Chapter 11 - THE DINNER THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO SILENCE HER
Gordon met Skylar in Lauronie’s empty dining room before the restaurant opened.
The white tablecloths were immaculate.
Fresh flowers stood beside polished silverware.
Table 7 was exactly where she remembered it.
Gordon looked exhausted.
“I’m sorry.”
Skylar did not sit.
“Tell me everything.”
Six months earlier, Victor Sloane had learned Skylar was working at Lauronie.
He contacted Gordon through a restaurant investor.
At first, he simply asked whether she still worked there.
Then he requested her schedule.
Later, he instructed Gordon to remove her if she caused problems involving Aurelian’s collection.
“Why didn’t you refuse?”
Gordon looked ashamed.
“Because Victor said he could make sure the restaurant lost several major investors.”
“So you chose my job.”
“Yes.”
Skylar stared at the table.
The place where Dominic had tried to humiliate her.
The place where everything had begun.
“Did Victor arrange Dominic’s dinner with Henrik?”
“Not directly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Victor recommended Lauronie for the meeting.”
Skylar slowly understood.
Victor had not predicted that Dominic would attempt to insult her in Akkadian.
That particular stupidity belonged entirely to Dominic.
But Victor knew a confrontation might happen if the collection came up.
He wanted Skylar isolated.
Easily dismissed.
Unemployed.
He did not expect her to translate the phrase perfectly in front of Henrik Vogel.
He did not expect Henrik to listen.
And he certainly did not expect Dominic to turn against him.
Gordon reached into his jacket.
“I kept the messages.”
Skylar looked up.
Texts.
Emails.
Payment confirmations.
Enough to establish Victor’s efforts to monitor and silence her.
“Why show me now?”
Gordon looked toward the kitchen.
“Because Victor asked me to lie to investigators.”
“What did he want you to say?”
“That you approached Dominic intending to extort him.”
Skylar went cold.
“He wanted to claim you threatened to accuse Hayes Technologies unless he paid your father’s medical bills.”
She stared.
Victor was preparing to reverse the entire story.
The waitress who had exposed a suspicious antiquities transaction would become a dishonest employee seeking money from a billionaire.
Skylar sat down slowly.
For the first time, she understood how close Victor had come to controlling the narrative.
Then Gordon handed her his phone.
One final message had arrived that morning.
IF SHE DOES NOT ACCEPT THE SETTLEMENT, RELEASE THE UNIVERSITY FILE.
Skylar frowned.
“What university file?”
Gordon shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
But Skylar did.
Charles Whitmore had retained her dissertation materials when she suspended her studies.
Her unfinished research included preliminary translations and unpublished notes on administrative tablets.
If Victor and Charles altered those files, they could make it appear that Skylar had copied their consultants’ work instead of producing her own research years earlier.
She called Henrik immediately.
By evening, her attorney had contacted the university to preserve the original files and their submission history.
The records confirmed Skylar’s work predated Aurelian’s published translations.
Then the university archivist found something unusual.
Someone had accessed her old dissertation folder only six weeks earlier.
A download had been made.
The access belonged to Charles Whitmore’s faculty account.
And the downloaded files contained something Skylar had completely forgotten.
A transcription she had prepared during her doctoral studies.
One that identified a distinctive group of tablets from the same Iraqi collection.
May you like
Victor was not simply threatening to discredit her.
He was using her unpublished scholarship to identify more artifacts worth millions.
