2026-03-09 06:19:52
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CHAPTER NINETY SIX
Loretta found Roxanne in the kitchen.She had been following her in a calculated manner. She observed the dinner table long enough to be aware that Roxanne required someone to follow her and that she was never going to demand it.Roxanne was piling dishes on the counter. The movements were effective and controlled. It was the special stillness that people give themselves when striving hard not to fall apart."Let me help," Loretta said."I'm fine," Roxanne said.“I know you are fine,” Loretta said. "I'm helping anyway."She took a pile of glasses and headed to the counter next to the sink. She ran warm water. She didn't speak immediately. She first washed one glass and put it on the drying rack and then the other one.Roxanne went on stacking plates.“You saw it at the table,” Loretta said. Not a question.The hands of Roxanne hesitated half a moment. Then kept moving. "I don't know what you mean.""Yes you do," Loretta said. She had a simple voice. It had no softness in it to cushion
CHAPTER NINETY FIVE
Roxanne is the one behind the team dinner.She had proposed this a week before. A quiet evening at the penthouse, no program, no blackboard, and no papers on the table. Only the people that had been dragging the weight of the past months together in one room together with food and something that looked like normal.Robert had agreed on the spot. He understood what she was doing. The strategic parts were threatening to consume everything, and she was the one holding the human side together.She cooked. A proper meal. The type which took three hours and was filling the apartment with the smell and warmth and the specific air that only cooking of food can bring as compared to food in boxes.Dave came first. He came with wine and placed it on the counter and immediately volunteered to assist and was turned down. He was sitting at the island, and talking to Roxanne, as she was working, and Robert could easily overhear them in the other room, as they were talking in an easy manner, and the
CHAPTER NINETY FOUR
On a Tuesday morning Diana called Robert.He was in the car. Dave was driving. They were on their way to a pre-meeting which Marcus had arranged in order to get ahead of the quarterly presentation.“I need twenty minutes,” Diana said when he answered. "Today. Before end of business.""What is it?" Robert said."Not on the phone," she said. "In person."Robert looked at Dave. Dave caught the look, said nothing, and kept driving."Four o'clock," Robert said. "Marcus will be there.""Fine," Diana said. She ended the call.She came in at four with a printed document and the demeanor of someone who had long been sitting on information, and find it physically uncomfortable to continue holding it.She sat down across from Robert and Marcus. She laid the document on the table and evidently pressed two fingers flat against it.“Short selling campaign,” she said. "Coordinated. Targeting Zenco stock. The plan is aimed at causing a panic sell-off within the following two weeks.”Marcus bent forwa
CHAPTER NINETY THREE
The fake intelligence was constructed in three days.One Sunday afternoon Marcus was with Robert and Roxanne and he constructed it with them. Not something fabricated from nothing. Something that was based on truth enough that it would look real to anyone looking at it from the outside.Robert was allegedly intending to make a huge expansion in the logistics industry in the West Coast. A new distribution partnerships. Three facilities. Significant capital outlay. The type of movement that would take Zenco resourcefully in a given and anticipated direction.It was a step that Robert had thought of, and turned down four months before. The internal records were in place. The initial feasibility reports were real. Everything was authentic except the ending because in reality Robert had simply abandoned the idea. Yet on the paper it was like a work in progress.Three internal memos were sanitized by Marcus. Removed the rejection notes. Left the enthusiasm intact.“The contact of Maxime,” R
CHAPTER NINETY TWO
The third tip from Carlisle came six days after that.This was received by Robert in his encrypted channel and not through Dave initially. A single page. Brief even by the standards of Carlisle. It was read by Robert at his kitchen table on a Sunday morning when Roxanne was still asleep.The page was about Maxime.Maxime had been traced out by Carlisle as part of the coalition. He had provided the prison contacts that connected the three logistics companies that were involved with Leonard. The trade publication story had been fueled by the media relationships. The former Zenco regional director, who had lodged the regulatory complaint. The man had tracked back to a dinner that Maxime had attended eighteen months earlier, where the introduction had been made, the relationship quietly maintained, and then activated when Victoria gave the word.Maxime was not the architect of the coalition. That was Victoria. Yet he was its most interconnected point. He had an extended network than Leona
CHAPTER NINETY ONE
The second tip from Carlisle came on a Thursday evening.At nine PM, Robert was in his desk when Dave sent it via the encrypted channel to him. He read the message first. Dave had typed three letters in the document link. “Read this carefully.”Robert opened it.The paper was more in length than the initial one. Five pages. Compact and acute and written in the same clean language structure with which Carlisle transferred all words, no opinion, just pure information, flat and left to speak for itself.The first two pages were about Leonard.Robert read them slowly.Leonard was in contact with the coalition of Victoria in the federal facility for the past eleven weeks. Not through contraband devices. Not through corrupted personnel. Through his attorney. Another man, Gerald Pryce, who had defended Leonard during the first trial and who was still charging some regular legal consultation fee and had not reduced the fee despite the fact that Leonard was convicted.Pryce came on Tuesdays an
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