Your throat tightens.
“So you can help?” you ask.
Marisol nods once. “Yes,” she says. “But you will do exactly what I say, when I say it.”
Her gaze cuts to Luis. “And you,” she adds, “are either the bravest man in this story or the most endangered.”
Luis gives a small smile.
“My wife used to say bravery is just love wearing work boots,” he replies.
Marisol’s plan is sharp and surgical.
First: preserve the evidence, chain-of-custody, timestamps, independent verification.
Second: file an emergency motion to unfreeze your personal assets and prevent further spoliation of corporate data.
Third: go to the SEC and the U.S. Attorney with a whistleblower package so heavy it can’t be ignored.
Fourth: control the narrative before Miranda controls it for you.
You hate the idea of “narrative,” because you’re used to controlling reality with contracts and capital.
But you learn quickly that in a collapse, truth needs a megaphone or it gets buried under louder lies.
Marisol arranges a meeting with a journalist who has a reputation for eating powerful people alive.
His name is Devin Hale, and his eyes look like he’s already writing the headline.
You sit in a dim booth with Luis and Marisol.
Devin listens, taps his pen, and says, “Everybody loves a fallen billionaire. But they love a resurrected one even more.”
You bristle at the cynicism, but Marisol nods like she expected it.
Devin leans in. “If you want the public to believe you didn’t steal, you need to show who did, and why. Give me motive.”
Motive is the part that hurts.
Because you start to see the pattern.
Miranda didn’t hate you. She envied what you represented: a crown she believed should be hers.
The board didn’t want justice. They wanted volatility, because volatility is profit if you own the leverage.
And there’s a final name, one that makes your stomach twist harder than the rest.
Your co-founder, Daniel Roe. The friend you built this empire with.
His signature appears on multiple “emergency authorizations” that helped freeze your access.
His face appears in one of Luis’s hallway videos, shaking Miranda’s hand like a man selling you with a smile.
You don’t sleep that night.
You sit in Luis’s small apartment, listening to radiator clanks and distant sirens.
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