REBECCA’S POV
We spread it across the kitchen table at Olivia’s apartment on a Thursday evening.
The interference, three separate moves, each one precisely timed, each one placed at a specific point in Edmund’s business cycle where it would produce maximum downstream effect. The first delay, small and almost forgettable. The second delay, larger, touching two systems at once. The third move, the one that had shifted from introduction to necessity because Marcus had called with a timeline that had collapsed.
Beside the interference, Olivia’s original mapping, the structural weakness that had existed for eighteen months, building quietly in the background, created entirely by Edmund’s own decisions. The consolidation that had made the business more efficient on paper and more fragile in
