The Merger

Chapter Seven: The Short List

Three names. Marcus, too loyal to believe easily. Whitfield, a CFO she'd never met, who'd opposed the Aldridge deal from day one. And Sebastian.

She called him at seven the next morning.

"You think it's me," he said, before she'd said a word.

"You reached out before I signed anything. You told me things Damian didn't want me to know. Now a stranger is calling me with numbers that didn't come from any public filing. That makes you the easiest name on a very short list."

"I didn't leak anything to Holt." His voice sharpened, wounded in a way that sounded, infuriatingly, real. "I told you the truth about Ashcombe because you deserved it — not because I want this deal to fail. Damian's finances aren't a secret to me. I've watched him bleed this company dry trying to prove he's not his father. Why would I blow that up?"

"Because it would hurt him."

"I don't like what he did to you. That's not the same as wanting to watch him lose everything." A hard exhale. "Whitfield's been meeting quietly with outside investors for months — not about Aldridge, about replacing Damian as CEO if the board loses confidence. He sits on three of the same investment committees as Holt. I'm not clearing my own name. I'm telling you because I'd rather you walk into Thursday's board meeting aiming at the right enemy."

Elena hung up, pulled up the Wolfe Development investor directory, and searched one name.

Whitfield, Gerald — Chief Financial Officer.

The photo stopped her cold. She recognized his face — not from any press release, but from a photograph three years old, the one industry gala she'd ever attended with her father, standing beside him in a receiving line like old friends.

She had no memory of meeting Gerald Whitfield. Her father, apparently, had known him well enough to stand beside him for a photograph the same year Cross & Wolfe's ashes were still settling.

She dialed her mother's number before she'd fully decided to.

"Elena? It's barely seven. What's wrong?"

"Mom. I need you to tell me everything you know about a man named Gerald Whitfield."