Lucas didn't sleep.
He sat at his desk long past midnight, the tablet glowing softly in the darkened apartment. The city outside his window hummed with distant traffic and the occasional siren, sounds he'd lived with for years. Tonight, they felt intrusive—too loud, too close.
He rubbed his eyes and refocused.
The dossier was layered. Intentionally so.
At first glance, it looked like a standard financial irregularity: delayed approvals, rerouted funds, minor discrepancies buried in routine operations. The kind of thing auditors flagged and forgot once the paperwork smoothed itself out.
But the deeper Lucas went, the more patterns emerged.
Names repeated across departments that rarely intersected. Vendors approved despite weak credentials. Projects that ran just long enough to justify extended budgets, then vanished quietly.
It's not sloppy, he realized. It's cautious.
Whoever was behind this wasn't greedy. They were patient.
Lucas leaned back, fingers steepled beneath his chin.
He pulled up a timeline and began aligning events manually—approval dates against internal transfers, meetings against sudden reallocations. It was slow work, but familiar. This was the kind of problem he excelled at. Not loud. Not obvious. Just… wrong in subtle ways.
One name kept resurfacing.
Marcus Bell.
Senior operations manager. Mid-level authority. Enough influence to redirect workflows, not enough to draw attention. Clean performance reviews. No scandals. No enemies, at least on record.
Lucas frowned.
Too clean.
He tapped into internal communications—emails, chat logs, meeting summaries. Bell was careful. Rarely wrote anything substantive. Deferred decisions upward. Framed suggestions as questions.
But every time a questionable approval passed through, Bell had been there first. Not signing. Just setting the tone.
Lucas's phone buzzed on the desk.
He flinched before checking it.
Lily.
Lily: You're still up, aren't you?
Lucas hesitated, then replied.
Lucas: Yeah. Work stuff.
A pause.
Lily: That thing with Victoria?
His fingers hovered over the screen.
Lucas: Kind of. Nothing bad.
The lie felt thin even as he typed it.
Lily: You don't sound convinced.
Lucas sighed and set the phone face-down without responding.
He turned back to the tablet—and froze.
A new file had appeared.
No notification. No timestamp.
Just… there.
His pulse quickened as he opened it.
The file contained a single document. No header. No author.
A transcript.
Lucas scanned the first few lines, then felt a chill crawl up his spine.
It was a conversation. Recorded. Private.
Two voices.
One of them was Marcus Bell.
The other—
Lucas's breath caught.
Victoria Hale.
He read faster.
The discussion wasn't explicit. No talk of money. No confessions. Just strategy. Influence. Timing. Phrases like "letting pressure build" and "useful leverage."
But the implication was unmistakable.
Victoria wasn't unaware of the siphoning.
She was allowing it.
No, Lucas thought. She's managing it.
The realization landed hard.
This wasn't an investigation.
It was a calibration.
Someone knocked at his door.
Lucas nearly jumped out of his chair.
He checked the time.
2:17 a.m.
The knock came again—measured, unhurried.
"Lucas," a voice called softly.
His stomach dropped.
He recognized it.
He moved to the door, peering through the peephole.
Victoria stood in the hallway, coat draped over one arm, expression calm as ever.
He unlocked the door with trembling fingers.
"You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
"I know," she replied. "That's why I am."
She stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, her gaze flicking briefly to the tablet on his desk.
"I see you found the extra file," she said.
"You put it there?" Lucas asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
She turned to face him fully. "Because I needed to know what you'd do when the story stopped being simple."
Lucas swallowed. "You're involved."
Victoria tilted her head. "Define involved."
"You knew," he said. "You let it happen."
"I shaped it," she corrected. "There's a difference."
She moved closer, her presence filling the small apartment in a way that made it feel suddenly inadequate.
"Marcus thinks he's clever," she continued. "He believes he's exploiting a blind spot. In reality, he's revealing every weakness in the system. And every person willing to look the other way."
Lucas shook his head. "This isn't ethical."
She smiled faintly. "Neither is reality."
Silence stretched between them.
"What do you want from me?" Lucas asked.
Victoria studied him for a long moment, then answered honestly.
"I want to know if you'll expose him," she said. "Or protect the structure that allowed him to exist."
Lucas's heart pounded.
"And what happens if I choose wrong?"
Her gaze softened—just slightly.
"Then you'll learn how unforgiving power can be."
She stepped back toward the door.
"You have until tomorrow evening," she added. "Your conclusion. Your recommendation."
She paused with her hand on the handle.
"Oh—and Lucas?"
He looked up.
"This decision," she said quietly, "will define you far more than your work ever has."
She left.
The door clicked shut.
Lucas stood alone in the silence, the weight of the choice pressing down on him.
On his desk, the tablet's screen dimmed—waiting.
For the first time, Lucas Reed understood that observation alone was no longer enough.
Soon, he would have to act.
And someone would pay the price.