POV: Liam
She came through the door at ten-fifteen, hung up her jacket, and found me in the kitchen.
"Come sit with me. The couch, not in here." I set down what I was holding and came without asking why.
She sat beside me, turned slightly toward me, and told me everything from the beginning.
No preamble, no softening. Webb at the conference — the phone screen, the listing, the first approach.
The showcase three days later, the longer play she had identified, the call to Nora from the parking structure, the decision to let it run and document every contact.
The recording from tonight. The attorney already briefed. The legal steps already in motion.
All of it, without stopping. She had organized it in the car on the drive home — sequenced so it landed in the right order, context before action, action before legal architecture, the recording last.
She had rehearsed none of it. She had simply known the order before she opened the door.
She gave it to me the way she had built it: methodically, nothing omitted, nothing reordered to make it easier to hear.
I listened without interrupting. She watched me process in real time — the specific stillness I held when I was taking in something I needed to get right before reacting.
My jaw worked once, when she described the Virtue Exchange screenshot. After that I held everything in place and let her finish.
When she finished the room was quiet.
"You were right about the legal exposure." Evenly, the statement of a man doing an honest accounting.
"If I'd known about Webb at the conference, I would have moved on it. Fast. And I would not have thought through what it exposed on the contract side first."
"I know."
"The clause was still unexamined. Any public pressure, any legal action, anything that drew attention to the listing would have put the original employment contract under outside scrutiny before we understood what was in it." I was following her logic to its end. "You were protecting the legal ground."
"I was protecting both of us from something detonating before we were ready."
I looked at her directly. "I know you weren't protecting yourself from me. I need you to know I understand that."
"I do know that."
"Good." A short pause. "Next time I want to be in the calculation. Even if the decision is still yours. Even if you can't tell me everything yet — I want to know something is running. So I'm not moving blind when it surfaces."
"That's fair."
"What happens now?"
"The cease and desist is already drafted. The attorney files it Thursday. Webb receives it before the weekend." She held my gaze.
"The recording is clean. Three encounters documented, escalating specificity, the final ask captured in full." A beat.
"He named the artist, named the exchange, named the terms. If he pushes back legally, we have enough to make it extremely expensive."
"And the Virtue Exchange listing?"
"Once the cease and desist is filed it gets a legal wrapper — untouchable without documented authorization from both of us. That's what he was trying to get ahead of. He moved when he believed it was still exposed."
I was still for a moment.
"You built this in three weeks. While going to work every day and coming home and not saying anything."
"While going to work every day," she said, "and coming home and not saying anything until I had something worth saying."
She looked at me with the real expression, not the managed one.
"The Nora part." A beat. "Nora knew before I did."
"Yes. I needed someone with no exposure to Cadence."
"That was right." Quietly. "That was exactly right." I was not performing acceptance — she could tell the difference.
I was acknowledging a decision I would have made differently and understanding, without defensiveness, why she had made it better.
"The recording. Can I hear it?"
She took out her phone.
We sat on the couch in the quiet apartment, Aurora asleep in the next room, and listened to Marcus Webb's careful, pleasant, incriminating voice lay out everything he had done and wanted and thought he could get away with.
Seven minutes of it. Unhurried. Precise. Complete.
I did not speak while it played. I sat with my forearms on my knees, the way I sat when I was absorbing something that required the full surface of my attention. Not flinching from it. Just letting it reach me.
When it ended the room was still.
"He was so certain. The whole seven minutes."
"Yes. That's why it was clean. He wasn't improvising — he was executing a pattern he's used before. Which means the pattern is documentable." She paused. "His certainty is what makes this prosecutable."
I absorbed that.
"What does he do when he gets the cease and desist?"
"Two options. He accepts the terms, backs off entirely, and the listing is sealed. Or he pushes back and we go on record — which means the recording goes on record."
She met my gaze. "If he's done this before, he can't afford the record."
"He backs off. Thursday."
I nodded once. I put my arm around her. She leaned into me and the apartment settled into the specific quiet of a building that had held a great deal and was still holding.
Neither of us needed to say anything else.
Aurora stirred once from the other room — a small sound, testing, then silence. I did not move to check on her. Neither did Jasmine. We both knew the sound of a baby settling herself back down.
We sat in the dark and let the week be over.
Thursday was three days away. She had already thought through what came after Thursday. She had a clear view of the next six steps and she had left room for contingencies.
Whatever Marcus Webb decided to do when the document arrived on his desk, she was ready for it. She had been ready since the moment she pressed record and walked through that door.