Six Weeks

Chapter 18: Six Weeks Leah carried the tray past the bar without slowing, though the words had hooked under her ribs. Costa was going to move on NexGen before year-end. The letter of intent was already drafted. If she turned her head, if either venture man saw her face sharpen, she would become a waitress who listened too closely. So she kept her shoulders loose, delivered the dirty glasses to the kitchen, and told Priya she needed the restroom. The back door shut behind her with a hard click. In the alley, cold October air hit her cheeks, and for three breaths she let the pressure show. Halcyon owned the Chelsea building. NexGen rented the second and third floors. Sebastian Costa was "advising" NexGen in every public article she had found. Now two men who moved money for a living were talking about a signed acquisition path before the end of the year, before December, the same month as the Thorne Group board meeting. Leah pressed both palms to the brick until the rough edge bit into her skin. She had thought the shell network was hiding money. It was worse. It was timing money. It was moving hidden Thorne capital into a property asset that made Sebastian's acquisition look clean when the board finally asked why Costa Holdings was suddenly stronger, richer, and better positioned. "Leah?" Priya called from inside. "If you are sick, tell me now. Table seven is waiting on dessert." "I'm fine," Leah said, because lies worked best when they sounded bored. She washed her hands in the staff bathroom, checked her face in the cracked mirror, and returned to the floor with the expression of a woman whose only problem was a slow panna cotta. The two men at the bar were still there. One had a Manhattan untouched before him. The other scrolled through his phone, smiling at numbers Leah could not see. "If Costa closes in December, NexGen's board will look brilliant," the one with the phone said. "They get the oncology pipeline, the real estate, and the licensing window before the next funding round." Leah passed behind them with a water pitcher and asked, "More sparkling?" The man with the phone glanced up, saw only a waitress, and shook his head. "We're good." Only a waitress. The dismissal went through her like a small, clean victory, the same kind of invisibility that had let her stand inside Chesapeake and touch Webb's ledgers without anyone asking why her hands were too steady. At nine forty, during the lull between dessert and final checks, she slipped into the coatroom with a linen basket and wrote three phrases on the back of an order slip: LOI drafted. NexGen board before year-end. Real estate included. She folded the slip twice and tucked it into the inner seam of her apron. She did not touch her phone. Karim watched phones. Paper was safer. The rest of the shift became a test of stillness. She smiled when couples ordered coffee. She refilled wine without spilling a drop. She let Karim correct her angle on table twelve's silverware and apologized with exactly the right amount of humility. All the while, the picture arranged itself behind her eyes: Halcyon Properties, 511 West 25th Street, NexGen Therapeutics, Sebastian Costa, Webb's shells, Martha's trust, the December board meeting. When she finally left L'Etoile, Midtown had gone sharp and black around the edges. Leah took the long route home, doubling back through a hotel lobby, crossing against the light once, stopping at a pharmacy window long enough to see who stopped with her. No one did. Her phone buzzed two blocks from the subway, and the alert glowed white in the dark: Costa Holdings American Division in Advanced Talks to Acquire NexGen Therapeutics - Sources. Leah stopped so abruptly that a man behind her muttered and stepped around. She opened the article. A financial site, one anonymous source, careful language. Advanced discussions. Undisclosed sum. Expected close before year-end. Costa spokesperson declined comment. She read it twice, then once more for the dates. The rumor was no longer a rumor. Someone had pushed it into the market. That meant Sebastian wanted pressure on NexGen's board, or wanted investors ready, or wanted the Thorne board to believe the acquisition was inevitable before anyone saw where the seed money had come from. Leah put the phone away. The cold seemed to move through her blazer and settle against her spine. If the Halcyon money disappeared into Costa Holdings after closing, the paper trail would not vanish completely, but it would blur. Auditors would see real estate, acquisition value, tenant contracts, and a biotech pipeline. They would not see a dead heiress, a grandmother's trust, or a lawyer's shell companies unless someone forced the path into the light before December. She walked faster, counting the weeks as if they were cash in an envelope: one to identify the source account, one to get a copy of the transfer, one to connect Webb to the entity, one to prove Martha's authorization, one to survive whatever happened when they noticed someone had been reading backward through their books. In her apartment, she locked the door, wedged the chair under the knob, and pulled the Moleskine from its hiding place inside War and Peace. Her hand was steady when she wrote the field note in tight lines: 22 Oct. Chesapeake Session 2 confirmed Halcyon. L'Etoile overheard: Costa LOI for NexGen already drafted, close before year-end. News alert confirms advanced talks. December convergence with Thorne board. Shell network funded Halcyon building; building houses NexGen; Sebastian acquiring target. She underlined the next sentence until the paper nearly tore: Must find origin of shell money before closing. Then she added what mattered most: Webb's network was not just concealing assets. It was building Sebastian's acquisition engine with money that looked like it belonged to dead Isabella Thorne's family. For thirty seconds, she let herself feel the weight of it: the dead name, the fake name, the little apartment, the city outside full of people who did not know a girl had been erased so money could move in peace. Then the thirty seconds ended. Leah closed the notebook and placed one more task on the next page, not as a wish but as an order to herself. The next file would have to run backward, not forward. Not where the money went. Where it came from. And on Monday, inside Chesapeake, she would start with the first dollar while Webb's people still believed the new bookkeeper was only cleaning up Q4.