The Briefing Part 2

Chapter 098: The Briefing Part 2 Martha Thorne's question left no safe answer on the table. If Catherine minimized the NexGen variance too neatly, Antonio Costa would hear permission to relax and Martha would know she was useful but dull. If she sharpened the danger, Martha would ask why an eight-day analyst saw fraud where executives had chosen not to. Leah stood beside the screen with Sofia's hidden report burning behind every sanitized slide and chose the narrowest possible lie. "Yes," Catherine said. She clicked once. "The three point seven percent variance is below the range normally seen in comparable Phase III trial record reviews. Similar products often show fifteen to twenty-five percent variance between raw patient files and reported outcomes because of transcription errors, missing entries, or protocol deviations." Antonio exhaled too early. Catherine kept her eyes on the slide, not on him. "That does not mean the variance is irrelevant. It means the issue is less about volume and more about classification. If the discrepancy is isolated and properly documented, it is a manageable data-quality matter. If the discrepancy tracks a particular subgroup, site, or reporting period, then the risk profile changes." Martha's face did not move. "And does it?" "The data in ThorneVault is not granular enough to determine that from the portfolio model alone." It was true. It was also a knife wrapped in cloth. Sofia had the granular data. Catherine Marsh officially did not. The trustee finally looked up from his tablet. Antonio's fingers stilled around the pen. Richard watched Leah now, not with Martha's predatory assessment but with a grief-struck focus that made breathing harder. "Recommended next step?" Martha asked. "A limited internal review of source files before any external investor language is updated," Catherine said. "Not because the variance is automatically material, but because the acquisition size makes documentation discipline important." David's expression remained professional, but Leah saw his approval in the small shift of his shoulders. She had protected the company line without sounding ignorant. She had given Martha a next step that looked prudent, not accusatory. She had survived the question, and for one second it almost felt like a win. Then Martha smiled. "Careful answer, Ms. Marsh." "Accuracy matters," Catherine said. "So does judgment." "Yes, ma'am." Martha let the silence hold long enough to make the room understand that she owned it, then nodded. "Continue." Leah finished the pharmaceutical section without stumbling. She answered the trustee's question about regulatory exposure, gave Antonio the market-comparison number he wanted, and handed the presentation back to David with exactly the deference a junior analyst should show. Inside her, Isabella stood very still and counted every second she had spent lying in the same room as her father's grief. David closed with action items. The meeting dissolved with expensive chairs shifting over thick carpet. Leah gathered her folder and moved toward the door behind him, counting the steps between the conference table and the corridor as if distance alone could put Isabella back under Catherine's skin. "David," Richard said. The single word stopped them. Leah did not turn. Her hand tightened around the folder until the edge pressed into her palm. "The analysis was thorough," Richard said. "Especially the pharmaceutical section." "Thank you, Richard," David replied. "Catherine prepared that work. She joined us from consulting." "Catherine Marsh," Richard said. Hearing him shape the borrowed name was worse than Martha's scrutiny. Martha looked for threats. Richard looked for ghosts. Leah turned only enough to acknowledge him. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Thorne." His eyes met hers, and the room narrowed to the space between the name he had said and the daughter he had buried. Nothing in the room changed. No alarm sounded. No old name broke from his mouth. But something moved behind his expression, quick and helpless, the kind of recognition the body feels before the mind permits it. He did not know her. He could not know her. Still, for one terrible second, Leah saw her father staring through Catherine Marsh and finding a wound he could not identify. "Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Marsh," he said. Leah nodded and walked out before Isabella could answer, because any answer from the true daughter in that room would have been a confession. In the elevator, David checked his phone and missed the fact that Catherine Marsh had stopped breathing normally. "Good job," he said. "Martha listened to you." "Is that good?" "Usually." His mouth tightened. "It means she may want you closer to the SEC response work. We need clean internal analysis before Legal starts asking for version control on every number. I want you available next week." "Of course." The elevator doors opened on the thirty-fourth floor. Leah returned to her cubicle, opened a blank spreadsheet, and waited until her hands were steady enough to type. Only then did she pull the Moleskine from her bag and hide it under the Thorne Group notebook. April 7. Day fourteen. She wrote the facts first: Martha, Antonio, Richard, the variance question, the careful answer. Then the thing she did not want to write: Richard looked at me as if grief recognized the shape of me before he did. The sentence sat on the page like evidence. At 6:30, she left the building with the rest of the ordinary workers. Park Avenue was bright with cold evening light. She had walked three blocks before her phone buzzed. Ethan: Background check on Rachel Okonkwo is clean. No known Thorne family ties. Six years at Thorne Group, Goldman before that. Strong reviews. One notation: internal ethics complaint in 2021 regarding Veritas Labs acquisition. Reviewed and dismissed by HR. Leah stopped on the sidewalk while pedestrians moved around her. Veritas Labs. The truncated due diligence. The first corporate canary in the same mine that now held NexGen. She typed: She's not a sentinel. Ethan answered: She may be an ally. Not yet. Pressure has to rise first. Leah looked back toward the tower, where the upper floors were already lit for the people who never left when the workday ended. Martha had seen Catherine. Richard had almost seen Isabella. Rachel had complained once and been buried for it. The SEC inquiry response team was forming, and David wanted Catherine on it. When the next calendar invitation arrived that night, Sarah Chen's name appeared at the top, Rachel Okonkwo's beside it, and Catherine Marsh's in the analyst column. April 10. 9:15 AM. SEC Inquiry Response Team. The canary was about to sing. Leah only had to get close enough to hear it.