Chapter 13 - The Leak
Gabriel did not deny the report existed.
That was worse for exactly three seconds.
Then he explained what it was.
"After Madison's ex started waiting outside the restaurant, I had security review the block at closing time," he said.
We were back home.
Mara had left us alone because she understood the difference between legal privilege and marriage.
"You never told me."
"You told me not to put men around you."
"So you put them around the street instead?"
"For six nights. No contact. No following you home. No photographs unless there was a threat."
I folded my arms.
"There was a report with my schedule."
His face tightened.
"Yes."
"Which Roland Hale somehow got."
"Yes."
There was no way to soften that.
Someone inside Gabriel's security structure had leaked information about me.
The same organization I had feared would erase my independence had accidentally made me easier to target.
"Who had access?"
"Four people."
"Names."
He gave them to me.
One was his security chief, Isaac Bell.
One was Mara.
One was an analyst named Jordan Pike.
The last was Gabriel himself.
"Mara didn't leak it."
"I agree."
"Isaac?"
"He has been with me twelve years."
"That isn't an answer."
Gabriel looked at me.
"No. It isn't."
We sat with that.
The old version of him would have summoned Isaac, taken his phone, demanded loyalty, and called it truth.
Instead Gabriel called the independent investigator.
"Add my internal security logs to your scope," he said. "No exemptions."
When he hung up, I asked, "Does that feel like cutting off your own hand?"
"More like handing someone else the knife."
"Good."
He almost smiled.
Two days later, the investigator found the leak.
Jordan Pike had exported the restaurant surveillance report to a private drive three months earlier.
He had also searched my name in the security database thirteen times.
Pike disappeared before anyone could question him.
That was becoming a theme I did not enjoy.
Then Senator Vaughn called me personally.
Not Gabriel.
Me.
"Mrs. Kane, my son is prepared to give a full statement."
"Anna."
"Anna."
His voice sounded older than it had at the restaurant.
"Tyler says Preston bragged that his father had someone inside Kane's office. He thought it was nonsense."
"Until now."
"Until now."
I heard him breathe.
"I owe you an apology."
"For your son?"
"For seeing what was happening at that table and deciding it was not my business until it became political."
That answer surprised me.
"You were there before Gabriel arrived."
"Yes."
"You watched."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you stand up?"
Silence.
Then he said, "Cowardice wears very respectable clothes sometimes."
I wrote the sentence down after we hung up.
Not because it absolved him.
Because it named something I had seen all my life.
The people who hurt you are dangerous.
The people who decide not to notice are the room they do it in.
That evening, investigators found Jordan Pike at O'Hare with a one-way ticket to Lisbon.
In his backpack was a hard drive.
On the hard drive was a folder labeled A.K.
My initials.
Inside were photographs of me going to work, leaving the grocery store, visiting my mother, and meeting Gabriel for coffee months before our marriage had ever become public.
This had started long before the Coca-Cola.
---
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