“Did you email them to anyone outside the company?”
“No.”
“Cloud share?”
“Restricted.”
My phone vibrated on the glass coffee table.
MOM appeared across the screen.
Piper raised an eyebrow.
“That was fast.”
I answered.
Nancy was already crying.
“Audrey, please.”
I said nothing.
“Please don’t turn this into something ugly. We’re still a family.”
“You filed a lawsuit against me.”
“It didn’t have to happen this way.”
I looked at the legal complaint.
“You demanded my company.”
“We are asking you to do what is fair.”
“To whom?”
“To Payton.”
Piper pushed her chair away from the table and listened.
Nancy continued.
“Your sister deserves a chance. You have plenty. Why are you always so determined to make everything difficult?”
I almost laughed.
Instead, I asked, “You want me to transfer a company I built myself to Payton?”
“She contributed more than you’re admitting.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Audrey—”
“I built this business without a dollar from you.”
There was movement on the other end of the phone.
Then my father’s voice replaced hers.
“Listen carefully.”
His tone was familiar.
It was the voice he used when he expected immediate compliance.
“If you refuse to sign the transfer documents, I’ll contact every business reporter in Salt Lake City who will answer my call.”
I glanced at Piper.
Brian continued.
“We’ll tell them exactly what happened. We’ll tell them you took your own sister’s work and built a company around it.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“I know what the public will believe.”
There it was.
Not an argument.
Pressure.
“If you care about your reputation,” he said, “you will sign by tomorrow morning.”
I let the silence stretch.
Years earlier, that voice would have made me apologize before I even understood what I had supposedly done.
Not anymore.
“You’ll hear from my attorney,” I said.
Brian tried to interrupt.
I continued.
“I’ll see all of you in court.”
Then I ended the call.
I placed the phone on the sofa.
Piper did not speak immediately.
Finally she turned toward my home office.
“They have details they shouldn’t have.”
“Yes.”
“So either someone leaked them or someone accessed the files.”
I looked toward the office.
“Let’s find out.”
Piper sat at my workstation and began reviewing the internal security logs. I stood behind her while lines of activity filled the screen.
Most were routine.
Automatic backups.
Approved remote sessions.
Software updates.
Internal transfers.
Then Piper stopped scrolling.
“Wait.”
She enlarged one entry.
The system had recorded a significant data export from the directory containing my new seasonal collection.
The date was the fourteenth.
The transfer had occurred shortly after two in the afternoon.
I stared at it.
“That can’t be me.”
“Where were you?”
“At the production warehouse.”
“All afternoon?”
“I got there before noon and didn’t leave until after five.”
Piper opened the network details.
Her expression changed.
“This session originated here.”
I leaned closer.
“Here?”
“Your apartment.”
I looked toward the living room, suddenly aware of every quiet corner of my own home.
“Could someone have accessed it remotely?”
“Not this way.”
Piper checked again.
“The workstation was active locally.”
I crossed my arms.
“So somebody came inside.”
That sentence changed everything.
I mentally reviewed everyone who could enter the building.
The property manager.
Maintenance.
Piper.
Me.
Then my eyes moved toward the front door.
Beside it, visible through the narrow glass panel, was a ceramic planter.
I had kept an emergency key beneath it for years.
Only a few people knew.
My parents were among them.
I had told them after moving into the apartment because Nancy insisted families needed emergency access.
Payton had been sitting at their kitchen table when the conversation happened.
Piper followed my gaze.
“What?”
“The spare key.”
She understood immediately.
“Payton knows where it is?”
“Yes.”
Piper turned back to the computer.
“We need more than this log.”
“I have cameras.”
She looked at me.
“Inside?”
“One covering the office. One outside the front door.”
A few months earlier, several packages had disappeared from the building. I had installed the cameras and mostly forgotten about them.
Piper opened the surveillance application.
“Please tell me the footage goes back far enough.”
“It should.”
She entered the date.
The archive loaded slowly.
I stood behind her as the progress bar moved.
Forty percent.
Sixty.
Eighty.
For the first time since opening the lawsuit, I could hear my heartbeat.
The footage appeared.
We selected 2:00 p.m.
The porch was empty.
At 2:07, a vehicle moved through the far edge of the frame.
At 2:09, someone approached.
Piper leaned toward the screen.
I did not need the image enlarged.
I knew the walk.
Payton entered the frame wearing sunglasses and carrying a designer handbag.
She stopped near my door.
Looked toward the parking area.
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