I kept working.

Because what else could I do?

Even though I knew it was useless — Phase II without Phase I was like building a house without a foundation. Every financial model, every feasibility projection would eventually circle back to Phase I. And right now, that phase was gone. Missing. Vanished.

Still, I kept at it, staring at my screens, trying to make sense of incomplete data. Because if I stopped, I'd start thinking again. And that was worse.

By the time I finally stepped out of my office, it was close to six. My eyes burned, my back ached, and I felt like I'd been breathing recycled air all day.

When I got back to the room, Val was still asleep. The curtains were half drawn, letting a stripe of warm, golden light cut across her face.

She must've really been exhausted. Figures, she hadn't slept at all the previous night, and that conference had drained her in more ways than one.

I stood there for a long time, just watching her.

The thoughts kept creeping in. What if Moreau Dynamics had something to do with this? With the files? With everything?

Would Val know?

And if she did… would she tell me?

I hated that thought. Hated how easily it came, how natural it felt now to question her. I hated this, the not knowing, the doubt.

Not being able to trust her… not being able to trust my own wife, because of something someone else had done.

Still, I lay next to her. Because even with everything, she was still the one thing in my life that made sense. The one person who made the world stop spinning so damn fast.

And as her steady breathing filled the silence, I let my eyes close too, pretending, just for a moment, that everything was fine.

It wasn't.

But it was enough to get me through the night.

---

Monday hit like a freight train.

I hadn't even made it past the lobby of Gray & Milton when the receptionist looked up from her desk and said, "Mr. Tanaka, Mr. Hale says to meet him in his office."

I blinked. "Right now?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir."

Great. That was never a good sign.

I took the elevator up, the kind of ride that felt longer than it should've, the silence pressing in.

When I stepped into Hale's office, he was already there with Tasha, Noah and Ji-ho sitting across from him.

Hale looked up from the tablet in his hands. "Kai. Sit down. We're waiting for Gabriel."

I nodded, taking the empty chair beside Tasha. She gave me a small, tense smile.

"Morning," Ji-ho murmured, his tone cautious, like we were about to walk into a minefield.

"Morning," I replied.

Noah leaned slightly toward me, whispering, "Feels like a firing squad, doesn't it?"

Without looking at him, I muttered back, "You volunteering first?"

He snorted quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching, before straightening as Hale looked up.

Five minutes later, Gabriel arrived, slightly out of breath, a folder in hand. "Sorry, traffic was hell."

"Close the door," Hale said.

The moment Gabriel sat, Hale leaned back in his chair, expression unreadable. "All right. We've got a problem."

No one spoke.

"The files," Tasha started quietly. "They're gone. All of them. From my system, Hale's, Ji-ho's, Noah's even Gabriel's."

Hale exhaled sharply through his nose. "We can't tell the higher-ups yet. Not until we know what we're dealing with. The Meridian Development Initiative is too big to let this leak out."

My stomach tightened. "How really bad is it?"

Tasha turned her monitor toward me. "Deleted. No traces in the recycle bin, no cloud backups. It's like they never existed."

"That's impossible," Gabriel muttered. "Our network's firewalled six ways from Sunday."

Ji-ho looked at me. "You sent those files first, right? The master copies?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah. I sent them to Tasha last week for review. I moved on to Phase II right after that."

Tasha nodded. "I confirm that. I had them. I opened them. They were there."

"And now they're not," Hale finished, his voice low.

The silence stretched.

Finally, Hale's gaze shifted toward me, steady and sharp. "Kai… does your wife have any access to these?"

The words hit like a gunshot.

I blinked. "What?"

He didn't flinch. "I'm asking if she could've seen or known about them. She's with Moreau Dynamics, after all."

I clenched my jaw, sitting forward. "Are you implying my wife had something to do with this?"

"No one's saying that," Hale said, calm but firm. "But we can't rule anything out."

My pulse spiked. "You think she'd steal my work? From her own husband?"

Tasha raised her hands gently. "Kai, he didn't mean it that way. But maybe you could just… ask her? See if she's heard anything at her end?"

I turned to Tasha slowly, the glare forming before I could stop it. "Ask her? You really think that's what this is?"

] "Kai—"

"No." I cut her off, the word sharp enough to slice through the air. "I get that it looks bad, but don't you dare drag her into this."

Hale's tone hardened. "She might be your wife, Kai, but she's still a Moreau. Or are you forgetting how she shut us down at the conference?"

The room went dead quiet.

Ji-ho's head lifted, eyes flicking between us like he wasn't sure if he should intervene. Gabriel sank back in his chair, jaw tight, exhaling through his nose, the kind of sound that said damn. Noah who's usually unbothered by anything, stopped fiddling with his pen and glanced at me with a silent sorry, man.

But no one said a word.

Even Hale realized what he'd just said. His jaw flexed, and he looked down, muttering, "We'll… continue this later. I'll check in with IT again."

No one moved.

He glanced up once more, his expression somewhere between guilt and frustration. "You can go, Kai."

I didn't reply.

I just stood, my pulse pounding in my ears, and walked out.

By the time I got to my desk, the anger had dulled into something colder, something heavier.

I sank into my chair and stared at my screen, the blank light reflecting back at me.

I didn't even know what hurt more, the fact that they suspected her… or that, deep down, a small, quiet part of me understood why.

---

To be continued...

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