The reporter glanced toward Joshua, standing just off-camera. "And Joshua Archer? The acquisition itself. How would you describe the negotiation?"
"Respectful," Walker said flatly. "More respectful than most of the calls I get from my own family, frankly. He asked questions. He listened to the answers. That's more than I can say for the woman who's out there right now telling the world I got taken advantage of."
The footage went live within the hour, cut down to a tight 3-minute segment that opened with Walker's handwriting held up to the camera and closed with his flat, irritated dismissal of Venus's story. It spread even faster than her article had. By evening, the online conversation had flipped hard. Comment sections that had been debating whether Joshua was a predator were now filled with fury directed at Venus instead. Headlines shifting from "Raider or Rescuer" to "Holstead CEO's Claims Fall Apart as Seller Speaks Out."
Joshua watched it happen from his office, arms crossed. No real satisfaction on his face. Just quiet confirmation. "She's going to come back harder," he said.
"Probably," Nancy agreed. "People like her don't retreat. They regroup."
Across town, inside Holstead Beauty Group's headquarters, most of the building had already gone dark for the night. But in the finance department, senior controller Donald Olivar sat alone at his desk, the glow of his monitor the only light in the room. Walker Gallon's interview still paused on a browser tab beside a set of vendor account spreadsheets he'd been quietly uneasy about for almost a year.
He'd watched the whole news cycle unfold with a strange sinking feeling in his stomach. Not about Joshua Archer, and not really about Venus, either. About Preston Mason. About the name that kept appearing again and again at the bottom of vendor authorizations tied to accounts that didn't seem to do any real business at all.
Donald glanced toward the hallway, empty and quiet, then pulled the spreadsheets closer and began to dig. The finance floor was silent, except for the hum of the servers in the back room and the soft click of Donald Olivar's keyboard. He'd been staring at these accounts for almost a year. Ever since a routine audit had turned up a handful of vendor payments that didn't sit right with him. Small amounts at first, easy to explain away. A consulting fee here, a logistics contract there. But the amounts had grown steadily over the months, and every single one of them traced back to the same signature at the bottom of the authorization forms: Preston Mason.
Donald pulled up the vendor list again, cross-referencing it against the company's registered business database. Three of the five vendors didn't exist. Not really. No active business licenses, no verifiable addresses, nothing but shell names attached to bank accounts that received wire transfers every quarter. Right around the same time the company's pension fund made its regular disbursements.
His stomach turned as the pattern clicked into place. The vendor payments weren't separate from the pension fund. They were routed through it. Small percentages skimmed off disbursements meant for retired employees, dressed up as consulting fees and logistics costs, funneled into accounts that led nowhere real.
Donald sat back in his chair, his hand pressed against his mouth, running the numbers again in his head just to be sure he wasn't imagining the scale of it. Conservative estimate just from what he could see on this screen alone: this had been going on for at least four years, maybe longer.
He needed proof. Not suspicion, not a hunch he could carry into a room and get laughed out of. He needed documents he could put in front of someone who could actually do something about it. He opened a secure drive and began copying files, payment records, wire transfer confirmations. The original authorization forms with Mason's signature scrawled across the bottom of each one. His hands moved fast, methodical, years of careful habit taking over where nerves threatened to slow him down.
He was halfway through copying the fourth file when he heard footsteps in the hallway. Donald froze. The footsteps grew louder, unhurried, moving toward the finance department from the direction of the executive offices. He glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen. 10:00 at night. Nobody should have been on this floor.
He minimized the file window fast, pulling up a routine budget spreadsheet in its place, his heart hammering against his ribs as the footsteps stopped just outside the department entrance. The door opened. It was Mason's assistant, a young woman named Cassandra, who worked late more nights than not. A stack of folders balanced against her hip. She blinked in surprise at finding someone else on the floor.
"Oh, Donald. Didn't know anyone else was still here."
"Just finishing up some month-end numbers," Donald said, forcing his voice to stay level, casual. The same tone he used every single day of his ordinary, unremarkable career. "You know how it is this time of quarter."
"Tell me about it." Cassandra gave a tired smile and moved past him toward the copy room, disappearing behind another door.
Donald didn't move for a long moment. He just sat there listening to the copier hum to life down the hall, his pulse slowly settling back into something normal. When he was sure she wasn't coming back through, he finished copying the last file, saved everything onto a small encrypted drive, and shut the spreadsheet down completely. He didn't try to access the archive again that night. He couldn't risk it. Not with Cassandra still in the building, not with how close he'd just come to being caught with financial records that had nothing to do with month-end numbers.
He walked out of the building 15 minutes later, drive tucked deep in his jacket pocket, glancing over his shoulder more than once on his way to the parking garage. At home, sitting at his kitchen table with the drive plugged into his personal laptop, he opened a blank email and stared at the cursor for a long time.
To: Joshua Archer, Ridgeline Capital.
He typed three sentences explaining what he'd found, attached nothing yet, cautious even now. Then he read it over, hesitated, and deleted the whole thing. Not tonight. He needed to be sure Joshua was someone who would actually do the right thing with this, not just someone looking to win a fight with Venus Holstead. He closed the laptop, telling himself he'd decide by morning.
The boardroom at Holstead Beauty Group felt colder than usual that morning. The long glass table lined on both sides with faces that had learned to read tension before a single word was spoken. Preston Mason stood at the head of the table, a folder open in front of him, his tie straightened with a little too much precision. He'd called this emergency session himself, using a provision in his role as general counsel that let him summon the board on short notice when material concerns arose about company governance.
"Thank you all for coming on such short notice," Mason began, his voice smooth, practiced. "I want to raise a matter that I believe requires immediate board attention. The acquisition process behind Ridgeline Capital's recent purchase of a controlling stake in this company."
Joshua sat near the far end of the table. Nancy beside him with a folder of her own, already open, already flagged with color-coded tabs. He didn't react to Mason's opening. He simply watched, patient, waiting to see exactly what angle Mason intended to attack from.
"Our review has identified several procedural irregularities," Mason continued, sliding printed pages toward each board member. "Disclosure timing that may not meet regulatory standards, valuation methods that appear inconsistent with the company's own historical benchmarks. Frankly, enough concerns that I believe this board has a duty to formally review whether this acquisition should stand as executed."
A murmur passed around the table. Hannah Varner, seated near the middle, didn't touch the papers in front of her. She simply watched Mason with the flat, unimpressed expression of someone who had sat through this exact kind of theater before.