“He said they handled Daniela the same way they’d handle you, if you talked to a lawyer.”
Marisol’s hand went to her stomach instinctively.
“Handled how?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Claire.”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to find out.”
“I will.”
Claire called Rebecca again, her voice tight with urgency.
“I need everything you can find on Bradley Simmons.”
“The HR director?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s the one burying complaints, Rebecca. Not some unnamed executive. Him.”
“How do you know that?”
Claire chose her words carefully.
“I overheard something.”
“Overheard where?”
“It doesn’t matter right now.”
“Claire, if you did something that could get thrown out in a hearing—”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
“I have photographs of the files. Messages. Names. A word written in Nathan’s own handwriting that should terrify anyone who reads it.”
Rebecca was quiet.
“What word?”
“Handled.”
The line went silent for several seconds.
“Send me everything,” Rebecca finally said. “Encrypted. Now.”
Claire spent the next hour transferring photographs through a secure channel Rebecca had set up years earlier for whistleblower cases.
When it was done, she sat back and finally let herself breathe.
“What now?” Marisol asked.
“Now we wait for Rebecca to build something the board can’t ignore.”
“And if they try to ignore it anyway?”
Claire looked at her.
“Then we go outside the company.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the press. The police. Immigration protections for trafficking victims, if that’s what this turns out to be. Every door that exists.”
Marisol’s eyes filled with tears.
“Why are you doing this?”
Claire considered the question honestly.
“Because three months ago I would have found a way to make excuses for him.”
“And now?”
“Now I know exactly what kind of man I almost married.”
Two days passed in a strange, suspended quiet.
Claire didn’t hear from Nathan.
She assumed Bradley had told him to stay away, the way he’d instructed on the phone.
Optics, he’d said, as if Marisol’s pregnancy were a marketing problem rather than a human life he had threatened.
On the third day, Rebecca called with a different tone in her voice.
Sharper.
Focused.
“I found her,” she said.
“Who?”
“Daniela.”
Claire’s breath caught.
“She’s alive?”
“She’s alive.”
Relief flooded through Claire so fast it nearly buckled her knees.
“Where is she?”
“Tampa. She left Charlotte eleven months ago.”
“Willingly?”
“That’s the question.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She wouldn’t talk to me directly. She’s terrified. But she talked to a domestic violence advocate I know down there, off the record.”
“And?”
“Bradley Simmons personally drove her to a bus station in the middle of the night and gave her four thousand dollars in cash to disappear.”
“After she refused to have an abortion.”
“After she threatened to go to a lawyer, yes.”
“That’s not a resignation. That’s coercion.”
“I know.”
“That’s trafficking territory, Rebecca.”
“I know that too.”
“Will she testify?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“She’s scared of her immigration status.”
“There are protections for that. U-visas exist exactly for victims willing to cooperate with investigations like this.”
“I know the law, Claire.”
“Then help her use it.”
“I’m trying. It takes time to build trust with someone who’s been running for a year.”
Claire pressed her fingers against her temple.
“What about the board?”
“I presented a preliminary summary yesterday. Not the full file. Enough to freeze Nathan’s certification pending review.”
“How did they take it?”
“About as well as you’d expect from a group of men who were three weeks from a merger announcement.”
“Did anyone push back?”
“One board member asked whether this could wait until after the transaction closed.”
Claire’s jaw tightened.
“What did you say?”
“I said if word of this got out during due diligence and they’d chosen silence, it wouldn’t be Nathan facing liability. It would be all of them.”
“That worked?”
“That worked.”
Rebecca continued.
“There’s an emergency ethics session in three days. Full board. Nathan will be there. You’ll need to be too.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
