Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 945

Chapter 945: Shady Meeting

And because proceedings were coming, the recipient was now required by law to preserve every record in the categories listed below.

Deleting so much as an email after this page touched his hand would be destruction of evidence, a fresh crime with his name already on it.

The categories followed, one per line. Communications with any employee of the Bureau’s compliance division. Payments to third-party consultancies. And, in a line that made the back of his neck go damp, any materials concerning the routing or expedition of administrative orders.

There were no names in it, and there did not need to be. Demands like this were usually shotguns sprayed at everyone within range of a dispute, and this one was a scalpel drawn along the exact shape of what he had done.

They didn’t know who yet, only how, and his wastebaskets were off limits while they closed the distance.

The morning got worse at the speed of dialing.

The consultant’s number played three rising tones and told him it was no longer in service, and the consultancy’s office had surrendered its lease overnight, movers at three in the morning, professional and prepaid.

His own attorney listened for ninety seconds without making a sound.

"Stop," he said. "Stop there. Has anyone else heard this version?"

"You’re my lawyer."

"I’m Skyline’s lawyer, which is not the same instrument, and I’d like us both to be careful about which of us knows what." Paper moved on his end. "I’m going to recommend outside counsel. Someone who can hear things I can’t."

The one guild leader he counted as a friend was in board meetings all week, according to a secretary who had never once made him hold before.

By ten the architecture was clear, because the cutouts he had paid for worked in both directions. He could not reach the clerk, the desk, or anyone else attached to his own conspiracy, and the one man who could have sold him was already gone.

Vespera Ashborn did not sue people. He had sat in a room she never once entered and been strangled by her anyway, and his collar had felt tight ever since.

At 11:40, a number with no history sent him a text.

’Your file has been acquired. Its previous holder is no longer in a position to inconvenience you. If you wish to learn what happens to your file next: 6:40 this evening, the Halloran Center, thirty-first floor, suite 3106.’

Acquired. The word sat in his chest all afternoon while he canceled his meetings. Files that were destroyed set a man free. Files that were acquired came with a leash, and someone was inviting him to come look at his own collar.

He arrived nine minutes early.

...

The thirty-first floor of the Halloran Center listed law firms, wealth managers, and one suite with no name at all.

The man waiting inside introduced himself as Adler, no first name offered, and shook hands like a physician. He was somewhere past fifty, narrow through the shoulders, with the scrubbed pink hands of someone who had not held a tool in thirty years and a wedding ring worn thin at the back.

The office had been leased furnished, and nothing in it admitted to being anyone’s. It was also cold, not the crisp chill of hard-run air handlers but a still, settled cold the room seemed to have brought with it, and Adler sat in it in shirtsleeves without any sign of noticing.

Mercer kept his coat on and blamed the thermostat, which was becoming a habit of his lately.

On the desk lay a folder with his name on the tab, thicker than his own personnel file, and squared against its edge, a bound copy of the inspection report he had paid for and never been allowed to read.

"Mr. Mercer. Providence Capital Partners." Adler poured two glasses of water and indicated the chair across the desk. "You’ve had a difficult day, so let me take the worst of it off the table."

"The consultancy you retained no longer exists. Its records passed to us before dawn, and its principal is enjoying a retirement he negotiated himself. The two federal employees your money touched have resigned, or will shortly, for personal reasons."

He set one glass within reach. "As of this morning there is no trail, not even a cold one."

Relief hit him first, indecently, and suspicion arrived three full seconds behind it, embarrassed to be late.

"What’s the fee?"

"There is no fee for what’s already done. We didn’t clean your trail in order to sell you the cleaning." Adler said it patiently, a man correcting an understandable misreading of a menu.

"The method interested us, and methods degrade when investigations complete, so we bought this one a dead end. You were incidental to it. What remains is what you are to us afterward."

"And my options?"

"Two, both respectable. You walk out owing nothing and knowing nothing, and Providence loses interest in you." Adler let the phrase sit exactly as long as it needed to.

"Or we take a minority position in Skyline, quiet capital on terms you’ll find generous. Your title stays, your tower stays, and from time to time paperwork arrives and you sign it."

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