Too Late, Mr. Blackwood

Vivi

I was halfway through rewriting the same paragraph for the fourth time when my phone buzzed across the kitchen table. The vibration sent my pen rolling over a stack of journal articles and into the mug I had abandoned twenty minutes earlier. Coffee splashed against the inside rim, narrowly missing my notes, which was more consideration than my research paper had shown me all morning.

Perfect.

My paper was already late, my professor had used the phrase serious concern in his last email, and now my caffeine had turned against me. I caught the phone before it vibrated onto the floor and looked at the name glowing across the screen.

Claire Morgan.

Adrian’s assistant had called me exactly three times in four years. The first was to confirm the floral arrangements for our wedding reception. The second was when Adrian left his passport at home before a business trip to Singapore. The third was now, and none of those occasions had involved Claire asking how I was.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Blackwood.” Her voice was polished enough to belong in one of those corporate training videos where everyone smiled too much. “Mr. Blackwood would like you to come to the office.”

I glanced at the clock above the stove. It was eleven forty-two, which meant Adrian had been at work for nearly five hours and I had accomplished one badly written paragraph.

“Today?”

There was a small pause. “As soon as possible.”

I straightened in my chair. Adrian had never asked me to come to Blackwood Holdings. In four years of marriage, I had never stepped inside the building, attended one of his meetings, or met him for lunch in his office. I knew the address because it appeared on magazine covers, financial reports, and the occasional envelope delivered to our home, but he had never once said, Come see where I spend most of my life.

Apparently, today was the day.

Lucky me.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Mr. Blackwood will explain when you arrive.”

That was corporate language for yes, but I’m not paid enough to tell you. I looked down at the open book in front of me. Three highlighted paragraphs stared back, none of them more helpful than they had been an hour ago.

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

“Thank you.”

The call ended before I could ask anything else. I kept the phone pressed to my ear for another second, listening to the dead line and trying to decide whether I had missed something at breakfast.

Adrian and I had eaten together that morning, or at least occupied the same room while consuming food. He had answered emails with one hand and drunk coffee with the other. I had mentioned that I might be late coming home because of a meeting with my academic adviser, and he had nodded without looking up.

Nothing about him had seemed unusual. Then again, unusual required a reliable definition of normal, and Adrian Blackwood had never been a man anyone could read easily.

I closed my laptop, gathered my notes into something resembling order, and stood. The penthouse was quiet around me, which was impressive considering it was large enough to produce its own weather system. Adrian called it home, the interior designer had called it timeless, and I privately thought of it as a luxury hotel where I happened to know the Wi-Fi password.

Twenty-five minutes later, I stood in front of the bedroom mirror wearing navy trousers, a cream blouse, and the small pearl earrings my grandmother had given me when I graduated college. I looked professional enough to enter Blackwood Holdings and married enough to its CEO.

My wedding ring caught the light as I reached for my bag. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I twisted it once around my finger before leaving.

Blackwood Holdings occupied forty-two floors of glass and steel in downtown Chicago. The building rose over the street as if it had personally negotiated with gravity and won. I stepped through the revolving doors into a lobby filled with polished marble, quiet footsteps, and people who looked as though they had never spilled coffee on a research paper in their lives.

A security guard glanced up from behind a sleek black desk. “Good afternoon.”

“Hi. I’m here to see Adrian Blackwood.”

He smiled politely. “Do you have an appointment?”

The question should not have bothered me, but it did. “His assistant called me.”

“Your name?”

“Vivienne Blackwood.”

His fingers paused over the keyboard. His gaze flicked toward my wedding ring before returning to my face, and recognition arrived a moment later.

“Oh. Of course. Mrs. Blackwood.”

That of course came several seconds too late to be convincing. He typed something, printed a badge, and slid it across the desk.

VISITOR appeared in bold black letters beneath my name.

Four years of marriage and I had finally made it inside Adrian’s company as a guest. Apparently, marrying the CEO did not come with backstage access.

