Security locked the floor within eight minutes. Mira took Cassian into Conference Room B, the only room without interior cameras because the executives believed privacy made them visionary.
“Explain the photograph,” she said.
Cassian sat across from her, hands flat on the table. “I was here that night.”
“Why?”
“Liora hired me.”
“For a birthday party?”
“For misdirection.”
Mira’s pulse remained steady. Her mind did not. “You expect me to believe a senior bio-systems engineer hired a magician to help her commit corporate espionage?”
“No. I expect you to believe she hired a magician because she thought someone was framing her, and she needed a witness who understood how tricks work.”
The word witness landed hard between them.
The national obsession with Liora’s death had begun with one witness: a night courier named Oren Pell, who claimed he saw Liora speed away from VeyraDyne alone, frantic, carrying a case full of stolen data. He gave interviews. He wept. He became beloved. The Public Verdict had invited him to sit in the front row.
Mira had cross-examined him during the internal review. He had been perfect.
Too perfect.
Cassian leaned forward. “Liora believed the stolen research never left the building. She believed the accident was already planned. She asked me to watch the watchers.”
“And you vanished?”
His jaw tightened. “My daughter was threatened.”
Mira had read the entertainment columns. Cassian Holt, once a family-friendly TV illusionist, had lost his career after a live special went wrong. A child assistant was injured. Sponsors fled. The child, if Mira remembered correctly, had been his own daughter.
“She’s safe?” Mira asked before she could stop herself.
“For now.”
The door opened. Adrian Korr entered without knocking, flanked by his communications director, Becca Sloane. Adrian’s suit was the color of expensive forgiveness.
“Mira,” he said gently, “why is our retreat magician in a secured conference room?”
Cassian’s face emptied of expression. Mira noticed. Adrian noticed her noticing.
“I’m reviewing guest access,” Mira said.
Adrian smiled at Cassian. “Mr. Holt. I loved your old show. My niece cried when the moon cage trick failed.”
A cruel sentence dressed as nostalgia.
Cassian did not blink. “People cry at bad illusions.”
Adrian’s smile sharpened. “And at consequences.”
After he left, Mira checked the unknown number again. A second message appeared.
ASK HOLT WHAT HE HID IN THE ELEVENTH FLOOR VENDING MACHINE.
Cassian went pale.
Mira rose. “We’re going downstairs.”
He caught her wrist—not hard, but urgent. The contact startled them both.
“If we open that machine,” he said, “someone will die.”
Mira looked at his hand until he released her.
“Then,” she said, “we open it carefully.”
