Chương 3
Not enough to understand the whole situation.
Enough to understand there was no easy conversation happening.
Grant lowered his voice.
“You’re making this worse.”
“For who?”
His expression changed slightly.
That was always his weakness.
He could handle accusation.
He struggled with questions that forced him to choose a side.
Lauren stepped away from the stage and approached us.
“Grant.”
He looked at her.
“Not now.”
Her face tightened.
That answer hurt her more than the accusation on the screen.
I saw it because I knew what it looked like when someone realized they were not being protected.
“Not now?” she repeated.
He looked around the room.
“Lauren, please.”
There it was.
Not an apology.
Not reassurance.
A request for silence.
She stared at him for a moment.
Then she looked at me.
“I didn’t forge anything.”
The sentence came out before she could stop it.
Several people nearby turned.
Grant’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“No, but you’re letting everyone think—”
“Lauren.”
The way he said her name stopped her.
Not because it was threatening.
Because it reminded her that he was still trying to manage the room.
She closed her mouth.
That was when I knew their partnership had cracks.
Not because they were arguing.
Because neither of them trusted the other person to save them.
I walked back toward the control table.
The technician looked relieved to see me because at least my instructions were clear.
“Can you remove the document from the rotation?” I asked.
He nodded.
The screen went dark.
For a moment, the ballroom returned to normal.
Except nothing was normal anymore.
The blank projector screen hung above the stage like an unanswered question.
Marcus called again.
I stepped away from the crowd before answering.
“Eleanor.”
His voice was different.
Not panicked.
Focused.
“I saw the files.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the ballroom.
Grant was speaking quietly with two board members.
Lauren stood several feet away, watching him.
“I thought you were coming here.”
“I’m on my way.”
“On your way?”
“I was calling the bank first.”
That stopped me.
“What?”
“I froze the pending transfer.”
The relief lasted less than a second.
Then another feeling replaced it.
Fear.
“How?”
“Because I had authority to place a temporary hold while we verified suspicious activity.”
Marcus paused.
“But Eleanor, I need you to listen carefully.”
I leaned against the hallway wall.
“What?”
“The contract you sent me is not the only document involved.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What does that mean?”
“It means someone prepared this more carefully than a simple fake invoice.”
The hallway suddenly felt colder.
“What did you find?”
“I found a board communication from six weeks ago.”
My stomach dropped.
“Sent by who?”
“Your office.”
I stared at the ballroom doors.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
The word should have comforted me.
It did not.
Because Marcus did not say it like reassurance.
He said it like a lawyer recognizing a problem.
“Someone used your access,” he continued.
“Your email.”
“Are you saying someone hacked my account?”
“I’m saying we don’t know yet.”
The answer bothered me because Marcus was usually precise.
When he did not know something, it meant the uncertainty mattered.
“What was in the email?”
“A request to temporarily delegate tournament responsibilities while you handled personal matters.”
I closed my eyes.
“Personal matters.”
The phrase felt familiar.
The same language from the sponsor emails.
The same polite wording that made betrayal sound like administration.
“Marcus, I never sent that.”
“I believe you.”
“But?”
“But whoever created it knew enough about your role to make it believable.”
I looked down at my phone.
The reflection on the black screen showed my own face looking strangely unfamiliar.
For years, I had been the person who knew every detail.
Every donor.
Every account.
Every contract.
Now I was standing in the hallway discovering that someone had been building a version of my life without me.
“I need you to come here,” I said.
“I’m coming.”
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes.”
I looked toward the ballroom.
Twenty minutes felt like a lifetime.
When I returned, the atmosphere had changed.
No one had left.
That almost made it worse.
People were still waiting.
Waiting to see whether this was a misunderstanding.
Waiting to see who would control the next few minutes.
Richard Hale approached me near the entrance.
“Eleanor.”
I nodded.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” he said.
The honesty surprised me.
Most people in that room were trying to appear informed.
Richard was admitting he was not.
“I don’t either,” I said.
He studied my face.
“You really didn’t approve this?”
“No.”
He looked toward Grant.
“I assumed you two handled the foundation together.”
“We did.”
The past tense came out before I intended.
Richard noticed.
So did I.
He did not ask about the marriage.
He was too polite.
Or maybe too experienced.
He simply said, “Your father would have hated seeing this.”
I looked up at the portrait.
“I know.”
The strange thing was that I did not imagine my father being angry.
I imagined him disappointed.
That was worse.
Grant approached before I could say anything else.
“We need to talk.”
I almost said no.
The answer was already ready.
But then I noticed something.
He was not looking at the crowd.
He was not looking at the screen.
He was looking at me.
Not like someone trying to win.
Like someone trying to calculate how much I knew.
“What?” I asked.
His eyes moved briefly toward Lauren.
“She wasn’t supposed to be involved in this part.”
My chest tightened.
“What part?”
He immediately looked away.
A mistake.
A small one.
But Grant had spent years teaching me how to read him.
“Grant.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I need you to understand something.”
“That usually means I’m about to hear something I won’t like.”
He did not deny it.
May you like
“The tournament changes were not only about the tournament.”
The noise of the ballroom seemed to fade.
