Several executives moved farther from the evidence container.
Adrian laughed too loudly.
“A preliminary screen isn’t proof.
You have no chain of custody.
The boy could have touched the cup.”
“He never went near it,” William said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I was watching him.”
Adrian’s expression sharpened.
“You met him ten minutes ago.”
“And he saved my life nine minutes ago.”
The answer left Adrian silent.
William turned to the head of security.
“Search every service area he accessed.
Preserve the surveillance footage.
Call the police and our outside counsel.
No one inside this company handles this investigation alone.”
One executive stepped forward.
“William, before we involve outside authorities, perhaps we should understand the corporate implications.”
William looked at him.
“A man attempted to poison me, and a child risked his life to stop him.
Those are the implications.”
No one argued again.
Ethan remained beside the desk, staring at Adrian.
William noticed that the boy’s fear was mixed with something else.
Guilt.
“You followed him here,” William said gently.
“Tell me why.”
Ethan glanced toward the guards.
Adrian spoke first.
“Don’t say another word.”
William gave a small nod to security.
One officer moved Adrian into the adjoining conference room, still visible through the glass but too far away to interrupt.
Only then did Ethan open the front pocket of his backpack.
He removed an old mobile phone with a cracked screen.
“My mother gave me this before she died.
She said there were things on it that Dad could never find.”
“Did he know you had it?”
“Not until last night.”
Ethan explained that after Rebecca’s death, Adrian had taken custody of him.
At first, Adrian rarely mentioned Harrison Group.
Then letters began arriving from lawyers asking about Rebecca’s estate and the descendant trust.
Adrian told Ethan the letters were meaningless.
But he kept them.
He began asking questions about William’s schedule, the tower’s security, and whether Rebecca had left Ethan any passwords.
The night before, Adrian searched Ethan’s room and found the phone.
Ethan woke while his father was listening to one of Rebecca’s recordings.
In it, she described the trust and warned that Adrian had tried to use her credentials to create false vendors inside a Harrison subsidiary.
She had discovered payments moving through shell accounts controlled by him.
She also said William had never seen the complete evidence.
Adrian had intercepted it before she could deliver it.
“When he saw I was awake, he took the phone,” Ethan said.
“But I had already copied the recordings to a memory card.
Mom showed me how.”
William looked at the boy’s backpack.
“You put it in the envelope?”
