The Rival Who Warned Me

What the Cameras Saw

Mia didn’t answer Damian’s text right away. She sat in the dark of her father’s old office for nearly twenty minutes, the flash drive still warm from her palm, trying to decide whether the man who’d been the closest thing to an ally she had was actually just another person watching her from the shadows.

When she finally called him, she didn’t bother with a greeting.

“How do you know about the drive?”

“Where are you right now?” His voice was tight, urgent in a way that didn’t match the calm she’d come to expect from him.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Mia, I need you to listen to me carefully. Are you alone?”

Something in his tone made the hair on her arms rise. “Yes. Why?”

“Because Renata called me an hour ago, terrified, saying she thought someone followed her to that park. She wanted me to warn you, in case whoever it was traced things back to you next.” A pause, and she could hear traffic in the background, like he was already moving, already outside. “I didn’t have you followed, Mia. I don’t have that kind of reach, and even if I did, I wouldn’t do that to you. But someone else might. Julian has people who watch anyone who gets close to information he doesn’t want found.”

“He called me tonight. He knew I’d had dinner with you.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s had people watching Cole Maritime’s building for years — probably has a standing order to flag anyone who comes in or out that he recognizes. It wouldn’t take much to connect a name from a restaurant reservation to a face on a rival CEO’s private security footage.” Damian’s voice hardened. “I’m not saying that to scare you. I’m saying it because you need to understand what you’re actually dealing with. This isn’t a man who plays fair, Mia, and if he suspects for one second that you have something real, he won’t wait for you to use it against him.”

Mia looked down at the flash drive again, suddenly aware of exactly how exposed she was, sitting alone in a half-empty office with the one piece of evidence that could bring down a billion-dollar company.

“I need someone who understands what’s actually on this drive,” she said. “Renata said it was financial irregularities, but I can’t read half of what’s here. I need — “

“Send it to me.”

“I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”

The honesty of it hung in the silence between them, and to his credit, Damian didn’t argue.

“That’s fair,” he said finally. “Then don’t send it to me. Find someone else — an accountant, a forensic auditor, anyone independent you trust more than either of us. But Mia, whoever you choose, do it carefully. And don’t go back to Hale Tower tomorrow like he asked.”

“I have to. If I don’t show up, he’ll know something’s wrong.”

“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t go.”

“He already suspects something. Not going will only confirm it.” She was surprised by how steady her own voice sounded, even as her pulse hammered somewhere near her throat. “I need to look him in the eye and figure out how much he actually knows. That’s the only way I’m going to get ahead of this.”

Damian was quiet for a long moment.

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“He asked me to come alone.”

“I don’t care what he asked.” There was something fierce in his voice now, something that sounded less like strategy and more like fear. “I watched my sister walk into that building alone every day for four years, convinced she could handle whatever he threw at her. I’m not doing that again.”

She met him outside her apartment the next morning, and the sight of him — steady, watchful, dressed like he was heading into a war rather than a business meeting — did something to settle the anxious hum that had kept her up half the night.

“You don’t have to protect me,” she said as they walked.

“I know.” He didn’t look at her, eyes scanning the street out of habit. “I’m doing it anyway.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer immediately, and when he finally did, his voice had lost some of its careful control. “Because three years ago I told myself I’d never let anyone else walk into that building without knowing exactly what they were risking. I broke that promise the moment I saw you outside Hale Tower that first night and decided to warn you instead of stopping you. I’m not going to break it twice.”

They didn’t go inside together. Damian waited across the street, close enough to see the entrance, far enough that Julian’s security wouldn’t immediately flag him — a compromise neither of them was fully satisfied with, but the only one Mia would agree to.

Julian was waiting for her on the top floor again, but the warmth from their first dinner had cooled into something more careful, more assessing. He didn’t offer wine this time.

“You look tired,” he said, studying her face in a way that felt less like concern and more like calculation.

“Long night.”

“I imagine so.” He gestured to the chair across from his desk, and Mia sat, keeping her expression as neutral as she could manage. “I want to be direct with you, Mia, because I think you deserve that. Damian Cole has spent three years trying to destroy this company. He lost his sister’s trust, his own credibility with every journalist in this city, and a considerable amount of his family’s fortune chasing a story that was never true. I don’t say this to villainize him — I understand grief does strange things to people. But I need you to understand what you’re caught in the middle of.”

“Tell me about Elena Cole.”

Julian’s expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes went very still, the same flicker she’d caught during their first dinner.

“Elena worked for me for four years,” he said carefully. “She was talented, ambitious, and eventually made some serious accusations against the company that an internal investigation found no basis for. When the investigation concluded, she chose to resign rather than continue working somewhere she’d lost trust in. I offered her a generous severance out of respect for her years of service. That’s the entire story, Mia. There’s no conspiracy. There’s no cover-up. There’s a woman who made a difficult decision and a brother who’s never forgiven me for not fighting her accusations publicly, which frankly would have destroyed both our reputations for nothing.”

It was, Mia had to admit, a good story. Clean, reasonable, sympathetic even. If she hadn’t spent the last two days piecing together fragments of something far darker, she might have believed every word.

“Why was the lawsuit sealed?”

Something shifted, finally, behind Julian’s composed expression — the first genuine c***k she’d seen.

“How do you know about the lawsuit?”

“Answer the question.”

“NDAs are standard practice in cases like this, to protect both parties from—”

“From what, exactly?” Mia leaned forward, surprising herself with the steadiness in her own voice. “From the truth getting out? Or from someone finding out what was actually in the financial records Elena found before she was fired?”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Julian rose slowly from his chair, walking to the window with his back to her, and for the first time since she’d met him, Mia felt something close to real fear settle into her chest.

“I don’t know what Damian has told you,” he said quietly, still facing the window, “but I would be very careful about what you choose to believe, and even more careful about what you choose to do with it.” He turned back to face her, and the charm was gone entirely now, replaced by something colder, more precise. “You signed a contract with this company, Mia. Your father’s future is tied to mine now, whether either of us likes it. I would hate for anything to jeopardize that arrangement. For either of you.”

It wasn’t a threat, not exactly. But it wasn’t nothing, either.

Mia stood, gathering her bag with hands she willed to stay steady. “I should go.”

“Mia.” His voice softened again, so quickly it was almost dizzying, the warmth sliding back into place like a mask returning to its rightful spot. “I only want to protect you. I hope you understand that, whatever happens next.”

She didn’t answer. She walked out without looking back, down through the gleaming elevator, out into the daylight where Damian was waiting exactly where she’d left him — and it was only once she was safely across the street, his hand steadying her arm, that she let herself breathe.

“What happened?” Damian asked, searching her face.

“He knows I have something. He didn’t say what, but he knows.” Mia’s phone buzzed in her pocket before she could say anything else — a notification, an automatic security alert she’d set up on her father’s company email the week before signing, back when she still trusted the process enough to think it was just a formality.

She opened it, and the color drained from her face.

Someone had just logged into her father’s old company servers, using her own credentials, from a location that wasn’t hers.

Someone was inside the system right now, looking at exactly what she’d been looking at all night.