Chapter 114 Taken In
"Then explain the fifteenth of the month," another official said, flat. "Not the total. The pattern. Because a bidder putting a government consultant on a monthly schedule isn’t funding. Forget how it looks. That’s a retainer."
"They’re together." Victor’s jaw worked. "They’re a couple. Gifts between partners are normal."
He heard how thin it sounded before he got to the end of it.
"A couple." Alpha Killian let it sit for a beat. "Strange words, Dr. Victor. Mr. Hale’s been married four years."
The room died.
Forty-eight months of wires. Forty-eight months of marriage.
Nobody at that table needed help lining up two numbers. Half of them stopped hearing an affair right there and started hearing a payroll.
Alpha Sebastian never said the wife’s name. Not once.
Behind the annex glass, Eira picked up her coffee. Cold an hour ago. She drank it anyway.
Serena turned around slowly. "You knew."
"I told you. Nothing leaves this program without my signature." Eira set the cup down and nodded at the screen. "That didn’t come from me."
--
Victor stood so fast his chair barked on the floor. His hands were shaking. For a second it looked like his legs were done.
Messi hadn’t said ten words all day. Contracting officer. He closed his folder and set it down.
"We’re done. Evaluation’s suspended. Hale Group is out pending review, and I’m calling the Inspector General from this room."
"You can’t just—" Alpha Sebastian started.
"Already did." Messi looked up. "Litigation hold, effective now. Nobody deletes anything. Email, texts, calendars, not a sticky note. That’s every company in this room."
He nodded at the security officer by the door.
"And go get Miss Winthrop out of the annex. She doesn’t leave the building."
Nobody argued.
--
The feds showed up inside an hour.
Not city cops. Two cars from the Inspector General’s office and a third nobody could place. They came in through the loading dock so the lobby cameras wouldn’t pick anything up.
A woman in a navy blazer held up a badge at the front of the hall. "Special Agent Reyes, Office of the Inspector General. Nobody leaves this floor without checking out with me."
Alpha Sebastian and Serena got walked out separately, one from each room. No cuffs. Reyes said "voluntary interview" twice, loud enough for everybody to hear, and everybody understood how voluntary it was.
Victor Winthrop went too. He cooperated. He also needed a hand getting to the elevator.
Nobody else said a word.
One morning. Alpha Killian walked up to a podium, read some numbers off a page, and let the government do the rest. No leak, no press, no raised voice. Hale was out.
Finn Carter looked like the floor had dropped. Ten minutes ago Hale was neck and neck with Sterling. Now Hale was a headline.
And he was supposed to be here learning from Alpha Sebastian.
Finn started dialing his father.
--
Three rooms on the fourth floor. Three very different conversations.
Room A.
Serena had her arms crossed and her chin up. No lawyer. She’d asked for her grandfather twice and gotten nothing.
"What’s your relationship with Sebastian Hale?"
"We’re friends."
"Friends." The agent didn’t look up. "Friends who buy each other penthouses. Try again."
"He’s generous. That’s not a crime."
"Three hundred grand on the fifteenth, forty-eight months straight. That’s not generous, that’s payroll." Now he looked up. "Generous is a birthday."
"I didn’t leak anything." Her voice climbed. "I don’t even have access to the core data. Eira Crawford locked me out of the main lab day one. Go ask her. Ask anybody on that floor."
He wrote something down.
"So you took fourteen million from a bidder and gave him nothing back."
Serena opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Room B.
Same opener, different chair.
"What’s your relationship with Serena Winthrop?"
Hale’s counsel was right beside him. "You don’t have to answer."
"Friends. And she didn’t leak anything. I didn’t need her to. My people built that proposal from scratch."
"Generous friend." The agent flipped a page. "She’s in a penthouse downtown. You’re in a three bedroom on Ashford. Interesting priorities."
Alpha Sebastian went still.
"Say that again. Ashford’s still in my name?"
"Should it be in somebody else’s?"
He didn’t answer.
He’d signed that transfer himself. Weeks ago. A title change takes four weeks, six if the county’s dragging.
So she’d walked out with the keys and never filed it.
She hadn’t wanted the house.
"Mr. Hale." The agent tapped the table. "Are you and Miss Winthrop romantically involved?"
His lawyer’s hand came down flat. "Don’t."
Alpha Sebastian looked at the table. The silence answered for him.
"That’s got nothing to do with a leak."
"Answer the question."
He nodded.
"Out loud, please. We’re recording."
"Yes."
The agent wrote it down and took his time doing it. Then he turned the page, and something in his face shifted. Not harder. Almost curious.
"Last question for now, Mr. Hale. What does your wife do for a living?"
The question landed wrong.
Alpha Sebastian turned it over and it still didn’t fit. Who else would Eira be?
Whatever showed on his face, the agent across the table caught it. He didn’t push. He made a note, the second agent made one too, and they left it sitting there like something they’d come back to.
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
"We ask, you answer, Mr. Hale." The agent turned a page. "Every contact you’ve had with Serena Winthrop. Start at the beginning."
"Serena never gave me anything classified."
That part he wasn’t sweating. Every time she tried to slide him lab data he shut it down. Half to keep her clean, half to keep himself clean.
Sterling was the part he never saw coming. The Alpha had built a file on him and dropped it in the middle of a federal bid. No warning shot. Just the hit, timed for the week it would cost the most.
He’d take it to Eira, too. Of course he would.
The research money Alpha Sebastian could still call an investment. The condo, the bracelet, the car in her garage titled in his name? Good luck.
And if a reporter got a shot of him walking out with an agent’s hand on his elbow, he was finished by the morning news.
Alpha Sebastian could bury that much. His PR team was the best money could buy, and they’d killed uglier stories than this one. Two calls, a friendly editor, and by Thursday nobody would remember.
But Finn Carter was the part nobody could bury.
The Carter pack held enough Hale Group stock to come with a board seat, and Finn hadn’t heard about this secondhand. He’d stood in that room and watched it happen. Nothing to deny, nobody to sue.
He wouldn’t even have to play dirty. Let the story run, let the stock bleed, call an emergency board meeting and ask one question: who lost us the contract. Pick up whatever shares came loose while people were scared, then go after Alpha Sebastian’s seat with the room already on his side.
Nobody was taking that hit for him.