Mate Under NDA

Chapter 4: Boardroom Hunt

By 8 a.m., the blood is washed off the tiles, but it lives on my cuff like a rumor I can’t quite scrub.

Maya is breathing in the med suite.

Aria is a steady fragment of citrus and nerve in my head.

The door handle in the server room turned, a growl answered, and Luca peeled the hall back with quiet men and cleaner courage.

We didn’t catch the thing with my eyes.

So I brought the hunt upstairs.

Board meetings are choreography.

You decide who thinks they lead, you decide who actually leads, and you keep everyone from breaking a leg.

As CEO, I call it governance.

As alpha, I call it keeping the pack’s throat safe.

Today the pack includes investors in winter suits and one compliance analyst whose pulse I could find in a hurricane.

Red Harbor is a shell eating our inventory.

Inside help smells worse than pond water and pennies.

I will flush the human traitor in daylight and the not-quite-human one at the pier, and I will not lose Aria to either.

Luca briefs me outside Conference North, his voice low enough not to disturb the glass.

“Server corridor clear,” he says.

“Maya stabilized. Whatever twisted the handle walked on two legs and looped us for twenty seconds.”

“Ronan?” I ask, the name I don’t use often rough in my mouth.

“Eyes like yours says yes,” he says.

“But no visual. Inside help still likely.”

I nod once.

“Stay on the east elevators. Text me if the building changes weather.”

“Copy,” he says.

Aria meets me at the threshold, folder tucked to her ribs, hair still damp from a shower that probably didn’t touch her thoughts.

“You’re sure about this?” she asks.

“About bringing a wolf problem to a table full of sharks?”

“I’m sure about you,” I say.

“And I’m sure about daylight. May I put you at my right?”

“Yes,” she says, with that precise consent that keeps the night from eating us.

Investors file in, cologne flattening the air.

Vivian Park, counsel, crisp as a blade.

Evan Dorsey, CFO, eyes red from either fear or spreadsheets.

Hale Mercer from Harbor Ridge Capital, new to the table, too tan for October, smile that practiced its sincerity.

I take the head seat.

Aria sits to my right, the quiet center of a storm the board doesn’t know is coming.

“Let’s begin,” I say.

“Before forecasts and futures, a threat assessment.”

Evan’s shoulders jump.

Hale’s smile doesn’t.

Vivian’s pen waits.

“Last night,” I say, “someone with cloned credentials accessed Level 22, east corridor, then Pier 19 Bay 4.

We have evidence of inventory routed to Red Harbor Logistics without EIN, verification, or insurance.”

Vivian lifts her hand.

“Law enforcement?”

“After we secure internal cooperation,” I say.

“Which starts here.”

I nod to Aria.

She rises with the clean economy of someone who learned to be listened to without raising her voice.

“The access logs show edits between 2:07 and 3:11 a.m. in four clusters,” she says.

“GL-SSNT-ALPHA SKUs shift from inbound to write-off without corresponding damage reports, then travel physically to Red Harbor.

A cloned badge ID traces to a temp who left eighteen months ago.

Finance approvals were appended after sign-off from Mr. Dorsey’s terminal.”

Evan sputters.

“My terminal was locked.”

“Your terminal was awake,” she says.

“The logs record wake events at 02:16 and 02:54.”

“Anyone could-”

“Which is why we’ll image your drive,” I say.

“Standard procedure in nonstandard times.”

Hale leans back, ankle over knee, watching me like a man at a hunt he didn’t plan.

“Cole,” he says.

“Let’s not spook the horses.

Red Harbor may be a consolidator buried under a labyrinth we haven’t mapped.”

“Then we map it,” I say.

“Today.”

Vivian’s pen moves.

“What are you asking for?”

“Emergency authorization for a forensic audit independent of Finance,” I say.

“Immediate payment freeze to Red Harbor and affiliates.

Full system access to Compliance, including physical audits at Pier 19.

Counsel oversight.

If we find criminal exposure, we go to the DA before the DA comes to us.”

Hale tips his head.

“That will rattle supply.”

“Let it,” I say.

“Better a rattle than a bleed.”

Evan’s fingers worry his tie.

“We’re exposed on Q4 margins if we freeze receivables.”

“We’re exposed on the front page if we don’t,” I say.

“Aria?” Vivian asks, without looking away from me.

“Can you manage scope?”

“Yes,” Aria says.

“If you authorize, I’ll produce an audit trail that would stand up in court.

I’ll also produce one that stands up in a boardroom.”

Hale’s smile thins.

“And what do you need from us, Ms. Hart?”

“For you not to call anyone at Red Harbor while I’m working,” she says.

“For you not to warn the thing we’re hunting.”

Hale laughs, just short of rude.

“Thing?”

“Not a term of art,” she says.

“A term of necessity.”

Vivian sets down her pen.

“All in favor of the CEO’s motion?”

Hands rise.

Hale’s rises last.

Evan’s doesn’t rise so much as hover.

“Carried,” Vivian says.

“Counsel takes possession of Mr. Dorsey’s laptop and phone now.”

Evan pales.

“I have-”

“Backups,” I say.

“Of course.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Luca: EAST STAIRS. POND/PENNIES. Envelope under door.

I stand.

“Break for ten,” I say.

“Coffee, water, courage.”

Aria steps with me into the hall, keeping close without clinging.

“May I?” I ask, hand hovering at her elbow.

“Yes,” she says.

I guide her to the east stairwell.

A white envelope sits against the baseboard, too clean, a theatrical prop on a concrete stage.

The wax seal is a wolf’s head pressed off-center.

The smell rises in a tired tide.

Pond water.

Pennies.

Hale’s cologne is forest without rain.

This is swamp without apology.

“Gloves,” Aria murmurs, and slides nitrile from her pocket because of course she came to a board meeting with a lab in her bag.

“May I?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

She breaks the seal.

Inside: a metal key stamped R.H. and a glossy photo of a shadow crossing Bay 4, arm stiff, head wrong, eyes two coins catching light.

On the back, block letters: TONIGHT. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE OR SHE BLEEDS THE SLOW WAY.

I do not let my wolf chew the paper.

“‘She’ is Maya,” Aria says, voice steady enough to hang a plan on.

“Or the threat thinks ‘she’ could be me,” she adds, without drama.

I hate that truth.

Vivian finds us in the doorway, gaze landing on the envelope without getting in its blood.

“Problem?” she asks.

“Invitation,” I say.

“To Red Harbor.”

“Counsel accompanies,” she says.

“No,” I say.

“Security does.

Aria does if and only if she agrees.”

Aria meets my eyes.

“Let’s call it a field audit,” she says.

“Midnight,” I say.

“Pier 19.

We go quiet, we go fast, we go with eyes open.”

“Consent protocol?” she asks.

“Every step,” I say.

“Every touch.”

She exhales, and the sound sits on my skin like future.

“Then I’m in,” she says.

We go back into the room and the rest of the agenda pretends to matter.

Hale votes yes on everything he would have voted yes on anyway.

Evan sweats.

Vivian watches me like a wolf who learned law.

When it ends, the board thinks it witnessed command.

What it witnessed was hunting.

As the last investor leaves, the stairwell door below us sighs open, and a wet, coin-sour draft lifts the hair on my arms while a voice I haven’t heard in three years travels up the concrete well and says, almost fond, “Little brother.”