“Please wear this where it’s visible,” the guard said.

“Wouldn’t want anyone thinking I belong here.”

His smile faltered. I offered one of my own, because making strangers uncomfortable was not on my schedule, and clipped the badge to my blouse.

Claire was waiting near the elevators. She wore a charcoal dress, black heels, and the same composed expression she had in every photograph from company events. Not a strand of her blond hair had escaped its knot, which made me suddenly aware that the humidity had encouraged mine to develop ambitions of its own.

“Mrs. Blackwood.”

“Claire.”

Her gaze dropped to the badge clipped to my blouse. Something shifted across her face before she controlled it, and the possibility that it had been pity sent a thin line of unease down my spine.

“Is Adrian all right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Is someone else hurt?”

“No.”

“Has the building been taken hostage by accountants?”

Her lips parted, but no answer came.

Tough room.

The elevator doors opened, and Claire stepped inside to press the button for the forty-second floor. I joined her, watching the lobby disappear as the doors closed.

The mirrored walls reflected two women who looked as though they were heading to entirely different meetings. Claire appeared prepared for a board vote. I looked like a graduate student who had wandered into the wrong building and was too polite to admit it.

“Can you tell me what this is about?” I asked.

Her attention remained fixed on the changing numbers above the door. “Mr. Blackwood requested that he speak to you directly.”

“Adrian requests a lot of things.”

Her shoulders tightened, which did nothing to reassure me.

“Claire.”

She finally looked at me. Whatever she saw in my expression softened hers.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

The elevator stopped before I could ask what she meant. The doors opened into a private reception area with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the city Adrian rarely seemed to notice. A dark wooden desk sat before a wall displaying the Blackwood Holdings logo, but no receptionist occupied the chair and no phones rang. Even the air felt careful.

Claire walked toward the double doors at the end of the corridor. I followed, listening to the visitor badge tap against my blouse with every step.

She opened the door without knocking.

Adrian stood behind his desk in a black suit, white shirt, and dark tie. His jacket was buttoned, his posture straight, and both hands rested against the polished wood. He looked exactly as he had at breakfast: controlled, immaculate, and impossible to reach.

Two men sat in the chairs facing him. Both wore expensive suits, and a thick black folder rested on the table between them.

My steps slowed. One of the men rose.

“Mrs. Blackwood.”

I looked from him to Adrian. “Why are there lawyers in your office?”

Adrian’s eyes met mine. Nothing moved in his expression, but his thumb pressed once against the edge of the desk.

“Close the door, Claire.”

She obeyed. The click behind me sounded much louder than it should have.

“Sit down, Vivienne.”

He only called me Vivienne when he was angry or when other people were listening. I remained standing.

“I’d rather know what this is first.”

The older lawyer cleared his throat. “Mrs. Blackwood, my name is Martin Scott. This is Daniel Price. We represent Blackwood Holdings.”

“I assumed you weren’t here to discuss my thesis.”

Neither lawyer smiled. Adrian’s gaze remained fixed on me.

“Sit.”

One softly spoken word, and somehow it still felt like an order.

I pulled out the empty chair and sat. Claire lingered near the door with one hand still resting on the handle until Adrian glanced at her.

“You can go.”

Her eyes found mine once more before she left. When the door closed, Martin Scott opened the black folder.

Inside were printed emails, bank records, access logs, and several pages stamped CONFIDENTIAL in red. The unease I had carried upstairs sharpened into something colder.

“What is this?”

Adrian moved from behind his desk and took the chair opposite me. He did not sit beside the lawyers. He positioned himself directly across from me.

“There was a leak,” he said.

I waited, but he offered nothing else.

“At the company?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of leak?”

“Confidential acquisition documents were sent to Halstead Capital three weeks ago.”

I knew the name. Anyone who read the business section knew it. Halstead was one of Blackwood Holdings’ largest competitors.

“That sounds serious.”

“It is.”

The room seemed to contract around us. I looked at the papers again.

“Why am I here?”

