I didn't open the USB drive that night.

I sat with it on my desk for an hour, turned it over in my fingers, and thought about what it meant that Serena had put it there.

She was careful.

She didn't do things without calculating the outcome.

Handing me that drive was either a genuine gesture or the opening move of something I hadn't seen yet.

I called Ryan.

"She gave it to me," I said.

"The proposals?"

"A USB drive.

Her mother's work.

Three years of it."

A pause.

"Are you going to look at it?"

"I'm going to look at it.

But I want someone else to look at it too.

Someone who knows what good commercial real estate work actually looks like."

"My dad might," Ryan said.

"He's been in property development his whole career.

He'd know within ten minutes if the work was serious."

"Would he do it without telling my father first?"

"I can ask him to."

"Ask him tonight."

Ryan's father — whose name I learned was Graham — agreed to meet me the next afternoon at a coffee shop two blocks from the school.

He was a quiet man with reading glasses and the kind of unhurried attention that meant he was actually listening.

I handed him the drive.

He plugged it into his laptop and read without speaking for forty minutes while I drank a coffee I didn't taste.

Finally he looked up.

"These are good," he said.

"The third proposal especially.

She identified a development corridor your father's company missed entirely.

The numbers are conservative but the location analysis is sharp."

"Why would it have been rejected?"

Graham took his glasses off.

"I don't know that it was rejected on its merits.

Sometimes proposals get lost in the intake process.

A junior associate who doesn't recognize a name, routes it low priority, moves on.

It happens more than it should."

"Is that what you think happened here?"

"I think if Jonathan Carter had read this himself, the conversation would have gone differently." He paused.

"I also think you already know what you want to do with this information."

I did.

That evening I knocked on Dad's study door.

He was on a call.

He held up one finger, finished the call, and set the phone down.

"Emily."

"I need twenty minutes."

He looked at me — at whatever was in my face — and nodded.

I put the USB drive on his desk.

"A woman named Patricia Walsh has been submitting proposals to your company for three years.

They've been routed to junior associates and rejected without reaching you.

I think you should read them yourself."

Dad looked at the drive.

"How did you get this?"

"Her daughter goes to my school."

A beat.

"Her daughter," he said slowly, "is the one who told Madison Blake who you were."

"Yes."

"And you're bringing me her mother's work."

"I'm bringing you good work that didn't get a fair look.

What her daughter did is separate."

Dad was quiet for a moment.

He picked up the drive.

"You said twenty minutes."

"The third proposal.

Start there."

He did.

I sat in the chair across from his desk and watched him read.

He didn't speak.

He scrolled, went back, scrolled again.

At one point he picked up a pen and wrote something on a notepad.

After thirty minutes he set the laptop aside.

"Who reviewed these originally?"

"I don't know."

"I'll find out." He looked at me.

"This doesn't change what her daughter did."

"I know."

"And it doesn't mean Patricia Walsh gets a contract."

"I know that too.

I just want her to get a real meeting."

Dad looked at me for a long moment.

"You went to Ryan's father."

"He has the expertise.

I needed a second opinion before I brought it to you."

"You built a case," Dad said.

"Before you walked in here."

"I learned from someone."

He almost smiled.

Not quite.

"I'll call Patricia Walsh on Monday," he said.

"A real meeting.

No junior associates."

I stood up.

"Thank you, Dad."

"Emily." I stopped at the door.

"What you did today — coming to me with this, the way you did it — that took more courage than refusing the car."

I didn't answer that.

I wasn't sure I had the right words yet.

But I held onto it on the way upstairs.