Lorenzo’s eyes softened, and for the first time he looked away, at the dead floor indicator, as if ashamed.
“I want you to walk out of this elevator and go up to twenty-seven,” he said. “Right now. They’re still there. Hoffman, Adler, and the general counsel. They called a late meeting after they thought you left. They’re going to finalize the plan to use you. If we go together, if you show them you have the originals and you are not alone, they can’t bury it.”
“They’ll say I fabricated it,” I said.
“They will try,” he said. “That’s why I’m going with you. And that’s why the elevator is locked. I locked it. Not to keep you in. To keep them from leaving before you get there.”
The word alone rang in my head.
You are not alone.
I had not been alone in a room with someone and felt safe in two years.
I looked down at the photographs, at my own desk violated, at the letter that fired a future version of me who hadn’t even been allowed to defend herself.
Then I nodded, once. A jerk of the chin that was more breath than movement.
Lorenzo exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since the doors closed. He reached past me, not touching me, and pressed the code on the elevator panel. The buttons lit up. The motor hummed awake.
The car rose.
My heart rose with it, hammering against the files I still clutched like armor.
The doors opened on twenty-seven.
The floor was dark except for the glass conference room at the far end, lit up like a stage. Laughter inside. Three men in shirtsleeves, ties loosened, a bottle of scotch open. Richard Hoffman’s booming laugh I had heard through thin walls for two years, always just after he told me my work needed to be redone.
Lorenzo stepped out first. He didn’t take my arm. He just walked, and I followed because my legs decided to.
The carpet swallowed our footsteps until we were at the glass.
Hoffman saw us first. His smile froze.
“Maya,” he said, standing too quickly. “We didn’t know you were still here. And Mr. Colombo, this is unexpected—”
“She was leaving,” Lorenzo said evenly, his voice carrying that terrible, polite calm that made partners go pale. “But she received something that belongs to you. I think you should see it.”
I stepped forward. My hands were trembling so hard the photographs rattled.
I laid them on the conference table, one by one. The time stamps. His hands in my drawer. The memo with my name on it.
Adler picked one up, then put it down like it burned him. The general counsel went white.
Hoffman laughed. It was a terrible sound.
“This is insane. You break into my office? You stalk my associates and then— and then you forge—”
“It’s not forged,” I said. My voice was small at first, then it steadied, because anger finally cut through the fear. “You came into my office at 1:14 AM on Tuesday. You took the Brighton file. You removed page seventeen, the page with the indemnification language I spent three days negotiating, and you replaced it with a version without it. You did it because you told Brighton you could save them legal fees by cutting that clause and they said no. And you needed someone to blame when it blew up.”
The room went silent except for the air conditioning.
Hoffman looked at Lorenzo, appealing to the club I was not part of.
“Mr. Colombo, surely you don’t believe this girl’s—”
“Don’t speak to her that way,” Lorenzo said, not loud. The quiet was worse than shouting. “And don’t speak to me. Speak to the recording.”
He placed his phone on the table and pressed play.
