Page 6 of Vamp CEO Bit You Where?

"You're erasing a debt for someone outside your life on paper, through a shell instrument, so that her daughter never finds out. A moment ago you told me staying out of it was the right call."

"That changed when I learned who was holding the account."

"The account didn't change. You did." He raises an eyebrow. "You said you'd preserve separation. Now you're rerouting her mother's pension protection through a foundation she'll never see the name of. That isn't separation."

"Just do it." I command.

Gid just sits there so I authorize the routing myself, before he debates it with me further. The fund accepts the transfer. Drummond's lien will be vacated by Thursday on a technicality nobody will trace. Vivian will receive a letter about an administrative correction, and she will be relieved, and unlikely to tell others, because there will be nothing left to tell.

"There's a second item," Gid says, while I'm still watching the confirmation resolve. "Came up when I pulled her file. Someone's been running Jasmine online."

That gets my full attention. "Define running."

"Credential scrapes against her old employer's HR archive. Two failed access attempts on her sealed severance record. A data broker pinged her address history and employment timeline inside the same four-hour window — too specific for a marketing sweep. Somebody's building a profile."

"Whose hand?"

"Buried. The requests laundered through three resale brokers. I can't put a face on it yet. Could be a former colleague. A reference check that got aggressive."

It isn't. Reference checks don't fail twice against a sealed record and keep trying. I open the network instead — Crowe Technologies was built for exactly this, and that I prefer Gid not narrate aloud.

"Corrupt the broker trails," I tell the system, not him. "Poison the employment timeline so anything scraped comes back wrong. Kill the access path to the severance record. Misdirect the next attempt into a dead profile." The commands execute.Jasmine's digital shadow folds in on itself and resolves into something inert and false.

"Done," I say.

Gid doesn't congratulate me. "So in one morning you've cleared a debt without permission and erased a threat she doesn't know exists. You're playing a dangerous game."

"She's safer this way."

He stands with a look of concern, and exits without another word. Two confirmations glow on my desk and I maintain the lie that this was strategy, that I removed leverage and nothing more, that the lines I promised to hold are where I left them.

Both those lines moved this morning, and I decide I can put them back before she learns they shifted.

5

JASMINE

The summit gala fills the convention center's atrium with three hundred people who each believe they are the most important person in it, and I have spent the entire cab ride memorizing which of them actually are.

"Two things before we go in," I say, thumbing through my tablet as the car slows. "The Halcyon partners want twenty minutes about the data center deal. Don't give it to them tonight. And the press lead wants you for a photo at nine, not eight, no matter what her email said."

Sebastian Crowe glances at the screen. "Why the change?"

"Because eight o'clock puts you beside the senator who killed your spectrum bill, and the shot runs in tomorrow's business section either way. Nine is cleaner."

Cleaner," he repeats, and his mouth does something restrained. "You've been busy."

As we enter, the crowd adjusts around him. I've watched executives work a crowd before—the handshakes, the rehearsed laugh—but this is something more sinister. A cluster of investors near the bar stops mid-sentence when he passes. A man I recognize from a magazine cover steps back to clear Sebastian'spath to the stairs, then looks faintly relieved when Sebastian only nods. Conversations drop. Nobody steps into his path without permission. They wait to be acknowledged, and when he does, they seem grateful for it, almost relieved.

It would be easy to call it celebrity treatment, but the odd feeling I get is, it's not that. The nerves are too sharp for ordinary corporate awe.

"You're a hit," Penny murmurs, materializing at my elbow with two flutes of something sparkling she has no intention of letting me drink. "Half the guest list has asked who the new assistant is. The rest already know and are pretending not to care."

"Tell them I'm decorative," I say.

"They'd believe it until you opened your mouth." She drifts toward a knot of reporters, already wearing her PR smile.

A coordinator with an earpiece intercepts us before the stairs. "Mr. Crowe, we have you presenting the innovation award at eight-fifteen, right after?—"