“If he knew,” I whispered, “then why was my father’s death buried?”
Adrian’s expression changed.
Not into defense.
Into something worse.
Doubt.
Before he could answer, a server approached with a tray of espresso cups. Adrian reached automatically. My head turned and the smell hit me a second before his fingers closed.
I grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He froze.
The server went white.
“What?” Adrian asked quietly.
I leaned over the cup.
Not cyanide this time. Something greener, bitterer beneath the roast.
“Foxglove derivative,” I said. “Or digitalis. Fast enough if concentrated.”
The tray rattled in the server’s hands.
“I didn’t know,” the man stammered. “I swear to God, I just took these from the service station.”
Adrian’s face became a winter landscape.
“Jace.”
It was over in seconds. Security closed in. The server disappeared. The music stumbled, then resumed too brightly. Most of the room sensed trouble but not details, which was exactly how old money preferred its scandals.
Adrian steered me off the dance floor without explanation and into a private library off the main hall. He shut the door behind us with controlled force.
“Twice,” he said.
“What?”
“You stopped me twice.”
I crossed my arms, adrenaline still roaring through me. “You’re welcome.”
He stepped toward me.
“Whoever is doing this has access inside my house.”
“No kidding.”
He looked furious, but not at me.
For one strange suspended moment, the room held only the two of us and the knowledge that somebody had just tried to kill him again within twenty feet of a live orchestra.
“I need the truth, Rowan,” he said. “All of it. No more half-answers.”
I should have lied.
Instead I said, “Three months ago I took the job at the Ledger because Vale bought Helix and I wanted access. I thought if anyone in your world knew what happened to my father, I might hear something. That’s the truth.”
He went very still.
“So this was deliberate.”
“Yes.”
“You came into my orbit on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“If tonight had never happened, you still would have used me.”
Something in his voice made my chest tighten.
“I would have watched,” I corrected. “If I wanted you dead, Adrian, I would have stayed quiet at the bar.”
His gaze held mine for a long and terrible second.
Then the library door opened. Jace stepped in, face grim.
“Boss, the server’s clean. Temporary catering staff, hired through a subcontractor with fake paperwork. But we found this in the estate’s archive room.”
He handed Adrian a thin leather folio.
Adrian opened it.
His eyes changed immediately.
“What?” I demanded.
He did not answer.
He handed me the top page.
It was a scanned copy of a legal trust agreement dated eleven years earlier.
Grantor: Nathan Hale.
Trustee: Everett Sloan.
Beneficiary: Rowan Elizabeth Hale.
Collateral asset: 11.8 percent voting equity in Helix Biolabs, transferred under sealed indemnity agreement pending litigated disclosure involving Vale Holdings and Gideon Vale.
My knees nearly gave out.
“No,” I said. “No. This has to be fake.”
But my father’s signature was there.
I knew the slope of his N. The impatient slash through the t.
More pages followed. Notes. Draft letters. A buried affidavit. References to toxicology reports, suppressed trial data, and a contingency clause that would activate the shares in my name if Nathan Hale died before resolution.
I looked up at Adrian.
He had gone pale in a way I had not thought possible for a man like him.
“My father gave your father equity to keep Helix from going public with the evidence,” he said, voice flat. “Everett was named trustee.”
“And I never saw any of it.”
“No.”
The room tilted.
“Then he stole it,” I whispered. “He stole my father’s leverage. He stole my life.”
Jace’s phone buzzed. He looked down, cursed once under his breath, then raised his head.
“There’s more. Security found an edited clip on the internal server. It shows Rowan at the Ledger opening the bourbon alcove an hour before the summit.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“It’s already been copied to two outside recipients,” Jace said. “Someone is building a case that she planted the poison.”
Adrian swore softly.
“That clip is fake,” I said. “I never touched that bottle before he ordered it.”
Jace nodded. “I believe you. But whoever made it doesn’t need truth, just timing.”
Adrian took the folio from my hands and closed it.
His eyes met mine.
“This was never about one drink,” he said. “It’s about control of Helix. If you’re alive, Everett cannot quietly clear those shares. If I’m dead, he gets emergency authority over tomorrow’s vote.”
The horror of it arrived in a single brutal wave.
My father had not only died for knowing too much.
He had tried to leave me a weapon.
And the man who was supposed to protect it had spent eleven years making sure I never found it.
I wish I could say the kiss happened because romance has perfect timing.
It happened because fear does strange things to the body.
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