Chapter 5: Brendan Fights Back
He called at 9:14 that same morning.
Cassidy was in a car between Grace's office and Harlen Group's headquarters when her phone lit up with a number she had not deleted and had not yet decided whether she would.
She answered.
"You made a mistake," Brendan said.
He wasn't shouting.
That was the thing about Brendan — he never shouted when he was truly angry.
His voice went quieter.
Flatter.
"Freezing those accounts.
My mother's house.
You don't understand what you've started."
"I understand exactly what I've started," Cassidy said.
"I have people, Cassidy.
People you don't know about.
People who have been patient."
"Are you threatening me?"
A pause.
"I'm telling you there's still a way to handle this quietly.
You drop the account freeze, you return the phone, and we agree that last night didn't happen.
You keep your company.
I keep my settlement.
The baby is born and we work out a custody arrangement like adults."
"And the forged psychiatric evaluation?"
Silence.
"And the trust structure that would have given you control of thirty-one percent of Harlen shares through my daughter's inheritance?"
More silence.
But a different kind.
The kind that confirmed he knew exactly what she was talking about.
"That was never going to be used," he said finally.
"It was a contingency.
A precaution."
"A precaution for what?"
"In case you became unreasonable."
Cassidy looked out the car window.
A woman was walking a small dog along the pavement.
The dog stopped to investigate something in the gutter.
The woman waited patiently.
"Brendan," Cassidy said.
"The fraud unit received a referral forty minutes ago.
Marcus's phone is in an evidence chain.
The server contents have been copied and secured in three separate locations.
Your attorney will receive formal notification before noon." She paused.
"There is no quiet way to handle this."
"You're going to regret this." The flatness was gone.
Something rawer underneath.
"I will make this so difficult for you.
The pregnancy, the custody, the press — I will make every single day of the next year a fight."
"Then we'll fight," she said.
"You're pregnant.
You're alone.
You think you can—"
"I'm not alone," Cassidy said.
"I have never been alone.
You just never noticed who was in the room with me."
She ended the call.
Her driver glanced in the rearview mirror.
Said nothing.
She appreciated that about him.
Her phone buzzed almost immediately.
Not Brendan this time.
A message from an unknown number — a photo.
It took her a moment to understand what she was looking at.
It was a photograph of her building's underground parking garage.
Taken from inside.
Timestamped forty minutes ago.
Her car was in the frame.
She forwarded it to her head of security without a word and typed one line beneath it: *Find out who sent this and where they were standing.*
Three minutes later her security chief replied: *Already on it.
Do not go to the garage alone.*
She hadn't planned to.
But the photo meant something she hadn't fully accounted for.
Brendan's "people" weren't a bluff.
Someone had been watching her this morning.
Someone who knew her schedule, her car, her building.
Someone who wasn't Marcus.
She typed a second message to Grace: *There may be a fourth person.
Check Doyle Fitch's client list for the last two years.*
Grace replied in under a minute: *Already pulling it.*
The car pulled up to Harlen Group's main entrance.
Cassidy stepped out.
The lobby doors opened automatically and two of her senior directors were already waiting — they had seen the news about the account freeze and the questions were written on their faces.
She walked toward them with her coat still on and said, before either of them could speak, "Call a full leadership meeting for ten o'clock.
I'll explain everything once."
They nodded.
She stepped into the elevator.
The doors closed.
For four seconds — just four — she let herself feel the weight of it.
The photograph.
The call.
The word *alone* in Brendan's mouth like he believed it was a wound.
May you like
Then the doors opened on the executive floor.
She walked out.
