Chapter 122At the bar, Caleb pressed the phone against his ear."Mr. Stone." His man's voice came through fast. "Sarah Wilson has been released. Walked out of the station within the last hour."Caleb set the drink down.He glanced across the room — toward the place where Ethan Cole had just been standing — and found it empty. Gone. He turned back to the bar."Where is she now?""Heading home, we think. She'll need time to regroup.""Give her tonight." Caleb's voice had changed — quieter, focused, the club noise suddenly irrelevant around him. "Tomorrow we move. Jake speaks to her first. He gets her inside before she has time to think about other options." He paused. "By the time she understands what's happening, she'll already be part of it.""And if she pushes back?"Caleb thought about Sarah Wilson — the years of watching her move through Boston, untouchable and difficult and entirely convinced she had more choices than she actually did. He thought about what she was walking out to

Chapter 124The ride was twenty minutes of Sarah watching the city move past the window and running the conversation in her head. What to lead with. How to frame what she needed without making it sound like pure desperation, even though it was pure desperation. Whether to go straight to the B Corporation partnership or whether to start further back, somewhere that made her look less like a woman trying to grab a lifeline.She was still working through it when the cab rolled to a stop in front of the building.B Corporation rose above her, glass and clean lines, exactly as it always had. Sarah looked up at it for a moment. A month ago she had walked through those doors with a title and a business card and the particular confidence of someone who believed the ground under them was solid."That'll be one eighty, ma'am.""Of course." Sarah pushed the door open and stepped out, already turning toward the building."Excuse me." The driver's voice came again, sharper this time. "Where do you

Chapter 126The nameplate again.*Victoria Chen — CEO, B Corporation.*Sarah reached up and removed the cap. Then the mask. She held them in one hand and used the other to push the hair back from her face, smoothing it as best she could without a mirror. She breathed in. Breathed out. Let the breath go.She thought about what she was about to walk into.Victoria Chen, who had stood behind Ethan at the press event with the composure of someone who had never once doubted which side of a situation she belonged on. Victoria Chen, who had delivered *you signed it yourself* without a flicker of hesitation, who had looked at Sarah on her knees and felt nothing that showed on her face. A woman who had spent her career building B Corporation into something that didn't need to compromise, and who had agreed to this meeting for reasons that had nothing to do with sentiment.Sarah needed to be useful to her somehow. That was the angle. Not sympathy — Victoria wasn't built for sympathy, or at leas

Chapter 128"Ethan—""I'm not your lifeline." His voice was flat. Not cruel — he said it the way you say a fact to someone who needs to hear it and has been avoiding it. "I'm not going to be what you reach for when everything else has gone. Not anymore." He picked the car keys up from where he'd set them on the roof, turning toward the building. "Get out of the parking lot. If you're still here in five minutes, I'll send security.""Please." She reached out and her fingers caught the edge of his sleeve — barely, just the fabric. "Please just—"He stopped.He looked down at her hand on his arm.She let go.Something in the way she did it — the immediate release, the dropping of her hand like she'd overstepped and knew it — seemed to be the only thing that gave him a moment's pause. He stood still for two seconds, not looking at her, just standing.Then he walked away.She watched him go — the steady, unhurried steps, the door to the building holding open on its sensor and closing behin

Chapter 130She thought about Simon Stone.The Simon Stone she knew — the one she had been inside a situation with, the one whose choices she had observed even when she couldn't fully explain them — was not a man who operated out of family obligation. He had spent his entire life being the Stone family's useful inconvenience. Their tool. The one they pointed at problems and put back on the shelf. She knew what that did to a person. She had watched it do it.A small, unhurried question formed."Why?" she said.Caleb looked at her. "Why what?""Why would Simon work to put you on that seat." She tilted her head slightly, watching him. "If he's the left hand man — if he's the second in Boston, answering directly to the Chairman, standing at the centre of everything — why would he use that position to put *you* in the Chair?" She paused. "Why not himself?"Caleb's expression didn't change. But it didn't change in a way that she noticed — a steadiness that was working slightly too hard."Be