The merger was three days from signing when the first sign of trouble arrived, small enough that I almost dismissed it.
A folded note, slipped under the door of my private office at Knight Group, where I'd started spending afternoons helping coordinate the transition alongside Diane's team. No envelope. No name. Just six typed words that emptied the breath from my lungs the moment I read them.
*Stop the merger, or he suffers.*
I sat frozen at my desk for a long moment, rereading the words as though they might rearrange themselves into something less alarming. They didn't. I thought immediately of my father, three months into a clean recovery, living independently again in an apartment Nathaniel had insisted on paying for outright, safe, I'd believed, in a way he hadn't been safe in year
