"Ms. Sullivan, please calm down. You struck a colleague first. We're only following procedure—"
"Procedure? I am the procedure! I'm telling you, if that little bitch isn't fired today and on her knees apologizing to me, this isn't over!"
That was when Charlotte came out of the building.
She spotted me at once and walked straight over, slipping her arm through mine.
"Wait long?"
"No. Just got here."
I smiled at her, and Yvette caught the whole thing.
The sight of how easy we were together told her everything she needed to know.
"You. It really was you behind all this, Swanson! Getting my brother fired wasn't enough, so you sent someone after me too!"
She tore loose from the guards and came at me with her hand raised.
Charlotte's expression hardened. She stepped in front of me and called the guards over.
"Get her out of here."
The two of them grabbed Yvette and hauled her off.
"Swanson, you think you can come after the Sullivan family? My mother will never let this go. Just you wait!"
Yvette's screaming faded into the distance. Charlotte turned to me, worried.
"Kay Sullivan's been one of the most respected names in this city for years. What actually happened, that you'd do something like this?"
I shook my head. I didn't want to get into it.
That night, I got a call from a number I didn't know and a voice I did.
Kay Sullivan.
Twenty years.
The voice landed before I was ready for it, and something in me clenched, sharp and against my will, the way an old wound does when you forget and then remember.
"So you're the Swanson who runs Bedrock Technologies?"
On the other end, there was a thread of condescension in her tone, like she was sizing me up.
"That's me."
"Who gave you the nerve to go after my children?"
I let out a short, cold laugh and didn't spare her.
"Ms. Sullivan, I think you've got this backwards. The Sullivan Group these days has already been pushed out by the market. Bedrock's in another league. Why would I waste my time targeting a failure?"
"You—"
That tipped her over the edge. In all her life, she'd probably never had someone half her age provoke her like that.
A cold laugh came down the line.
"Fine. Very good. Young and reckless, no idea who you're dealing with."
"You think Bedrock is so untouchable? Let's see how many days you last."
"I'll be waiting."
I said it flatly and hung up.
Kay moved fast.
By early the next morning my assistant came rushing in, phone in hand, his face grim.
"Mr. Swanson, you need to see this."
Number three on the trending list, in plain sight: Bedrock Technologies President Leads a Sordid Private Life.
I scrolled down.
A handful of paid accounts had posted long write-ups, saying a man barely past twenty doesn't land a president's chair without a backer.
Then came post after post, all of it hinting that our core tech didn't hold up, that the whole company ran on marketing and tricked the market.
"Mr. Swanson, several of our partners have already called asking about it." His voice was shaking. "If we don't get ahead of this, they may pull their investments."
Before I could answer, there was a knock at the office door.
An assistant from PR hurried in with a laptop.
"It's bad, Mr. Swanson. Abner Sullivan's posted a video online too."
I took it and looked.
In the video, Abner sat in front of the camera in a sharp suit, walking through the project reports he'd done during his internship one by one.
"These are all the projects I completed during my internship at Bedrock Technologies. Every one of them was my own work. I had the top performance numbers of my intern class, and yet Mr. Swanson fired me in front of everyone, with no reason at all."
He paused, his eyes going faintly red.
