The missing page surfaced again on Friday morning, exactly where Vivienne expected trouble to surface — in the middle of a client call, with Zachary sitting three feet away and half the litigation team on speakerphone.
She’d spent the two days since discovering the gap doing exactly what her instincts told her to do: nothing visible.
She’d pulled the file room’s access log quietly, after hours, cross-referencing check-out times against badge swipes until one name sat alone in the window that mattered.
She’d found the missing page itself the night before, tucked inside an unrelated real estate file three cabinets away — a location no honest clerical error would ever produce.
She hadn’t told anyone.
Not yet.
She’d learned, over five long years, that the worst thing you could do with proof was reveal it before you were certain what to do with it.
“Ms.
Grant,” the opposing counsel said, brisk and faintly smug, breaking into her thoughts, “your financial disclosures appear to be missing the amended asset schedule.
Page fourteen of the Whitmore exhibit.
I trust that’s simply an oversight on your end.”
Every head at the table turned toward her.
Zachary’s expression didn’t change, but she felt the weight of his attention shift, sharp and immediate.
Vivienne didn’t flinch.
“It’s not missing,” she said.
“It’s misfiled.
Give me thirty seconds.”
She slid the recovered page across the table now, calm, unhurried, as if she’d known exactly where it was the entire time.
“Page fourteen,” she said.
“Exactly where it should be.”
The opposing counsel, visibly disappointed, moved on.
The call wrapped ten minutes later, and the room began to empty, junior associates filing out with the particular relief of people glad a tense hour was finally over.
Zachary didn’t say anything until the room had cleared, the door shut, the two of them alone with the debris of a dozen coffee cups and a stack of exhibits between them.
“You knew that was going to come up,” he said.
Not a question.
“I suspected.”
“Based on what.”
“The binder was thinner than my notes said it should be.
Two days ago.” She met his eyes.
“I checked the file room access log last night.
One name was in there during the exact window the page went missing.
Nobody else had a reason to be.”
“Who.”
“Victoria Hail.”
Something shifted behind his careful composure — not immediate agreement, closer to genuine surprise.
“Victoria.”
“That’s what the log says.”
“She’s been at this firm five years.
She’s never once given me reason to question her work, let alone her integrity.
You understand why that gives me pause.”
“I understand it perfectly.
I also checked the log twice, because I assumed I’d made an error the first time too.”
“Logs can be misread.
Badge swipes can belong to someone retrieving an unrelated file at an inconvenient hour.”
“They can.
I considered that.
It doesn’t explain why the only page missing from my exhibit happened to be the one page most likely to sink our position with opposing counsel, at the exact moment she was the only person with access to that cabinet.”
“Coincidences happen.”
“So do sabotage attempts.
I’m simply telling you which one this looks like to me.”
“You’ve known her for exactly one client mixer and a handful of hallway pass-bys.
I’ve worked alongside her for five years.”
Something in Vivienne’s chest tightened at that, sharper than she expected.
“So that’s it, then.
Five years of history outweighs a timestamp with her name on it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.
You’re standing there explaining, at length, all the reasons I might be wrong, and not one reason I might be right.”
“I’m not taking her side, Vivienne.
I’m withholding judgment until there’s something solid enough to judge.”
“That’s a very tidy way of saying you don’t fully believe me.”
“It’s a very tidy way of saying I don’t fully believe *anyone* without proof.
You, included.
That’s not an insult.
It’s the only way I know how to run this firm without destroying someone’s career on a hunch — yours or hers.”
“It feels like an insult from where I’m sitting.”
“I understand that it might.
I’m not going to apologize for being fair, though, even when fair is inconvenient for the person I’d rather simply agree with.”
The admission landed with more weight than either of them seemed to expect, and for a moment neither spoke, the small, unresolved hurt of it sitting plainly between them.
“You’d rather agree with me,” Vivienne repeated, quieter now.
“Obviously,” Zachary said, like the word cost him something to admit out loud.
“That doesn’t change what I owe Victoria, or anyone else in this building, until I have something more than a theory to act on.”
Vivienne studied him for a long moment, some of the sharpness in her chest easing, though not entirely.
“Fine,” she said.
“I don’t love it.
But I understand it.”
“That’s more than I usually get from anyone who disagrees with me.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Zachary studied her for a long moment, something assessing in his expression now rather than dismissive.
“Do you have proof, or a theory?”
“A theory backed by a timestamp.
Not proof.
Not yet.”
“Bring it to me the moment you have proof,” he said.
“Not the board.
Not HR.
Me.”
“Why.”
“Because I handle things in my firm my way.” His jaw tightened.
“And because if you go over my head with an accusation you can’t fully back, against someone with five years of clean standing here, you hand her exactly the ammunition she needs to say you’re inventing enemies to cover for your own mistakes.”
Vivienne considered that, and found, grudgingly, that he wasn’t wrong.
