Chapter 125
Cedric's arms tightened around her. His lips pressed against the crown of her head—not a kiss, but something clumsy, forceful, a physical attempt to hold her together.
"I'm here."
The words scraped out of his throat, rough and raw.
Evelyn's tears didn't fall. They stayed trapped behind her eyes, burning her vision into a blur.
Her hand lifted, gripping the arm he'd locked across her collarbone. Her nails dug into the fabric of his shirt, deep, like she was trying to pin something down.
Outside the safe house, the world kept turning. Street vendors calling out their wares. Cars rattling over manhole covers. The long, distant wail of a foghorn from the harbor.
Inside this cramped room, a woman stood in a man's arms, silently, fiercely bearing the weight of a truth that was seven years late.
Her mother hadn't died of illness.
Her mother had been murdered.
---
Three days later.
Evelyn hadn't cried again.
She'd opened all the remaining envelopes. Letters twelve through seventeen contained Lily's fragmented records after leaving Ashford Group—headaches, insomnia, memory lapses, brittle nails, bleeding gums.
Evelyn had seen all those symptoms as a child. She'd thought her mother was just overworked.
It was chronic poisoning.
The seventeenth letter included a theory about how the drugs entered Lily's system: a monthly 'community health clinic' that made house calls. Free checkups. Free supplements. The organization was called 'Harmony Health.'
Cedric's tech team spent forty-eight hours digging into Harmony Health. The organization had dissolved three months after Lily's death. The registered owner was a deceased elderly man. The actual controller, after three layers of corporate shells—
Led straight to Felix.
Ashford Group's former CFO. The one person who'd never been caught.
Every thread converged on the same point.
This afternoon at two, Evelyn received a text.
From that same unknown number.
[Ms. Kendall, Paxton wants to see you. Tonight at eight. Second floor of the market behind Emerald City University. He'll come alone. He hopes you will too.]
Evelyn stared at the message, her finger hovering over the screen for a long time.
Paxton. The Ashford family's old associate everyone thought was dead. The man who'd signed the cremation documents. The man who'd collected Lily's relocation compensation.
He was alive.
Evelyn forwarded the text to Cedric.
His call came through in ten seconds.
"You can't go."
"I have to."
Three seconds of silence on the other end. Evelyn could almost see the tight line of Cedric's jaw, his hand curled into a fist.
"Conditions."
"Go ahead."
"Live comms the entire time. Wesley stays within thirty feet. My people cover every exit. If I don't get a confirmation signal every twenty minutes—"
"You come in." Evelyn finished for him.
Cedric said nothing. Only his breathing came through the line—heavy, deliberate, barely containing his unease.
"Cedric."
"Yeah."
"I'll come back out."
Another three-second silence. Then one word.
"Okay."
---
Eight p.m. The market behind Emerald City University was closed. The first-floor stalls had their metal shutters pulled down. Only a corner porridge shop still had its lights on, the owner inside scrubbing bowls, the dull clatter of pots and pans echoing out.
Evelyn climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor. Foam boxes and plastic crates lined both sides. The air reeked of old fish and disinfectant.
The second floor was a row of makeshift storage units, metal doors half-open. The last one had a single dim bulb burning inside, yellow light seeping through the crack.
Evelyn walked toward it.
When she pushed the door open, she saw a small, thin man.
Mid-fifties. Graying hair. Hollow cheeks. Wearing a faded gray jacket, sitting on an overturned plastic crate.
Paxton.
He looked older than she'd imagined. Thinner. Like a tree bent too long by the wind, its branches drooping.
When he saw Evelyn, Paxton stood. His knee cracked.
"Ms. Kendall." His voice was hoarse and low, with the awkward roughness of someone who rarely spoke.
Evelyn stayed in the doorway. Her finger rested on the comm device.
"Paxton?"
"That's me."
Evelyn studied him. She'd never seen this man's face, but his name had surfaced repeatedly over the past three months—on crematorium receipts, relocation office records, in her mother's work logs as the one who'd followed her.
"You're alive."
"Alive." Paxton gave a bitter smile. "I've been hiding for three years."
"Why contact me now?"
Paxton's hands were shoved in his jacket pockets, fingers twitching restlessly. Evelyn could see the fabric moving.
"Because Felix found me."
Evelyn's pulse quickened.
"Last month, he sent people to Emerald City looking for me. Gave me two choices—help him get the evidence you have, or die."
Paxton looked up at her. His eyes were murky and exhausted in the dim light, filled with the kind of desperation only cornered people carry.
"Ms. Kendall, I did a lot of wrong things back then. Ran errands for Mrs. Ashford. Signed documents for Upton. Collected your mother's compensation. I own all of that."
He pulled a USB drive from his pocket. Black. Small. Warm from being clutched in his hand.
"But there's one thing I didn't do."
Evelyn stared at the drive.
"Lily's death—it wasn't just Upton." Paxton's voice dropped to a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. "Upton only procured the drugs. The person giving orders, the one in charge—it wasn't Susan Ashford—"
His Adam's apple bobbed.
"It was Felix."
Evelyn pressed the comm device once, sending the 'safe' confirmation signal.
"Felix was just Ashford Group's CFO back then. Why would he have any motive to kill my mother?"
Paxton shook his head. "He wasn't just the CFO. He was Simon's plant inside Ashford Group."
Evelyn's blood went cold.
"When Lily found that profit-sharing agreement between Simon and Susan at Ashford Group—" Paxton's voice quickened. "Felix was the witness who signed it. He was in the next office when Lily saw it. He knew she'd seen it."
The overhead bulb flickered. The filament unstable, light wavering.
"So Felix gave the order." Evelyn's voice was eerily calm. "He had Upton buy the slow-acting poison. Through that fake community clinic. Little by little—"