because of who he is, and the effort he’s put into all of this, he probably has other intelligence streams out there beyond Joel where they’re not just feeding directly to him, and those other streams he would have been correlating Joel’s information through this whole thing,” Lena explained. “So if we were to give him some data that was a direct contradiction to some other intelligence that was flowing into him, he’d recognize it’s garbage right away.”
"Therefore, either we'd need to somehow compromise those other streams, or find a way to work around them. While the former would be considerably harder to pull off, it would certainly be a cleaner operation." She continued.
As I stood and peered at Osei's garden I was starting to see the many different levels to this whole scenario.
Three intertwined contingency plans, and hacks to get to hacks of workarounds, and a man who'd plotted this whole scheme with seemingly zero errors for the past three years.
Lena said that she was going to need two days and to access Elena, who apparently kept all of his network notes and logs.
With Lena and Elena working together, there is a chance that they could map out his tertiary lines of intelligence without his knowing. I briefly wondered about Lena and Elena this unusual pair who now had this problem to solve.
"I'll arrange it," I said.
Lena then added, "There's one more thing. The emergency filing had a second component. It wasn’t just the immediate request; there’s a longer filing, one with more detailed allegations regarding Seraphina’s mental state during her pregnancy."
She paused, her voice hardening. "This latest discovery presents a new, complicating factor to our strategy, and it warrants close attention. It’s essential we understand the complete picture here-including all potential intelligence sources-in order to formulate the most effective course of action. This is not a simple problem to solve."
"The stakes are high, and our planning must be impeccable. The accusations about Seraphina's mental state have far-reaching implications, and we need to be prepared to confront them. That requires not just reacting to new information but proactively anticipating future developments."
She was talking about a document, a medical report written for a family court that claimed to be an objective medical report but, in reality, was a thinly veiled attack disguised as fact, leveraging a stressful real-life event and manipulating it to fit his narrative.
“Who provided it to you?” I asked, my mind spiraling.
Lena paused before answering, “Someone who wanted me to use it against you. I said no.”
I felt a flash of gratitude towards her, quickly followed by a growing sense of unease.
“How detailed is it?” I whispered.
“Detailed enough that it required someone with access to Diane’s records to pull it together,” she said.
My mind flew back to the array of people who had been in and out of our house, with access to our personal belongings. The placement consultant, even the nurse that didn’t make the vetting… Had any of them discovered something that could be twisted into this kind of argument?
“Can you send me whatever you have?” I asked, “so Crane can review it before she files the counter.” While waiting for Lena’s email, I sat in my study staring at the garden outside.
The sheer boldness of his parallel play-a tactical maneuver that not only adapted his physical approach but built a separate, legal campaign around it, using Seraphina's own medical history as fodder-struck me with the force of a blow.
He wasn’t just trying to snatch his grandson from a hospital parking structure; he was actively trying to invalidate his own daughter to do it.
Just as the weight of that realization settled on me, a new text message popped up from Crane. “I’ve found the second filing. You need to call me.” A knot of dread tightened in my stomach as I reached for my phone.