And in the morning I called Adrian and told him we were ready.
He had been waiting for that call. I could hear it in the way he picked up, the specific
readiness of a man who had been sitting with something long enough that moving felt like
relief. We had been building toward this board meeting for weeks, the evidence compiled,
the sequence planned, the timing coordinated with the investigators who needed it to land
in the right order for the legal case to hold. Everything was in place.
It was time.
The meeting was called for Thursday at nine.
I arrived at the Blackwood building at eight fifteen, which was not something I advertised,
because Ethan had asked at breakfast why I was wearing my good blazer on a Thursday
and I had said it was just a meeting and he had looked at me ove
