I don’t remember standing up.
One second I was in that velvet booth with Vanessa’s perfume curling around me and a half-empty glass of wine sweating beside my plate. The next I was on my feet, my knee cracking against the underside of the table hard enough to make the silverware jump.
Vanessa blinked at me. “Dominic?”
I didn’t answer. My eyes were locked on the headline glowing up from my phone.
LEAKED FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS THREATEN REED & PARKER DEVELOPMENT.
And below it, my name.
Not buried three paragraphs down. Not listed among a dozen others. My name was in the second sentence.
Dominic Reed, senior partner at Reed & Parker Development, is alleged to have authorized questionable transfers through affiliated shell entities tied to luxury expenditures and offshore consulting arrangements.
For five full seconds I could not breathe.
Then the phone buzzed again. Thomas.
I answered before the first ring finished. “What exactly did she send?”
His voice was lower than I had ever heard it. Strained.
“Divorce papers. A forensic accounting report. Screenshots. Travel records. Invoices. Wire transfers. Photographs.”
“Photographs?”
Across the table, Vanessa went very still.
Thomas swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “You and Ms. Hale. Aspen. New York. The Gold Coast apartment.”
The restaurant seemed to tilt on some hidden axis. The jazz still played. A waiter still poured champagne for an elderly couple by the window. Rain still traced silver down the glass. But my whole world had narrowed to the sound of Thomas breathing into a phone.
“Who else has seen it?”
“I have.”
“Good. Lock it down. Everything into my private safe. Call Martin Greer and tell him—”
“Dominic.”
He had never called me Dominic at work. Not once in twelve years. That single word landed harder than the headline had.
“What?”
“It’s already out.”
A hollow opened up somewhere in my chest. “What do you mean, out?”
“The financial documents went to the board. The executive committee. Outside counsel. Two reporters. And, from what I can tell, the state attorney general’s office.”
My grip tightened on the phone until my knuckles burned.
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Thomas said.
I looked across the table at Vanessa. And for the first time since I’d met her, she did not look glamorous.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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