The name on the phone was Preston Vane.
Vantage Meridian’s attorney. The man who had called me to a private meeting in San Francisco over a year ago and told me truths he hadn’t been required to tell. The man I had assessed as a functionary of financial interest rather than a player in his own right.
I had underestimated him.
“He’s been positioned the whole time,” I said.
“Yes,” Damien said.
“He told me things in San Francisco,” I said. “About Nadia’s construction of the arrangement. He framed it as Vantage Meridian wanting information asymmetry removed. I took it at face value because it seemed to serve us.”
“It did serve us,” Damien said. “And it served him. Things can do both.”
“What does he want with the documents?”
Damien sat down across from me, which told me the answer was n
