The prosecutor’s name was James Dan and he had her file open on the desk when she walked in, which meant he had read it before she arrived, which meant he was already taking this seriously.
He was in his mid-forties, clean-shaven, with the particular stillness of someone who spent his days listening to people in pain and had learned not to let his face react faster than his brain.
He gestured to the chair across from him.
“Sit Ma’am”.
She sat and put her portfolio on the table and folded her hands on top of it.
“Ms.
Chen.” He looked at the file, then at her.
“The Foundation fraud case is strong.
The payment trail to Derek Chow is clean, the original communications are admissible, and the accounts discrepancy you flagged three years ago is the foundation of the entire case.”
“And my parents?” she said.
“The mechanic payment three days before the brake failure is significant.
We are treating it as part of the same pattern of behaviour.” He paused, he chose his words with precision.”But I want to be honest with you.
That case will take longer.
The fraud case moves faster.”
“I want both.”
“I know.” He nodded once.
“There is something else you should know.
We have a parallel investigation open on Richard Sinclair.
Securities fraud.
He has been acquiring Sinclair Corp shares through nominee accounts for three years, other people’s names, shell trusts, carefully spread.
He now holds enough to call a legitimate board vote.”
Lily looked at him.
Her hands stayed perfectly still on the portfolio.
“He is going after Ethan’s company,” she said.
“He may already have enough to move on it.
Which is why we need to act before the board meeting happens, not after.” James leaned forward slightly.
“We will need your full statement on record today.
Everything.
The voicemail from your father, the termination letter, the accounts page, Derek Chow, the mechanic payment.
All of it.”
“I know,” she said.
“Let’s start.”
She talked for two hours.
She did not rush and she did not embellish and she did not cry.
She laid it out the way she had built her prosecution file, piece by piece, each item in order, the logic of it visible by the time she got to the end.
When she finished, James sat back in his chair and looked at her with eyes widened in surprise.
“You put this together alone,” he said.
“I had help.
Eventually.”
“Three years.”
“Yes.”
He closed the file.
“We will be in touch by end of week.
Do not contact Richard Sinclair directly.
Do not signal to anyone in the Sinclair family that this meeting happened.”
She picked up her bag and stood.
“One question.”
“Go ahead.” He nodded.
“The board vote.
How much time do I have to stop it?”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“Forty-eight hours.
Maybe less.”
She nodded and left.
‘He used the divorce to buy himself three years of quiet time, three years to move money, buy shares, build a position.’ Lily thought.
She stopped.
‘Wait…
Ethan signed those papers in a hotel room and handed his father every minute of it.
He signed the papers and cleared the path and now his father is about to take his company using the time that divorce created.
Oh my God …Ethan does not know a single piece of this yet.’
The elevator doors opened.
She got in.
The planning meeting was at three.
She arrived to find Ethan already at the table, which was normal.
What was not normal was the way he was sitting, papers open in front of him, but his eyes not on them.
His pen was in his hand but it had not moved.
He was looking at the middle distance somewhere above the papers and his jaw was tight.
She sat down and opened her portfolio and did not say anything.
The vendors arrived and the meeting started.
And for the first time in three weeks of working together, Ethan missed the thread.
The head caterer asked about the preferred supplier clause and Ethan nodded at the wrong point in the question, and the caterer looked at Lily, and Lily picked it up without looking at Ethan.
“The clause applies to florists and linen only,” she said.
“Catering is covered under the standard vendor agreement, page six, section three.”
The caterer nodded.
The meeting continued.
Lily dropped the substitution twice more before the hour was up, moving so smoothly each time that no one in the room seemed to notice he had dropped it.
She did it because the meeting needed it, not because she was covering for him.
When the vendors filed out she gathered her papers.
Ethan was still at the table, looking at the window now, his pen flat between his fingers.
She should leave.
She knew she should leave, her car was downstairs, she had forty minutes before Theo needed collecting, and she had forty-eight hours before something very large happened that she needed to be ready for.
She reached the door and stopped.
“The venue contract needs to be signed by Thursday,” she said.
“Or we lose the preferred rate.”
He looked up.
His eyes came to her face and the focus came back into them.
“I’ll have Nathan send it over.”
She nodded, then turned and put her hand on the door handle.
And then something, some part of her that had not fully received the memo, the part that spent four years learning every version of his distracted face, made her stop again.
She turned back.
“Are you alright?”
He looked at her.
His pen went still.
His brow shifted slightly, he wasn’t expecting the question.
She swallowed hard.
“Never mind.
Thursday, Ethan.”
She left.
She walked to the elevator and pressed the button and stood there with her jaw set and her free hand closed at her side, fingernails against her palm.
” Oh my gosh!
I asked if he was alright.
I did not plan that”.
She said, hitting her forehead slightly.
*****
At home, Marcus made pasta.
Theo helped by stirring the sauce with extreme seriousness.
Lily sat at the kitchen counter and watched them and thought about James’s voice saying related deaths and Ethan’s pen going still and forty-eight hours and the share certificates moving through three years of nominee accounts.
Marcus looked over his shoulder.
“You’re quiet.”
“Long day.”
“Good long or bad long?”
“Complicated long.”
He nodded.
He turned back to the stove.
He did not push, pushing was not something he did, and she watched the back of his head.
‘ Maybe I should tell him about the prosecutor.
I would tell him after Theo goes to bed.
I would find the right words.’ Lily thought.
After Theo went to bed she and Marcus sat on the couch and he told her about a student who had handed in a history essay written entirely from the perspective of a time-travelling penguin, and she laughed, and she did not tell him.
She went to bed.
He fell asleep with his hand warm against her side.
She lay in the dark and looked at the ceiling and breathed.
Her phone lit up on the nightstand.
She tilted the screen toward her.
A Sinclair Corp news alert, the one she had set three weeks ago.
Sinclair Corp Announces Emergency Board Meeting — CEO Position Under Review Following Shareholder Concerns.
She read it.
She read the second paragraph.
An unnamed shareholder group.
Personal conduct.
Business decisions characterised as liabilities.
The language of something that had been written by lawyers before it was sent to journalists, which meant it had been ready for a while.
She sat up in the dark.
Marcus’s breathing stayed even beside her.
“Richard is moving”.
She whispered as she stared at the headline.
‘Ethan is sitting wherever he sleeps not knowing that his father has been buying his company out from under him for three years’.
She picked up her phone and opened her contacts.
She stared at Ethan’s name.
She did not dial.
She dialled Nathan instead.
“I need to talk to you right now,” she said, when he picked up, voice rough with sleep.
“Richard filed for the board meeting.
It is happening.”
A pause.
Then: “I know.
Ethan called me an hour ago.”
“Does he know about the shares?”
There was silence.
“Nathan.” Her voice went very flat.
“Does he know?”
“He found out tonight,” Nathan said quietly.
“He is not doing well.”
She closed her eyes.
She opened them.
“Tell him not to do anything until he hears from me,” she said.
“Tell him forty-eight hours.”
She ended the call.
She sat in the dark with Marcus asleep beside her and the prosecution file in her home office down the hall.
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