Chapter 129
Lena's POV
The words washed over me like cold water.
He killed my grandfather.
I heard myself ask questions—calm, professional questions about evidence and witnesses. But my mind was somewhere else entirely, pulling up fragments of memory I'd buried for years.
Grandfather in his study, showing me financial statements when I was seven. His voice gruff and impatient: "You're smarter than your mother at this age. Don't waste it."
He'd never been warm. Never hugged me or called me pet names. But he'd noticed me in a way my parents never did.
And he'd protected me. Once.
I was five, maybe six. Marcus had grabbed my arm too hard, shouting about something I'd done wrong. Grandfather's voice had cut through the room like ice: "Don't raise your voice in my house."
Marcus had let go immediately.
"Lena?"
Rowan's voice pulled me back. He was watching me with that careful expression, ready to stop if I needed him to.
"I need—" I stood abruptly. "Give me a minute."
I walked out of the study, down the hall to my bedroom closet. In the back, beneath winter coats I never wore, was a storage box I'd brought from my old apartment. Things I couldn't throw away but couldn't look at either.
I pulled out the leather-bound journal on top.
My hands shook as I carried it back to the study.
Rowan stood when I entered. "What is that?"
"His diary." I sat down, opening it to pages I'd read once, ten years ago, and never looked at again. "I found it when we were clearing out his things after he died. I was ten."
The handwriting was precise, controlled. Just like him.
"Vivian has chosen that man over everything I taught her," I read. "She is weak. Sentimental. I failed her as I failed her mother."
I flipped forward.
"The child resembles him too much. His eyes. His sharp features. Looking at her reminds me of my failure to protect Vivian from this marriage. But perhaps I can still mold her into something better."
My throat tightened. I'd forgotten that passage. Or maybe I'd just forced myself to forget.
"He didn't like me," I said quietly. "He saw Marcus in me, and he resented it."
"Lena, it's not your fault."
"Yeah, so he tried." I looked down at the diary, at the careful notes about my education, my progress in mathematics, the trust fund he'd set up that Vivian later seized control of. "He was the only one who tried to teach me to be different."
I found the entry from three weeks before he died.
"She has potential. Intelligence without sentimentality. If I can remove her from their influence, she might yet become worthy of carrying on what my wife and I started. Vivian was lost to me the moment that man entered her life. But perhaps the granddaughter can be saved."
The tears came before I could stop them.
"He wanted me to escape," I whispered. "He was planning something. To get me away from them."
And Marcus had killed him.
I pressed my hand flat against the page, feeling the slight indentation of the pen strokes.
"Marcus didn't just kill him," I said, my voice hardening. "He killed any chance I had of becoming someone else."
I closed the diary carefully, setting it aside. When I looked up at Rowan, I felt something shift inside me—grief crystallizing into something colder, sharper.
"Show me everything," I said. "Every document. Every transaction. Every witness. I want to see it all."
Rowan's expression was unreadable. But he nodded and reached for the folder.
"We'll build this case together," he said quietly.
I pulled the files toward me, my lawyer's mind already cataloging evidence, identifying gaps, planning strategy.
My grandfather had tried to save me.
Now I would finish what he started.
---
I spread the documents across the desk in chronological order. Bank records. Email timestamps. Witness statements. The confession letter.
Twenty years of evidence, meticulously arranged.
"Does Vivian know?" I asked, not looking up.
"No." Rowan's voice was certain. "All the payments came from Marcus's personal accounts. She was grieving when he started taking control of Nexus. He used her vulnerability."
I nodded slowly, still staring at the papers.
My mother had also lost her father. Had also been deceived, manipulated, used.
But what she'd done to me afterward—the years of control, the cold calculations, turning me into a bargaining chip—
Could I blame her for that? Should I?
I thought of Grandfather's diary entries about Vivian. "She is weak. Sentimental. I failed her." The coldness in those words. The resentment he'd never bothered to hide.
Maybe that's why she'd clung so desperately to Marcus. Maybe a lifetime of her father's disappointment had made her vulnerable to the first man who showed her warmth, even if it was fake.
Maybe losing her father—losing the one person with enough power to keep Marcus in check—had broken something in her that never healed.
And maybe all of it—Grandfather's coldness, Vivian's desperation, Marcus's violence—had converged on me.
I was born into this. Vivian had brought Marcus into our family, had given birth to me, had placed me directly in the path of a monster.
Did that make her a victim or an accomplice?
I pressed my fingers against my temples, feeling the beginning of a headache.
"Not now," I muttered to myself. "Deal with Vivian later."
First, I needed to focus on the evidence.