Page 34

Theo

The numbers on my laptop blend together, a sea of projections and percentages I can’t make sense of. It’s only been a day, twenty-four hours since Mackenzie walked out, but it feels like longer. Like forever.

I tell myself to focus, to dive headfirst into work the way I always have, to let the pressure numb the loss. But for the first time, it’s not working.

I’ve been getting second-hand updates through Scott, fragments of Mackenzie’s day, hints that she’s managing. Breathing. Existing without me. I tell myself it’s a relief to know she’s okay, but every breadcrumb he feeds me only leaves me hungrier for her. For us.

And the cruelest irony?

I’m still drowning in everything that led to my colossal failure, my horrifying error in judgment—work and keeping the board and our customers happy and all the crap Crystal is throwing at us on her fucking TubeIt channel that has the police and the media re-examining everything. The board is freaking out. The publicity Crystal is generating keeps showing up on their doorsteps. Keeping them calm is a full-time job by itself.

I lean back, fingers pressing against my eyes as the truth finally lands with full weight. It’s time to change everything.

“Mr. Reed, how do you spell—”

The temp’s voice breaks through my spiral, tentative and uncertain.

“Capriotti,” I say automatically, cutting her off before she gets there. “C-a-p-r-i-o-t-t-i.”

She’s new. Nervous. Her notes are a mess, her desk scattered. She’s overwhelmed, and it’s obvious.

And all I can think about is Mackenzie.

She would’ve already had this handled. Meetings locked in. Contracts reviewed. Fires pre-emptively put out before they ever had a chance to flare. And now? Now, it’s just noise, and everything’s a mess.

And that’s not even close to the worst part of her being gone.

I stand, stretching muscles stiff from sitting too long.

“Is it Crystal?” I ask, gesturing toward the phone on the temp’s desk, seizing on the first distraction I can find.

Her eyes widen, and she nods, half-grateful, half-panicked.

“What line?” I ask, pushing the blinking button and turning my back on the temp before she can even react. I pull out my phone. I want to record the call, so I have proof of what was said.

“Theo Reed speaking,” I answer, already bracing for the fallout.

Her voice hits me like a thunderclap—fast, frantic, unraveling by the second.

“Theo, you have no idea what it’s like,” she gasps, her words tumbling over one another in a breathless panic. “They’re all over me, like I’m some criminal. They’re watching, digging, following me.”

I press my fingers to the bridge of my nose, an ache behind my eyes already forming. I want to scream at her for all the problems she’s created, and likely for killing my friend, but I have her on the phone, and maybe I can coax her to come home.

“Crystal, calm down,” I say, trying to cut through the torrent. “Just tell me where you are. I’ll send the jet.”

She laughs. “Forget the jet. You guys did this to me. I need to clear my name, Theo. They’ve made up their minds, and it’s all on me while the real threat is still out there.”

“Crystal, we’ve all been under pressure,” I say evenly. “The scrutiny is part of the process. You know that. I was back at the police station yesterday.”

“Then why am I the one they won’t let go?” she snaps. “They’re trying to pin this on me, and you know it. I need you to help me find out who’s really behind all this. Hire a PI, someone off the books, someone who answers to you.”

I turn toward the glass wall of my office, the City sprawling beneath me, indifferent and cold.

“I thought you hired someone. And we already have Grantham on this,” I remind her. “He’s the one who should be handling it for all of us.”

“Grantham reports everything to the police,” she fires back. “But you—you’re protected. You can keep things quiet until we know what we’re dealing with.”

I feel the ground shift beneath my feet.

This isn’t a plea for help. It’s a setup. A whisper of manipulation dressed up as desperation. A storm she’s trying to pull me into, one move away from dragging all of us down with her.

“I think we should stick to Grantham’s advice,” I say carefully. “We need to do this the right way.”

But she’s quiet now. Too quiet.

And then I realize—Crystal doesn’t want the right way.

She wants control.

And I’m not sure any of us is ready for what she’ll do to get it.

“Damn it!” Crystal snaps, her voice cracking with fury. “We need someone who’s actually on our side!”

“Grantham is on our side.”

“Look into Stan Richards,” she says, suddenly measured. Calculated. “He’s behind the sodium-ion cells in the fake batteries.”

The name knocks the air out of me. “Stan Richards?” I repeat, stunned. CEO of Maloney Chemical? Politically connected and recently fired supplier for EnergiFusion? Rhys didn’t feel great about his last interactions with Stan, but this feels like a leap.

