“You ruined yourself when you signed those papers,” I said.

I ended the call and let the phone slip onto the counter.

The silence of the apartment returned, thick and oppressive.

Outside, the rain had started again, a soft tapping against the glass of the living room window.

I walked over to the window and looked out at the city lights, blurred by the wet glass.

My shoulder throbbed with a dull, persistent ache that the ibuprofen hadn’t touched.

I needed to think clearly, the way I did in the trauma bay when a patient was bleeding out.

In the ER, you don’t panic when the monitor starts to scream.

You look at the patient, you find the source of the bleed, and you apply pressure.

The source of this bleed was the edited video.

If the board saw the unedited footage, the entire threat would vanish.

But the camera was inside Patricia’s house, connected to her personal network.

She would never hand over the original file, and Michael had likely ordered her to delete it from her phone.