Chapter 4 - The Alibi
Back at her hotel room past midnight, Lauren found her laptop screen glowing in the dark. Her mind raced with the terrifying implications of her father’s revelation. If Andrew was working with Meridian Capital, then every conversation they had shared over the kitchen island, every strategic plan they reviewed over Sunday morning coffee, had been weaponized against her.
She needed proof. Not just circumstantial credit card receipts or emotional betrayal, but a smoking gun that tied Andrew directly to Meridian’s acquisition strategy.
She opened the secure internal server once more, navigating past the human resources folders straight into the encrypted directory reserved exclusively for executive management committee files—files that only she and Andrew possessed the dual-key encryption codes to open.
To her astonishment, the folder’s access log showed a recent download timestamp from forty-eight hours ago.
The file downloaded was the master blueprint and financial underwriting model for the upcoming Hudson Yards commercial bid—their most closely guarded project, worth over two hundred million dollars.
And the IP address used to download it?
It wasn't registered to the Manhattan office. It was traced to a residential IP address in Boston.
Andrew’s supposed "business trip" last month wasn't just a cover for an affair. It was the physical staging ground where he had handed their company’s crown jewels over to their worst competitor.
Just as Lauren reached to export the server logs, her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Caller ID: Andrew.
She stared at the screen, letting it ring twice before sliding her thumb across the glass to answer. She didn't say a word. She simply waited.
“Lauren,” Andrew’s voice came through the speaker, breathless, sounding smaller and more desperate than he had on the airplane. “Please. I know you’re angry. I know what it looks like with Chloe, but I can explain everything. You have to listen to me before you do something we can’t take back.”
“I’m listening, Andrew,” Lauren said, her voice dangerously calm. “Where are you right now?”
There was a long, suffocating pause on the other end of the line.
“I’m still in Chicago,” Andrew lied, his voice pitching slightly upward—the unmistakable tell he had possessed since the day she met him. “I’m at the Drake. Just come to the suite, Lauren. We can talk face-to-face. Just you and me.”
Lauren glanced down at her laptop screen, where the active GPS ping from Andrew’s corporate-issued phone—tracked via the executive security app she had installed on all company devices—flashed brightly on a digital map.
He wasn't at the Drake.
He was pinging from a private residential address in an exclusive suburb forty miles north of downtown Chicago.
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An address registered under the corporate name of Meridian Capital.
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