The SEC testimony took three days.
Aria gave it in a glass-walled conference room in lower Manhattan, across a table from two federal investigators and a stenographer, with Clara Reyes sitting beside her and the complete documentation package in a binder between them. She answered every question the same way she'd answered Whitfield in the courthouse — directly, factually, without editorializing.
On the third day one of the investigators — a woman named Torres, sharp-eyed and thorough — looked up from her notes and said: "Miss Bennett, in your assessment, was the CEO of Cole Enterprises aware of Protocol 7 at the time of its execution?"
Aria had known this question was coming.
She had thought about it for two weeks. Turned it over in the quiet of her apartment, in subway cars, in the a