“He’s dirty,” Crystal says, the sharp edge of certainty in her voice. “He was working on sodium-ion tech just before we cracked it. He had motive, he had access—and he had every reason to make us look like the villains.”

My mind kicks into overdrive, connecting dots that have been just out of reach. I rake a hand through my hair. “How do you know this?” I ask, suspicion rising like smoke.

There’s a pause. “Stan told me,” she replies.

That twists everything sideways. Why on Earth would he do that? But I don’t ask, for fear of setting her off again. It just seems too easy. Too convenient. And yet…if there’s even a sliver of truth, we can’t afford to ignore it.

“Okay,” I say finally. “I’ll talk to Austin, Rhys, and Mason. We’ll look into Stan.”

“Thank you,” she says, all business now.

But I let it go.

For the time being.

We say goodbye, and I hang up.

Stan Richards.

If Crystal’s right, everything we thought we knew just blew wide open.

I set the phone down, every nerve in my body tense with what-ifs. If Stan could be behind the fake sodium-ion batteries? It changes the game. We’ve been chasing ghosts. Pointing fingers in the wrong direction.

I fire off a quick email to Austin, Rhys, and Mason.

Me: Bourbon & Branch. Library Room. Tonight at 6 p.m.

No way we do this over text or a call. Not when the stakes keep climbing.

I stare at the message for half a second, then hit send.

Justin, what the hell did you get wrapped up in, man?

I press a hand to my forehead, rubbing at the pressure behind my eyes. Something’s still not adding up. Crystal may have handed us a piece of the puzzle, but whether it’s the truth or just another calculated move, I don’t know yet.

The noise of the city fades the moment I step inside Bourbon & Branch that evening. The scent of aged whiskey, leather, and old wood engulfs me, a familiar cocoon. But I’m not here for comfort. Not tonight.

I move through the dim bar, past quiet conversations and clinking glasses, toward the hidden door disguised as a bookcase. A nod to the host, a quiet word, and I’m ushered through.

The Library is already occupied.

“About time,” Austin says, not even looking up as he swirls the whiskey in his glass.

“Sorry, guys.” I drop into the seat across from him. “Had a staffing issue. Temp walked out on me. Tomorrow, they’re sending two people to try to do Mackenzie’s job.”

Rhys lets out a low chuckle. “Two temps? You’re gonna need three. Minimum.”

Mason leans forward, his tone too casual to be casual. “Speaking of Mackenzie… What happened?”

There’s no point dodging it. Not here. Not with them.

I let out a breath and meet their eyes, one by one. “I never meant for it to get complicated.” I shrug. “Doesn’t matter now. She’s gone. And we’ve got bigger problems.”

The server appears, sets a drink in front of me, and vanishes without a word. I don’t reach for it yet. Instead, I scan the room—no ears but ours.

“This isn’t about Mackenzie,” I tell them. Just saying her name tightens my chest, but I keep going. “Crystal called me today.”

Everything stills.

“She called me at the office,” I continue. “And I recorded it.”

I have their complete attention now.

“She’s rattled,” I say. “She sounded pretty unhinged. But at the end, she said she wants us to look into Stan Richards.”

Rhys frowns. “Maloney Chemical?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “She says he’s behind the fake sodium-ion batteries. That he had motive, opportunity—and a vendetta.”

I play them the recording of the call.

Mason exhales slowly. “She doesn’t sound good. But if she’s credible, this could be bigger than we thought.”

“Exactly.” I sit forward. “We’ve been focused on the fallout. Maybe it’s time to find the person who lit the fuse.”

Austin leans back, eyes narrowing. “Did you get her to clarify what she meant by that?”

I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “No, I didn’t. You heard the whole conversation. She dropped it like a grenade, and I was too stunned to dig deeper. It was just…a lot. And I was afraid to push her.” I tighten my grip around the whiskey glass. “As soon as she hung up, I had a thousand questions. It felt like she was manipulating me. She hasn’t talked to me in months. And now, she’s suddenly vulnerable? Wants to confide in me? That alone threw me.”

Mason doesn’t flinch. “Do you believe her?”

I don’t answer right away. I know better than to assume she’s telling the whole story. She never does. “I believe she believes it,” I say finally. “And that’s enough for now. We need to start looking at Stan Richards.”

