Richard’s mouth tightened.
Victoria continued.
“I didn’t know who was doing it.
I suspected someone close enough to understand my schedule and powerful enough to make employees cooperate.”
She touched the earring.
“So tonight I wore insurance.”
The diamond itself was real.
The tiny backing behind it contained a miniature encrypted audio recorder, a security prototype developed for executives working in high-risk environments.
Victoria had activated it when Richard asked her to leave the ballroom and speak privately.
The green blink I had noticed in the hallway meant the device was still capturing audio.
Richard hadn’t seen her start it.
But during the struggle, one earring had been torn away.
He had apparently assumed the other had stopped recording.
It hadn’t.
Richard stepped toward the table.
Victoria put one hand over the folder.
“Don’t.”
His voice became cold.
“You think a recording solves this?”
“I think it begins it.”
“You have no idea how many people depend on me.”
“You mean how many people you’ve frightened.”
He looked at me.
“This man carried you out of the building.
Alone.
At midnight.
Do you understand what that looks like?”
There it was again.
A new story already being built.
A low-level male employee alone with an impaired female CEO.
Richard didn’t even have to accuse me directly.
He only had to suggest the photograph people would imagine.
My stomach turned.
Victoria saw it.
“That’s why you let us leave,” she said.
Richard didn’t answer.
“You could have stopped the service elevator.”
Silence.
“You wanted David seen taking me away.”
Richard’s expression hardened.
“If necessary.”
The words came out before he could pull them back.
Victoria stared at him.
“So if your first story failed, you had another.”
Richard suddenly reached past me for the reader.
I caught his wrist.
He glared at me.
“Take your hand off me.”
“No.”
“You’re fired.”
The threat should have terrified me.
Three hours earlier it would have.
I pictured Lily asleep in our apartment, her medication lined up beside the kitchen sink.
I pictured the unpaid bills, the cardiology office, the refrigerator I kept pretending wasn’t making a strange noise.
Then I looked at the blood on Victoria’s neck.
“Then fire me.”
