Luis watches you carefully.
“They used a voice model,” he says. “I heard them brag about it.”
He leans closer. “But the file metadata gives them away. And I recorded the meeting where they tested it.”
He clicks, and you hear Miranda say, “If it fools Ethan’s wife, it’ll fool Wall Street.”
You flinch at the casual cruelty.
You don’t even remember the last time someone spoke your name without wanting something from it.
And now you’re hearing people discuss your destruction like a Tuesday task list.
You stare at Luis. “How long have you been sitting on this?”
Luis exhales slowly.
“Long enough to be sure,” he says.
He looks down at his hands, rough and steady. “They started planning months ago. They thought you were too busy being a legend to notice the knives.”
He meets your eyes. “I kept telling myself someone else would stop it. But no one did.”
Your shame rises first, hot and bitter.
Because you realize how many times you walked past this man without seeing him.
How many times you said “good evening” while your mind stayed on mergers and headlines.
You want to apologize, but you don’t know how to do it without making it about you.
Instead, you ask the only question that matters now.
“What do we do?” you whisper.
