Page 92 of Secret Baby Daddy

32

PIPER

Trust and reconciliation are not the same thing, and I make Calder say it back to me, plainly, before I agree to build anything with him at all.

“This isn’t us,” I tell him, across the same small table where he learned about the baby three days ago, both of us calmer now that the initial shock has settled into something more workable. “Whatever we build to take Roman down, it doesn’t resolve anything between us. Not the relationship. Not how we’re going to co-parent. Not whether I ever fully trust you again. I need that understood before we start, because I won’t have you mistaking strategic cooperation for forgiveness.”

“Understood.”

He says it without argument, which is, in itself, a small sign of how much has shifted since the chapel.

“I’m not asking for anything beyond what you’re offering. I just want him stopped.”

“Then let’s stop him properly. Using both of us, not despite both of us.”

I lay out what I’ve been building since the night I recognized his editing signature in the Blackline leak, and for the first time in this entire case, we build the plan as equals, each contributing the piece the other doesn’t have.

“I control the sequence,” I tell him. “The context, the perception, the exact order in which each piece of information reaches him. If we want Roman to believe something specific, I’m the one who builds the story convincing enough for him to act on it.”

“And I secure the evidence chain. Witnesses, transmission channels, the physical and digital proof that survives whatever legal challenge his people mount afterward.”

Calder studies the framework I’ve sketched, something like genuine respect settling into his expression, the same respect I remember from the footage reconstruction, before everything fractured between us.

“You want to give him something he can’t resist chasing himself.”

“I want to give him something he can’t delegate.”

I tap the core of the plan, the piece I’ve been building toward since I first understood what actually terrifies a man like Roman Vasseur.

“We let it leak, quietly, through a source he trusts, that the original, unedited fire footage still exists, the complete version, including whatever happened in those eleven seconds he’s spent twelve years making sure nobody sees. And alongside it, a recorded statement from Jonah Reed himself, made before he died, naming Roman directly.”

“Jonah never made a recorded statement.”

“Roman doesn’t know that for certain. He only knows Jonah told you something dangerous was happening before he died, and that you’ve spent twelve years assuming that warning died with him.”

I meet his eyes, steady.

“If Roman believes a recording exists that could destroy him personally, not just professionally, not just Northbridge’s position, but him, directly, on the record, naming him as the man who orchestrated a death, he won’t be able to risk delegating its recovery to anyone else. Too much liability. Too much exposure if a hired hand gets caught or turns on him.”

“He’ll come himself.”

“Exactly. We tell him it’s stored in a private Merrick archive. Sealed, physical, off any network his usual methods can quietly compromise. He’ll have to physically access it, physically attempt to destroy it, and every second he spends doing that, we document.”

Calder is quiet for a long moment, testing the plan for weaknesses the way he tests everything.

I wait him out.

“This works,” he says finally. “It works because it isn’t a lie built out of nothing. It’s built out of what he already believes about himself, that Jonah knew something, that the fire footage is more damning than what’s already public. We’re not manufacturing a story. We’re giving him a reason to walk directly into the one he’s terrified already exists.”

“That’s the only kind of story that ever survives contact with a man like him. True enough to be irresistible.”

I close the folder.

“This doesn’t fix us, Calder. I need you to hear that clearly, one more time, before we do this together.”

“I hear you.”

He holds my gaze, something steady and unguarded in his expression that I don’t examine too closely, not yet, not while there’s still a dangerous man to catch.