Chapter 289 Waiting
ELIJAH
The Elders left.
Simone was taken back to the annex. The courtroom emptied with the specific efficient quiet of people who understood that the main players in a situation had reached the limit of what they were prepared to discuss publicly and that pressing further tonight was inadvisable.
Hazel fell into step beside me in the corridor.
“She went to the Elders before she came to you,” I said.
“I know.”
“Someone told her to do that. Someone who knows how the formal succession process works and knew that if she went to the Elders first, it would force the issue into legal territory before I could manage it privately.” I stopped walking. “This is connected to everything else.”
“I think so too.” Hazel kept her voice low. “The fingerprint results from Roy’s contact should come back tomorrow morning. If we get a name from that letter, it might connect to Simone’s arrival. It might tell us who’s been running all of this.”
“Where’s Adriana?”
“Her room. She went straight there after the courtroom.”
I went upstairs.
She was sitting at the small table by the window with a cup of coffee going cold in her hands, still in the clothes she’d worn to court, not reading or working or doing anything in particular — just existing in the room with the quiet of someone who had been dealing with too many things for too long and had finally run out of the energy to manage how that looked.
She didn’t turn around when I came in.
“Has he finally let that woman leave?” she said.
“Yes. Simone and her son are in the annex.”
“Good.” She still hadn’t turned. “And the Elders?”
“Gone. The DNA test is ordered.” I came and sat in the chair across from her. “Adriana.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine. That’s not what I was going to say.” I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I want to tell you everything about Simone. The full account. Not because you’ve asked me to and not because I feel I owe it — but because I don’t want there to be anything between us that you don’t know.”
She looked at me for the first time since I’d come in. Her expression was unreadable in the specific way it became when she was managing something carefully.
“My father had sent me to stay with his brother for a few months when I was seventeen. There was some political tension in the pack and he didn’t want me in the middle of it. Simone was someone who moved in the same circles there. She was—” I paused. “She was interested in me and I was seventeen and I made a poor decision on one specific night. The following morning I went back to my own life and I never saw her again. I never thought about her again. That is the complete truth.”
Adriana didn’t say a word. I kept going.
“I told Hazel about it once, years before I met you. It came up in conversation and lasted about five minutes before something else happened. After that I genuinely did not think about it.” I held her gaze. “I did not know there was a child. If I had known, I would have told you.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“But?”
“No but.” She looked at her coffee cup. “I believe you. The part that’s making me sit here drinking cold coffee is the part where our daughter is still missing and this arrived on top of it and I have to deal with both simultaneously and I’m tired, Elijah. I’m genuinely tired.”
I reached across the table and took the coffee cup from her hands and set it aside.
“Adrian, is there anyone else out there I should know about? Any other situation that’s going to show up at our door?”
“No,” I said immediately. “Nothing. I swear on this throne.”
She looked at me and searched my face with the directness she always used when she needed to know something was true and not just said. Then she nodded slowly.
“You know what bothers me most about this?” she said. “Not Simone. Not even the boy — whoever he turns out to be. What bothers me is the timing.” She looked at me. “Our daughter goes missing. A letter arrives demanding I divorce you. And then Simone shows up with an heir claim within the same three days.” She let that sit. “That’s not coincidence. Someone sent her here.”
“I know,” I said.
She stared at me. “You know?”
“Hazel and I were talking about it before I came up here. Someone who knows how the Elders operate told Simone to go to them before coming to us. Someone who wanted this to land as a legal succession question rather than a personal one that I could manage privately.” I held her gaze. “Whoever is behind the letter and Lana’s kidnapping is also behind Simone’s arrival. They’re trying to break us from multiple directions at the same time.”
Adriana was very still. Something was moving across her face — pieces connecting, the specific expression she got when a shape she’d been reaching for finally came clear.
“Divorce Elijah,” she said quietly. “Leave the kingdom. And now a claim on the throne from a son who would displace Leo.” She looked at me. “They want me gone and they want this family fractured. Everything they’ve done pushes in the same direction.”
“Yes.”
“Which means Lana being taken was never really about leverage. It was about getting me to react — to run, to leave, to be so consumed with fear for her that I stop thinking clearly about what’s actually happening.” She stood up and moved to the window. “Roy’s fingerprint results come tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“When they arrive, I want to be in the room.” She turned back to me. “Whatever the name on that letter turns out to be — I want to know the moment you know.”
“You’ll know first,” I said. “I promise.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then something in her shoulders released slightly — not all the way, not peace exactly, but the particular letting go that happened when someone stopped fighting the situation and started working with it instead.
“Leo,” she said. “Have you spoken to him today?”
“Not since this morning.”
“He needs to hear from you. Not about Simone, just you. He’s been carrying a lot and he needs to know his father is present.” She moved toward the door. “I’ll deal with the twins and Lorain. They’ve been asking questions.”
“What are you telling them?”
“That Lana is at the hospital and will be home soon.” She paused at the door. “Which is going to be true. I’m making it true.” She looked at me over her shoulder. “Get some sleep after you’ve spoken to Leo. We both need to be sharp tomorrow.”
She left, and I sat in the chair at the empty table and looked at the cold coffee she’d left behind and thought about the name that was going to come back on that letter in the morning, and what I was going to do when I knew it.