For three seconds, even Armand Kett looked human.

Then he lunged toward the speaker panel and ripped it from the wall with a violence that made the junior associate near the door gasp.

“Security breach,” Kett snapped. “Lock the floor.”

Lenora Voss turned slowly to Julian. “Mr. Frost?”

Mara did not look at him immediately. She watched his hands first. They were still. Too still.

Julian exhaled. “I wondered when this would catch up.”

Mara’s stomach dropped.

Kett’s voice went cold. “Explain.”

Julian reached into his jacket. Kett’s bodyguard moved, but Julian only removed a slim leather wallet and opened it on the table.

Inside was not a business card.

It was a federal investigator’s credential.

Mara stared at it. “You’re not an associate.”

“I passed the bar,” Julian said. “Unfortunately for everyone, that part is real.”

Lenora’s expression did not change, but the room seemed to tilt toward her anger. “You infiltrated my law firm.”

“Your law firm?” Mara said before she could stop herself.

Lenora ignored her.

Julian looked at Mara, and for the first time his charm was gone. “I work with the Public Integrity Commission. We’ve been investigating whether Vossline interfered with criminal proceedings to create profitable content.”

Kett laughed once. “Absurd.”

“Profitable absurdity is still absurdity,” Julian replied.

Mara felt heat rise in her face. Eight months. Eight months of competing with him, arguing with him, feeling seen by him in ways she had trained herself not to want. All of it under false pretenses.

“You used me,” she said.

“I tried not to.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s a confession.”

Lenora stood. “Mr. Frost, if you are conducting an investigation, you will do it through proper channels, not by trespassing in privileged meetings.”

Julian nodded toward the broken speaker. “Someone else is inside your channels.”

As if summoned, Mara’s abandoned phone buzzed in a plastic security pouch near the door. Then every confiscated phone buzzed. The junior associate handed Mara hers with trembling fingers after Kett barked permission.

A message glowed on the screen from an unknown number.

CONFERENCE ROOM SEVEN HAS NO SECRETS. NEITHER DOES MARA VALE.

Attached was a photo.

Mara opened it and went cold.

It showed her younger sister, Elin, leaving a rehabilitation clinic two years earlier. The image had never been public. Mara had spent half her savings keeping Elin’s overdose out of the tabloids after one of Vossline’s gossip affiliates tried to buy the story.

Another message arrived.

HELP FIND IONA, OR YOUR SISTER BECOMES CONTENT.

Julian saw her face change. “Mara?”

She locked the phone. “I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.”

“Occupational hazard.”

Kett approached. “What was sent to you?”

Mara smiled with all the warmth of broken glass. “Privileged material.”

For the first time, Kett looked impressed.

Lenora placed both hands on the table. “Enough. If Iona Reed is alive, we find her. If she is dead, we find who is using her. Until then, nobody leaves this matter. Not my company. Not this firm. Not either of you.”

Mara glanced at Julian’s federal badge. “I don’t work for you.”

“No,” Lenora said. “But your managing partner does.”

There it was: the invisible hand Mara had always felt pressing between her shoulder blades. Cale & Wren had not denied her promotion because Julian was better. They had denied it because Mara was useful where she was: brilliant, underpaid, loyal enough to exploit.

Her career had been a room with no doors.

Julian leaned closer. “Come with me. I can protect you.”

Mara laughed softly. “You’re a spy who got exposed by an intercom. Forgive me if I seek stronger insurance.”

She turned to Lenora. “I’ll find Iona Reed. But I want full access to Vossline archives, production notes, raw footage, internal messages from the original trial coverage, and written immunity from retaliation for anything I uncover.”

Kett said, “Impossible.”

Mara looked at Lenora. “Then watch your empire burn on someone else’s schedule.”

Silence.

Then Lenora smiled, and it was the most frightening thing Mara had seen all morning.

“Ladies first,” Lenora said. “Give Ms. Vale everything.”

Julian followed Mara into the corridor minutes later.

“Mara, wait.”

She kept walking. “If that sentence ends with ‘I can explain,’ I’ll throw you down the stairwell.”

“It ends with ‘I know where Iona was last seen.’”

Mara stopped.

Julian’s face was grim. “And if the file is right, someone from this building helped her disappear.”