Rachel's POV
She had known for forty eight hours and it had been the longest forty eight hours of her life.
Rachel Cross sat in the chair Olivia pushed toward her and wrapped both hands around the coffee Olivia put in front of her and tried to figure out where to start because the starting point mattered. She had learned that from Sebastian. He always said that how you opened a conversation decided what people were able to hear.
She needed them to hear all of it.
"I went to Dad's old club two nights ago," she started. "The one on Fifth that his friends still use. I know you hate that place," she said to Sebastian, "but some of his old contacts still talk to me and I thought maybe someone had heard something useful."
Sebastian's jaw was tight. He didn't interrupt.
"There was a man there I didn't recognize. Sitting with two people I did recognize, both from Dad's old circle. I sat at the bar and I listened." She tightened her hands around her cup. "They were talking about Cross Tech. About the collapse. About how perfectly the timing had worked." She looked at her brother. "Sebastian, they weren't worried about it. They were pleased."
"Names," Sebastian said quietly.
"The man I didn't recognize introduced himself to someone near me as a representative of Marcus Webb." Rachel watched Sebastian's expression shift and felt a cold thread move through her again the same way it had in that club when she first heard the name. "Marcus Webb has been working with Claire Moran for at least a year. She's been feeding him information from inside your company. And the board member, Aldrich, is on Marcus's payroll."
Olivia made a small sound and Rachel looked at her. Olivia's face was controlled but her eyes were sharp in the way they got when something confirmed what she had already been thinking.
"That matches the access pattern," Olivia said quietly, more to herself than either of them.
"There's more," Rachel said.
Sebastian looked at her carefully. "Tell me."
"Marcus Webb isn't doing this for market share." She set her cup down because her hands needed something to do and holding things wasn't helping. "He's not trying to beat Cross Tech in a business competition. He wants the whole thing. Not just the tech company. The infrastructure. The client relationships. The government contracts Dad built through his connections." She paused. "And the people Dad was connected to, the ones you've been trying to separate from for years, they're backing Marcus. They've decided he's more cooperative than you are."
The silence that followed was the heaviest kind. The kind that meant everyone in the room was processing something that changed the shape of the problem they thought they were solving.
Sebastian turned to the window. Rachel watched his shoulders and knew that posture. She had grown up watching that posture. It was the one he wore when something was serious enough that he needed a moment before his face would cooperate.
She looked at Olivia.
Olivia was looking at Sebastian with an expression Rachel recognized from years ago, from the early months of their marriage before the distance settled in, back when Olivia used to look at her brother like she was trying to find the person underneath all his layers. That look had disappeared somewhere in year two and Rachel had grieved it quietly without saying anything to either of them.
It was back now.
"He wants everything Dad built," Sebastian said to the window. "And he's been patient enough to spend a year setting it up."
"Yes," Rachel said.
"Which means the attack on Olivia's company wasn't just about using her as leverage against me." He turned around. "It was about making sure she was too compromised to be useful to me. Making sure I was fighting two fires instead of one. Making sure I was overwhelmed."
"That's what it sounded like," Rachel said.
Olivia crossed her arms slowly. "He underestimated one thing."
Rachel looked at her. "What?"
"That we'd end up in the same building." Olivia's voice was quiet and certain. "Two compromised companies working the same problem is harder to manage than two separate ones burning in different directions. He wanted us apart and desperate. We're together and we're looking at him."
Something in Rachel's chest loosened slightly for the first time in forty eight hours.
This was why she had always loved Olivia. Not because she was kind, though she was. Not because she treated Rachel like actual family, though she did. Because Olivia Grant looked at problems the way other people looked at puzzles. Not with fear. With focus.
"There's one more thing," Rachel said carefully. She looked at Sebastian. "I heard his name come up in connection with the mysterious messages Olivia has been receiving."
Both of them went still.
"How do you know about those messages," Olivia said.
Rachel took a breath. "Because I sent the first one."
The room temperature seemed to drop several degrees.
Sebastian stared at her. Olivia stared at her. Rachel held both their gazes because she had known this moment was coming and running from it was not going to help anyone.
"The photo from the night of the divorce," Olivia said slowly. "That was you."
"I was outside the building. I saw the man approach Sebastian in the alley. I knew who he was because I'd seen him at the club before." Rachel looked at her brother. "I panicked. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't want to send it to you because you would have shut me out immediately and I couldn't reach Olivia directly without it being strange so I used a blocked number." She exhaled. "I sent the first two messages. After that someone else took over the same thread. Someone who had access to the number I used."
Olivia's expression shifted. "Someone intercepted your communication."
"Yes." Rachel's voice dropped. "Which means whoever is watching this situation closely enough to take over a blocked number thread is closer than any of us realized."
Sebastian moved first. He went to his desk and picked up his phone and made a call that lasted twenty seconds. When he hung up his face had settled into the particular cold clarity that Rachel had learned meant he was done processing and had moved into action.
"We lock this floor down," he said. "Nobody in or out without my direct authorization. Rachel stays here tonight, she doesn't go home." He looked at Olivia. "David needs to know everything in the next hour."
Olivia was already texting.
Rachel watched them move together, finishing each other's sentences without finishing each other's sentences, understanding the other's next step before it was spoken, and felt something bittersweet and hopeful settle in her chest at the same time.
Five years. Two people. An enormous amount of damage done in the name of protection.
And somehow they had ended up exactly here.
In the same room. Facing the same direction.
Sebastian looked at Rachel with an expression that was equal parts fury and gratitude. "You should have told me immediately."
"I know," she said. "I was scared you'd send me away."
His expression shifted into something softer. "I'm not sending you anywhere."
Olivia looked up from her phone. Her eyes met Rachel's and she gave a small nod that said more than words would have.
Then Olivia's phone buzzed on the table between them all and she looked down at the screen and her face changed completely.
She turned the phone around so they could both read it.
The message was from the number Rachel had originally used. The intercepted thread. The one that wasn't hers anymore.
Lovely family reunion. I can see your floor from mine. Wave if you find this, Ms. Grant.
All three of them looked up at the building across the street at the same time.
Dozens of windows. Dozens of dark and lit offices staring back.
Somewhere in one of them, someone was already watching.