Chapter 8 - The Leak
The leaked bid created a crisis by breakfast.
If Voss Meridian could not explain how confidential pricing had escaped, it might lose a contract that supported hundreds of skilled workers.
Daniel wanted an immediate internal review.
Our outside counsel wanted all relevant devices preserved.
Adrian wanted to call the accusation nonsense.
"Everyone knows competitors steal information," he said on a conference call.
"Then you won't object to preservation requests," Claire replied.
His silence was noticeable.
Jonah found that the bid file had been downloaded onto an executive tablet assigned to Adrian two hours before the leak.
That did not establish he sent it to anyone.
It established a trail we needed to follow.
Daniel suspended the tablet's access and notified the appropriate compliance officials.
The next day, Celeste invited a business journalist to her penthouse and described me as an unstable woman manipulating her gifted child.
Her photograph appeared beside the article, surrounded by flowers and silver frames.
I considered issuing a furious public response.
Instead I authorized a short factual statement about the independent review and the company's continuity.
Claire filed documentation of the remarks where relevant to the family proceedings.
Ethan heard his grandmother's name on a television in the kitchen.
He asked me to turn it off.
I did.
Later that evening my father's old friend, retired judge Thomas Ellery, visited.
He had been one of the few people Dad trusted outside his business circle.
Thomas did not bring sympathy.
He brought a letter Dad had entrusted to him with instructions to deliver it only if someone disputed the fund's voting rights.
The sealed paper shook in my hands.
Dad wrote that his family had become too dependent on his silence and that he regretted not telling me earlier about a plan involving Adrian and Peter.
He identified a folder of supporting documents held by an escrow attorney in Boston.
He also wrote one sentence I read three times.
"If they attack Ethan, it means they have run out of legitimate leverage."
I wished he had trusted me while he was alive.
I wished I could argue with him about that now.
Thomas watched me fold the letter.
"There is another matter," he said.
"Your father believed someone was impersonating him during his final illness."
He handed me a photograph taken outside the Boston attorney's office.
The man exiting the building wore Dad's coat and hat.
May you like
But it wasn't Dad.
It was Peter Lowell.
