“I can get you fragments, not full files. If Marina finds out, I’m done.”
Ronald answered, “You said Alexandra lied.”
“She didn’t lie. Not exactly.”
“Then what did she do?”
A pause.
“She built something huge, and nobody knows how huge. But there’s another entity. Older. I saw the name once.”
Victor Hale spoke. “What name?”
Paper rustled.
Madeline whispered it.
“Blue Meridian.”
The laptop fan hummed softly.
My hands went numb.
Not Valestone.
Blue Meridian.
That was impossible.
No one in my current life knew that name.
Not Ronald. Not Priscilla. Not Marina.
Not even my accountant, who handled the structure through layers of initials and old trusts drafted before I turned twenty-five.
Blue Meridian was not a company in the way Ronald understood companies.
It was the first thing I ever built.
Before Miami. Before the marriage. Before the polished life Ronald had mistaken for the whole of me.
