Daniel: Keep the invoices under PR. No one checks PR closely enough.
Lorena: And if finance asks why I approved the dinner in Tulum?
Daniel: Then smile. You always know how to make men relax.
That one hit the room differently.
The first image had scandal in it. Affair. Betrayal. Something ugly but familiar enough that people could still pretend it was private. But the invoices, the shell vendor, the expense manipulation, those dragged the whole thing out of the marital realm and into the cold fluorescent territory of professional rot. Suddenly it was not just about who Daniel slept with.
It was about who he had been stealing from while he was doing it.
You looked across the ballroom at Lorena.
For six months, she had been the polished ghost haunting your marriage. The expensive perfume at the holiday party. The woman who hugged you in December and said, “It’s so nice to finally meet you,” while your husband was already sleeping with her and billing their weekends together to the company. You had imagined a hundred versions of this moment, and in none of them did you expect her to look terrified rather than triumphant.
Then you saw it.
Not fear of exposure exactly.
Recognition.
The images on the screen were not random. They were curated. Ordered. Chosen by someone who knew where to wound Daniel and in what sequence. And the reason Lorena had gone pale was because she recognized at least some of them as things only she, or someone very close to her, should have had.
