Sophia glanced at Ethan.
"She's seen the news," he said simply.
"I do," Sophia said.
"Do you have a fish?" Lily asked.
"I don't."
"We were going to get one," Lily said, "but then we decided to wait. Do you like puzzles?"
"Lily," Ethan said mildly, "she's a guest."
Lily seemed to find this perfectly reasonable. Sophia almost smiled. Not quite, but almost.
"I used to," she said. "I haven't done one in a long time."
"We have a lighthouse one," Lily said. "It's hard."
"Most things worth finishing are," Sophia said.
Lily seemed to find this acceptable. She tucked herself more firmly against Sophia's side and was asleep again in under two minutes, with the uncomplicated efficiency of a child who has made a decision and executed it. Sophia sat very still. She'd stopped being sure what to do with her hands. Ethan watched her over his mug.
"She does that," he said quietly. "Decides she trusts someone and just does."
"How does she know?"
"I asked her once," he said. "She said, 'Some people feel like wind, and some people feel like walls.'"
Sophia looked down at the small sleeping shape against her. "Which are you?" she asked.
He took a moment. "She says I'm a window."
"What does that mean?"
"I asked her," he said. "She said it means you can see through me, but I don't let the cold in." He lifted a shoulder. "I chose to take it as a compliment."
Sophia was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully, "I need to think through what happened tonight."
"I know."
He stood, moved to carry Lily back to her room. She barely stirred, and came back. Sat down again.
"Tell me from the beginning."
She did. Sophia was precise under pressure. Ethan recognized that it was the quality people developed when panic became a luxury they'd stopped allowing themselves. She laid it out without embellishment.
The call from a board member requesting an emergency off-site meeting, an address in a part of the city she hadn't been to before, a conference room in a building she didn't recognize. The meeting itself conducted mostly without her full understanding of what was being decided. Then, the corridor empty when she came out, the car gone, her phone at 9%, then 6%, then nothing.
"The building," Ethan said, "what was it called?"
"Meridian Partners," she said, "or that's what the sign on the door said."
He pulled up his cracked-screen phone, searched the name. Nothing in the business registry. No address match. A shell name, the kind you could have printed on a placard in 48 hours.
"Who called you?" he asked.
"Marcus Webb. He's my CFO. Has been for four years."
Ethan looked up from the phone. "You trust him."
"I trusted him," she said. The tense shift was quiet, but exact.
He handed the phone to her, showed her the search result, or the absence of one. She looked at it for a long moment. Her expression didn't change, not dramatically, but something in her posture settled into a different position, the way a building shifts when a foundational thing gives way.
"When is your next board meeting?" he asked.
"9:00 a.m.," she said.
"Seven hours. And if you're not there?" She was quiet. "What happens if you simply don't show?" he pressed, not unkindly.
"There's a clause," she said slowly. "Emergency succession. If the CEO is incapacitated or absent from a scheduled board session without prior notice..." She stopped, started again. "The board can initiate a temporary leadership transfer with a simple majority."
"How many votes does Webb have?"
She did the math without speaking it. Her eyes changed. "Enough," she said.