Chapter 4

By morning, the video had spread.

Someone had slowed it down. Milo's bent birthday crown was clear. So was the blue frosting on his sleeve. His card sat beneath the company booklet with its single green word showing.

DAD.

The comments were no longer kind to Julian.

He missed his son's birthday for this?

That little boy reached for him and he did not pick him up.

The assistant kissed him beside the child's card?

I did not feel victorious reading them. Strangers had needed a video to see what Julian had watched happen in front of him.

He came downstairs at seven-thirty with his tie straight and his collar scrubbed clean.

"This is why I told you not to come last night," he said. "Now everyone thinks I'm some kind of monster."

"Now everyone saw what happened."

"They saw ten seconds of a complicated night."

"Milo waited two hours for one candle. It wasn't complicated to him."

For a moment, guilt moved across his face.

Then Sienna called.

He answered on the second ring.

"I'm handling it."

Her voice came through sharp and controlled.

"Stay on message. If you look defensive, they win."

They.

She had already turned my son's birthday into a campaign problem.

Julian hung up and looked at me.

"For Milo's sake, don't come today."

He used our son to keep me away from the woman he was about to promote.

"What time are you naming her?" I asked.

His eyes narrowed.

"This is exactly what I mean. You hear everything as an attack."

"No," I said. "I hear what you don't say."

He left without answering.

I waited until the house went quiet.

Then I opened the old launch drive I had not touched since Milo was born.

Folders filled the screen.

First Office. Original Campaign. Hospital Drafts. Anniversary Raw Footage.

My hands stopped over the last folder.

The first clip showed me in the red dress, six months pregnant, taping paper over the crooked sign outside our rented office.

The next showed Julian freezing before our first investor pitch while I whispered the opening line from the side of the room.

Then came the hospital footage.

Milo slept against my chest. My hair was unwashed. My voice was hoarse with exhaustion.

"Julian," I said to the camera, "use the line about home remembering love. That one is for Milo."

The file was dated three days after he was born.

At the end of it, younger Julian leaned into frame and smiled at me.

"Elena built this with me," he said. "If this company ever tells its story, her name goes first."

I watched it twice.

Then I forwarded the file to Marcus Reid, who had handled our first contracts, and Ivy Larsen, the editor who cut our original launch reel before Sienna knew Julian's coffee order.

My message was short.

They are about to tell the story without me. I have the original.

At eight-fifty, Ivy called.

"Their anniversary reel is already loaded in the ballroom," she said. "Julian alone in the first office. Sienna narrating his vision. Your footage is gone."

"Can you replace it?"

"If I can reach the control booth."

At eight fifty-eight, I walked through the Halcyon's staff entrance with Ivy beside me and Marcus two steps behind.

Julian stood at the podium. Sienna waited beside him in white, calm and polished, while reporters lifted their cameras.

He saw me.

"Elena," he said quietly, warning wrapped in my name.

Behind him, the giant screen flickered.

Sienna turned sharply.

"What is that?"

For one breath, the screen went black.