Victory, Amelia was learning, had a very short half-life.
Less than twenty-four hours after Judge Alvarez denied the injunction, Wolfe's counterattack arrived not through the courts this time, but through a headline that hit every major outlet within the same ten-minute window, too coordinated to be anything but deliberate.
"GREEN STRATEGIES UNDER FEDERAL REVIEW: SEC Opens Inquiry Into Fundraising Irregularities."
Amelia read it standing in her kitchen, coffee forgotten, cold dread pooling low in her stomach as she scrolled through article after article repeating the same unsourced claims.
"This is fabricated," she said when Sebastian found her there twenty minutes later, still staring at her phone. "There's no SEC inquiry. I would know. I'd have received notice."
"I believe you," Seb