Mason shifts in his chair, the sound of leather creaking loud in the quiet room. His fingers tap a slow rhythm against the tabletop. “Do you think she knew about Stan’s involvement from the beginning?” he asks. “Could Justin have been in on it too? Was Crystal pulling the strings with those fake batteries?”

Rhys leans forward, elbows on the table, fingers steepled under his chin. “We need answers,” he says evenly. “But I don’t think we take this to Grantham—at least not yet. Not until we know whether it’s actually worth bothering with. Otherwise, we just look stupid, like Crystal is manipulating us.”

“I’ve just asked Jim to come over,” Mason says.

A dull throb pulses at my temples, a steady beat of exhaustion, pressure, and dread. I rub the spot with two fingers, trying to push the headache away. “Let’s not forget,” I say, “Dr. Allen was the one who leaked the original battery plans on the dark web. Crystal either on purpose or by accident didn’t put him on the list for our last investigation into the how the plans were released. Could she have been behind that delay too?”

“Jeez.” Austin covers his face.

My fingers tap restlessly against my glass. “And now she’s maneuvering.”

The others say nothing, but they don’t have to. We’re all feeling it, the slow click of puzzle pieces shifting into place.

“Breaking up the company,” I mutter. “So clean and convenient.”

Austin’s brow furrows. “You think that’s what she wants?”

I lean back, letting the chair take my weight. “I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.”

We’re standing on the edge of something massive, something dark and dangerous. I’m staring into the slow swirl of my whiskey when Jim arrives.

“The FBI got Kerrie Bailey, and she laid it all out,” he says, his voice gravel-rough. “She says Crystal hired her to create the fake emails and voicemails.”

The world halts.

Austin mutters a curse under his breath, and Rhys scrubs a hand down his face like he’s trying not to explode.

At first, I feel nothing.

I’m numb.

Then the sting of betrayal crashes into me—sharp, suffocating. My brain flips through every moment we’ve spent with Crystal like a deck of cards, each memory now smeared with suspicion. How much of it was real? Was any of it? What does she want from us? It feels like everything. Every time I think it can’t get any worse, it does. And why?

“Damn it,” Rhys says.

Austin shakes his head. “If she created those messages, she wasn’t just manipulating us. She was covering her tracks.”

Mason looks over at Jim. “And now she’s making a play for EnergiFusion? Come on. It fits. All of it fits. She created this mess to make herself look like the victim.”

I turn to Jim, jaw tight. “I spoke to Crystal today, and she said she knows Stan Richards is behind the fake sodium-ion batteries. I realize she’s not entirely credible, but can you have your team look into him? If there’s even a hint of truth to that or a link between him and Crystal, we need to know.”

Jim nods once and slips out.

This is war. We are under attack and have been since the beginning. We just need to identify the attacker.

There’s nothing left to do but let Jim work, so the meeting dissolves. Everyone else has someone at home waiting for them. But I don’t. I step outside and begin to walk instead. The chill cuts through my shirt, but I push myself forward.

I need to think.

I need to breathe.

I need Mackenzie.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I take out my phone and call her. Each ring pulls the knot in my heart tighter until I hear her voice.

“Theo?”

“I miss you,” I say before I can stop myself. The words land heavy, raw, a truth I hadn’t planned to share.

There’s a pause. “That’s not why you called,” she says, gentle but guarded.

She’s right. But just hearing her voice tilts the world back into place, even if only for a minute.

“It’s about Crystal.”

“What about her?”

I drag a hand through my hair, exhaustion hitting me like a wave. “She called me today, making more accusations. She says Stan Richards is behind the fake batteries, so Jim is looking into that. But it’s worse than I thought. Kerrie Bailey told the FBI Crystal hired her to fake the voicemails, the emails, and all the communication from Justin.”

Silence again.

“Wow. Good move.” Then she sighs. “I’m so sorry, Theo. About everything.”

A sharp pang cuts through my chest. “Mac—”

“I’m job hunting,” she says. “Thinking about moving back to LA. Levi could use some time with our dad.”

The air is sucked out of my lungs. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

I want to stop her. Beg her to stay. Swear I’ll fix it, fix everything.

But the words don’t come. They sit heavy, caught behind regret and too many missed chances.

“Thanks for letting me know, Theo,” she finally says. “Goodbye.”

The line clicks, and she’s gone.

I stand frozen in place, still holding the phone to my ear like maybe she’ll come back. Like maybe I imagined it.

Around me, the streets are dark, headlights streaking by, life moving on.

And for the first time in years, I don’t have a plan.