Page 114 of A Wolfe in the Woods

A shift had taken place within me.Resolve.

Skoll had taught me how to be invisible. Years of anticipating moods, reading silences, knowing when not to be seen. I used it all now.

The security cameras were small black eyes in the ceiling easy to ignore on a normal day…tonight they felt carnivorous. I kept my chin down, my face angled away, the way I had learned without ever consciously deciding to.

The executive floor was eerily quieter than the rest of the building. The air felt refrigerated. I signed into a computer terminal I wasn’t authorized to use with credentials I absolutely shouldn’t have had.

My hands shook as the interface loaded, so hard my fingers slipped once on the keys. I wiped them on my jeans, pulse hammering at my throat. Jonathan’s voice cut through—Nothing good comes from Graymore.And yet here I was, trying to prove otherwise.

I followed Bernie’s instructions precisely, typing the sequence slowly, terrified a typo would somehow set off alarms.

…And there it was.

A skeletal internal profile buried three layers deep in Skoll’s private asset-management system that was flaggedRestricted.The files unfolded slowly, layered inside one another like a puzzle designed to frustrate anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for. But Bernie had given me the solution.

As each layer opened, a quiet electric hum drifted above me—a fluorescent light waking, then dimming again. It felt like the building itself was breathing down my neck.

Polaris Equity had been quietly acquiring land for over a decade…purchases through proxy firms, conservation trusts, and shell-owned LLCs. Parcels adjacent to protected forest. Parcels near watershed boundaries. Parcels flagged aslow immediate valuebuthigh future yield.

Graymore Renewable Futures Initiative, the header read.

A hydroelectric dam project. Small-scale, they claimed. Framed as green, sustainable, and future-forward. A “run-of-river” installation designed to minimize disruption while providing long-term clean energy for Graymore and surrounding districts.

The map expanded when I clicked it. Boundaries had shifted. Adjacent parcels were highlighted.

It overlapped parts of Juniper Woods. Of Foley’s land…Jonathan’s land. The Hollow.

Jonathan’s face flashed—his eyes going cold in front of the fountain, stepping back from me like I was poison. My breath hitched so hard my vision blurred. I blinked fast. Focus.

My throat tightened.

I scrolled. The earliest documents were dated over a decade ago. The project had been initiated under Eldritch Skoll. Formal. Lawful. A letter to Foley Wolfe requesting a conversation as a preliminary inquiry. Foley had refused. Eldritch hadn’t pushed. Notes markedDeclined. No pressure. No follow-up.

Then Erik’s name appeared, and everything changed.

Under Erik’s leadership, the initiative was reclassified. Accelerated. It had been folded into Polaris Equity’s long-term-growth strategy. The dam project was less about energy and more about leverage, power, and control. It forced landholders into “voluntary compliance” through rising taxes, permit blackouts, and regulatory suffocation.

I felt sick.

Somewhere behind me, I heard footsteps. A pause. A door latch clicking. I froze, breath caged painfully in my ribs until silence returned.

The proposal was scheduled to appear on the next county ballot. The land would be acquired quietly beforehand. Resistance would come too late, I realized.

That was when I stumbled upon Bernie’s name. A buried memo. Unsent. Draft only.Bernard Hale.

Senior Operations Liaison.Infrastructure Oversight.LegacyCompliance and Access.

He’d flagged discrepancies. Asked questions. Requested ethics review.

But nothing happened. No response came from the board. No follow-ups.

Bernie had seen it all and never said a word in the lobby…not because he didn’t trust me, but because he cared about me. Because this information would have burned me.

Bernie had chosen peace…and silence.

“Oh, Bernie,” I whispered, staring at the screen.

I imagined him in Erik’s office. Calm. Tired. Saying something careful. Saying,This isn’t what Skoll was built for.This isn’t the legacy your father built.