The silence inside Room 12 of Mercy Harbor Medical Center was so absolute that the hum of the fluorescent ceiling light sounded like a distant generator. For fourteen months, Nora Bennett had survived on his silences. She had translated them into margins, profits, risk assessments, and deadbolts.

Victor Raines froze halfway to the foot of Nora’s hospital bed. His right hand, which had been reaching up to loosen his silk tie, hovered in mid-air for a fraction of a second too long before dropping smoothly back to his side.

"What do you mean, Dominic?" Victor asked, offering a tight, disarming smile. His voice was steady, practiced, the voice of a man accustomed to soothing angry investors and smoothing over corporate crises. "You told me you were heading out. Naturally, when the guards lost your trail, I checked your GPS locator. As your CFO—and your friend—I wanted to make sure you weren't walking into a security trap."

Nora watched from the pillows, her mind racing despite the haze of painkillers. A lie, her inner accountant whispered. A neat, tidy, double-entry lie.

Dominic had driven away from his penthouse at 3:08 a.m. without his phone. Without his car's digital console active. He had left his primary devices on his desk.

"My secondary phone was locked in the safe at the townhouse," Dominic said quietly, rising slowly from the plastic chair. He towered over Victor, standing a full two inches taller, his broad shoulders filling the cramped hospital room. "My primary phone is sitting on my desk, dead. There is no GPS locator active on the vehicle I took tonight, Victor. Because it belongs to my personal estate manager, and its transponder was disabled three months ago."

Victor’s smile didn't break, but a tiny bead of sweat materialized near his temple under the harsh hospital lights. "Must have been a system glitch, then. You know how these fleet trackers act up. Anyway, are we talking about corporate business, or can we let Miss Bennett rest? She looks like she's been through a blender."

Dominic turned fully toward his CFO. The gray eyes that looked at Victor were completely devoid of warmth. They were the eyes of a man who looked at a ledger sheet, spotted a glaring discrepancy, and immediately reached for a red pen.

"Nora," Dominic said, ignoring Victor entirely, "tell him what you were working on when you left the office."

Nora’s heart skipped a beat. She looked from Dominic to Victor. Victor’s eyes flicked toward her for a fraction of a second—a look not of concern, but of sharp, evaluating warning.

If I say it now, Nora thought, I blow the whole investigation wide open. I don't have the final bank routing numbers yet. I don't have the signature logs from the Cayman accounts.

"I was finishing the Q4 real estate portfolio projections, Mr. Hale," Nora said clearly, holding Victor’s gaze. "And reviewing the auxiliary vendor payments for the downtown construction project."

Victor’s shoulders relaxed visibly. A microscopic sigh of relief escaped his lips.

"See?" Victor chuckled, stepping closer. "Just standard year-end crunch. The girl is a workaholic, Dom. We should give her a bonus and send her home to recover for a month. No need to interrogate her at three in the morning."

Dominic stared at Victor for a long, agonizing moment. Then, he slowly turned back to Nora.

"Get some sleep, Bennett," Dominic said, his voice softening just enough for only her to hear. "I'll handle tomorrow."

"And the office?" Nora asked instinctively.

"Let it burn," Dominic repeated.

As Dominic turned and walked out of the room, he didn't invite Victor to follow him. Yet Victor had no choice but to scurry after his boss, casting one last, lingering, venomous look back at Nora before the heavy metal door clicked shut.

Nora lay back in the dark, her chest aching. She reached under her hospital gown with her uninjured right hand, feeling the small, encrypted flash drive taped securely against her ribs—the one containing every single file on Ashford Strategic Partners.