“Fine,” she said.
“Your way.
For now.”
“For now,” he repeated, and something in the way he said it made clear he’d noticed the qualifier and intended to hold her to it.
“You could fire her,” Vivienne said.
“If the log is enough to make you suspicious.”
“Suspicious isn’t the same as certain, and certain isn’t the same as provable.
I won’t end someone’s career on a hunch, however well-founded yours might turn out to be.”
“That’s remarkably fair-minded of you.
Considering you’ve known me a matter of weeks and her a matter of years.”
“I didn’t get where I am by being unfair,” he said.
“I got here by being right, and by making sure I could prove it every single time before I acted.”
“Is that a warning?”
“It’s a description,” he said.
“Take it however you’d like.”
“I’ll take it as mildly ominous, with a side of self-congratulation.”
“That’s an uncharitable summary of a perfectly reasonable statement.”
“Most accurate summaries are uncharitable.
That’s usually what makes them accurate.”
“You handled that well,” he said, quieter, once the practical matter had settled between them.
“The call.
All of it.”
“I’ve had practice staying calm while people underestimate me.”
“I noticed.”
“Was that a compliment, Mr.
Knight?”
“An observation.” A pause, something almost like the ghost of amusement crossing his face.
“Fine.
Both.”
She allowed herself a small, unguarded smile — the first one she’d let him see since walking back into his life.
“I’ll take it.”
“For what it’s worth,” Zachary said, quieter, “I wasn’t dismissing you earlier.
About Victoria.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t seem entirely convinced of that a few minutes ago.”
“I wasn’t.
I’ve spent enough of my life being the person nobody believed on principle.
It’s a sore spot.
I’m working on not assuming it every time someone asks a fair question.”
“I’ll work on asking the fair question without making it sound like I’m doubting you specifically.”
“Deal.” She held his gaze a beat longer than the moment strictly required.
“Though for the record, I still think you were being annoyingly reasonable about it.”
“I contain that particular flaw in abundance.”
“Don’t get used to it,” she added, dry, and this time his mouth actually curved, brief and real.
“Don’t get used to it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She began gathering the loose exhibits scattered across the table, sorting them back into order with quick, practiced hands.
“Though for the record, I intend to earn a few more before this probation is up.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“Careful,” she said.
“That’s dangerously close to a second compliment in one conversation.
People might start talking.”
“People already are,” he said, dry, gesturing vaguely toward the closed door and whatever gossip lived on the other side of it.
“I stopped concerning myself with that a long time ago.”
“Convenient, given how much of it seems to concern you specifically.”
“I contain multitudes.
Some of them contradictory.”
“That’s the most honest sentence you’ve said all night.”
“Don’t get used to that either.”
They worked in near silence after that, sorting the remaining exhibits into order, close enough that their hands nearly brushed twice reaching for the same folder.
Neither of them commented on it.
Neither of them moved away, either.
“Can I ask you something,” Vivienne said eventually, not looking up from the papers in front of her.
“You can ask.”
“Why does it matter to you?
Whether I sink or swim here.
You could let this drop entirely, stay out of it, let me handle whatever comes of the Victoria situation on my own.
It would honestly be simpler for you if I just quietly failed and disappeared somewhere off your radar.”
Zachary was quiet long enough that she thought, again, he wouldn’t answer.
“Because you’re good at this,” he said finally.
“Better than you should be, given how little formal training you’ve had.
And I don’t like watching good work get destroyed by someone too insecure to build their own — assuming that theory of yours holds up, which I suspect it will.”
“That’s a professional answer.”
“It’s the only one I’m giving you tonight.”
“Fair enough.”
The floor outside had gone dark, the after-hours quiet settling over the building the way it always did by this hour — just the hum of the building’s systems, and the two of them, and three months of careful distance neither of them seemed able to maintain as well as they’d promised themselves they would.
“Three months,” Vivienne said, half to herself.
“We’re almost a third of the way through.”
“I’m aware.”
“And then what.”
“And then,” Zachary said, gathering his own files, standing, putting the careful distance back between them with the same deliberate control he used for everything, “we’ll see what’s left standing.”
He paused at the door, hand on the frame, and turned back like something else had occurred to him.
“William asked about you again,” he said, in the tone of a man admitting something against his better judgment.
“Wants you to see his dinosaur collection.”
Vivienne’s chest tightened, careful and quiet.
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’ll see.” He held her gaze a beat too long.
“For what it’s worth, I’m starting to run out of ways to say no to that particular request.”
“You don’t have to say yes on my account.”
“I know I don’t.” He didn’t elaborate further, and she didn’t push, both of them aware they’d wandered right up to the edge of a conversation neither was ready to finish.
He left first, for once.
Vivienne sat alone in the quiet office for a long while after, turning the answer over, unable to decide if it had sounded like a warning or a promise.
She suspected, if she were honest with herself, that it might have been both.