The Leak

They found out about the photo the way they found out about everything that week — badly, and too late to stop what came next.

"He knows we're working together," Julian said, jaw tight. "Someone's been feeding him information since the article ran. Not the reporter — she wouldn't burn a source before the story's developed further. Someone closer."

It took a day and a half of quiet, furious work by Margaret's assistant to find the leak, and when they did, it wasn't the scandal Julian had braced for.

It was his own executive assistant, Sana, who'd taken a call three weeks earlier from a headhunter offering double her salary at Cole Capital, contingent, the email trail eventually showed, on "keeping her current employer informed of anything unusual."

Sana cried when Julian confronted her. She hadn't known what she was feeding him would end up in a blackmail folder — she'd thought she was reporting harmless scheduling gossip to secure a better job. By the time she realized what Bennett actually wanted, she said, she was too afraid to come forward.

Julian mostly believed her. It didn't change what it cost them.

"He knows about the meeting with Margaret," Julian told Nadia that night. "He knows you're planning to speak at the vote. Which means he's had eleven days to build a defense, and we've had about six hours."

Nadia sat very still in her kitchen — the same table where this entire second act had started. "Then we stop being careful and start being fast."

The shareholder meeting was in three days. Somewhere across the city, Bennett Cole was rehearsing a very different version of the story — and for the first time since the folder landed on Julian's desk, Nadia realized she wasn't afraid of standing in a room and telling the truth in front of people who'd already decided who she was.

She was afraid of what Bennett might have prepared to make sure nobody believed her.