Martin slid the first page toward me. It was a copy of an email sent from an address I did not recognize, with a document full of projections and numbers attached beneath it.

“We traced the files to a private account,” he said.

I scanned the page. “Whose?”

“Yours.”

For one absurd second, I expected someone to laugh. When no one did, I looked at Adrian.

“That isn’t my email address.”

“It was created using your personal information,” Daniel Price said. “It was accessed from an IP address connected to your residence.”

“Our residence,” I corrected automatically.

His expression remained unchanged.

I turned back to Adrian. “You think I sent this?”

His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “We know the files were transmitted from the penthouse network.”

“That doesn’t mean I sent them.”

“There are also financial transfers,” Martin said.

He turned another page toward me. A bank statement showed three deposits into an account bearing my name, each amount large enough to make my mouth go dry.

“I’ve never seen this account.”

“It was opened eight months ago,” Martin replied.

“Not by me.”

“It contains your Social Security number, date of birth, and electronic signature.”

“Then someone stole my information.”

Daniel folded his hands. “The signature matches documents you signed previously.”

“Electronic signatures can be copied.”

“Yes, they can.”

Something in his tone made my skin prickle. He was not informing me of a possibility. He was letting me know they had already considered it and dismissed it.

I looked at Adrian. “How long have you known?”

“The internal investigation began six weeks ago.”

Six weeks.

We had eaten breakfast across from each other for six weeks. He had left his suit jacket over the back of our dining chair, returned home late, and found me asleep with textbooks spread across the bed while this investigation continued around me. I had lived beside him without knowing he was deciding whether I had betrayed him.

“You’ve been investigating me for six weeks?”

“We’ve been investigating the leak.”

“Without telling me.”

“We couldn’t compromise the process.”

He said it as though I were part of that process rather than his wife, a risk to be contained instead of the woman who had shared his home for four years.

“I don’t have access to company files.”

“You had access through my home office.”

“I have never entered your office without permission.”

“You know the code.”

“I know the code because you gave it to me after the security system malfunctioned.”

“And you used it.”

“Once, when Claire called because you left your passport before your flight to Singapore.”

I remembered the morning clearly. Adrian had already been halfway to the airport, so I had entered the office, placed the passport in an envelope, and handed it to his driver. That had been two years ago, and apparently returning my husband’s passport had become evidence of corporate espionage.

“What about the files?” I asked. “How would I even know what to take?”

No one answered immediately.

I let out a slow breath. “I’m writing a thesis on twentieth-century literature. My most valuable stolen information is currently a scanned copy of an out-of-print essay about Virginia Woolf.”

Daniel’s mouth shifted, not quite reaching a smile. Martin glanced down at the folder. Adrian did neither.

“What do you want me to say?” I continued. “That I don’t understand any of this? I don’t. That the account isn’t mine? It isn’t. That I have never sent documents to Halstead Capital? I haven’t.”

Adrian’s fingers rested against the arm of his chair, unnaturally still.

“There are security recordings.”

Martin removed several photographs from the folder and placed them before me. They showed a dark-haired woman in a cream coat and sunglasses entering a private banking office. The images were grainy, but the shape of her face resembled mine.

“That isn’t me.”

Vivi

“The coat matches one you own,” Daniel said.

I looked closer. It resembled the cream Max Mara coat hanging in my closet, but half the women in downtown Chicago probably owned one.

“She’s wearing sunglasses.”

“The branch employee identified you.”

“She identified a photograph?”

“She identified you by name.”

“Then she’s mistaken.”

Adrian watched me with the detached focus he usually reserved for negotiations. He was not looking at me like a husband hoping his wife would explain. He was assessing whether the lie in front of him was convincing.

I pushed the photographs away. “Why didn’t you ask me about any of this?”

“We needed to establish the facts.”

“You could have established one of them by speaking to me.”

His gaze hardened. “Would you have admitted it?”

The question landed without a raised voice or dramatic accusation, but it told me everything. He had already decided what I w