Chapter 68 Paper Trails
Chapter 68 Paper Trails
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The drive to Reyes’ office was suffocatingly quiet.
Elowen sat rigid in the passenger seat of Lucian’s car, her fingers clenched tightly around her phone as city lights blurred past the window in fractured streaks of gold and white.
Neither of them had spoken since Reyes’ call but either of them needed to because the tension in the car was a living thing.
Beside her, Lucian drove with both hands gripping the wheel hard enough for his knuckles to pale beneath the faint cuts still healing across them.
His jaw was locked while his posture too still and Elowen had come to recognize that kind of stillness in him.
It was never calm.. It was restraint.
The kind that came when his thoughts were moving too fast, when panic and fury and fear collided inside him so violently that the only way to survive it was to become motionless.
He hadn’t looked at her once during the entire drive but somehow, she could feel the storm building beneath his silence.
Her own pulse refused to settle because weirdly enough Reyes had sounded wrong, not just concerned.
It was the kind of tone that suggested whatever he had found was not just another inconsistency.. It was something bigger and something ugly enough to demand immediate action.
The car finally pulled into the narrow lot outside Reyes Investigative Services.
Lucian killed the engine but neither moved for half a second then he exhaled sharply and stepped out and Elowen followed.
The night air was cool against her skin, but it did nothing to ease the heat of anxiety coiling tighter in her chest.
They climbed the stairs in silence.
Reyes was already waiting when they entered.
He stood behind his cluttered desk, sleeves rolled to his elbows, his usually composed face lined with tension.
Stacks of papers were spread across the surface.. Bank statements, printed account ledgers, transfer logs and others she couldn’t quite decipher yet.
The sight alone made Elowen’s stomach tighten and Reyes didn’t waste time although he seemed shocked she came with someone else.
“You came fast.” His voice was clipped and that alone told her how serious this was.
“What happened?” Elowen asked immediately.
Reyes gestured for them to sit but Lucian remained standing and Elowen noticed that.
The rigid line of his shoulders, the way his hands stayed shoved into his pockets, it was as if sitting would make this too real.
Reyes glanced at him briefly but said nothing instead, he turned one of the papers toward Elowen.
“I spent the last forty-eight hours tracing irregular financial activity tied to Apex.”
Her pulse quickened. “And?”
He slid several more pages forward. “What I found wasn’t random.”
Elowen leaned closer just to find rows of figures and transaction dates staring back at her.
“There were multiple quiet transfers made over the last six months.” Reyes tapped the highlighted entries. “Large enough to matter. Small enough not to trigger immediate scrutiny.”
Lucian finally moved and the moment he stepped closer to the desk his gaze locked onto the documents.
Elowen watched his expression sharpen then harden but she said nothing.
“These accounts,” Reyes continued, “connect directly to shell corporations registered under Apex subsidiaries.”
Elowen frowned. “That proves funding manipulation?”
“Partly.” Reyes reached for another file. “But that’s not the disturbing part.”
He placed the document in front of them and the moment Elowen scanned the header.. Her blood ran cold.
LANGFORD HOLDINGS — STRATEGIC ATHLETIC INVESTMENTS
The room seemed to still as slowly, very slowly, Lucian’s face lost color.
He didn’t speak, he didn’t even move but Elowen saw it.
The faint tightening around his mouth, the sudden rigidness in his jaw and the way his breathing changed almost imperceptibly like all the air had become heavier.
Some of the accounts traced back to a Langford subsidiary.. The realization hit hard for him though she was far from shocked.
His ice-blue eyes remained fixed on the page, unreadable in that terrifyingly blank way she had learned to fear.
He looked as if he had been carved from stone but she could feel the tension radiating off him.
“Lucian…” she said softly but he didn’t answer.
Reyes now realized why the boy had looked familiar.. he was Lucian Langford, so he continued carefully.
“These aren’t direct transfers from Jack Langford himself.”
Lucian’s voice finally came but as a scoff. “Of course they aren’t.”
The words landed like glass and Elowen heard through his words, she heard the bitterness and the quiet devastation of what he said because if there was one thing Lucian understood intimately, it was his father’s talent for distance.
Jack Langford never got his hands dirty personally.. He paid others to do it for him.
Reyes nodded grimly. “They’re routed through investment arms and holding accounts.”
Lucian laughed once. “Yup.. That’s exactly how he’d do it.”
Elowen’s chest tightened painfully.. She wanted to touch him, to ground him somehow but something about the brittle stillness in his posture warned her not to.. Not yet.
“What does this prove?” she asked instead.
Reyes exhaled. “It proves what we already know Dean Miller received quiet financial support.”
He pointed to several highlighted entries. “Your scholarship wasn’t revoked because of budget cuts.”
Her throat tightened. “Yup.. It was targeted.”
“Yes.”
The confirmation landed heavily on Lucian.. Someone had deliberately dismantled her stability.
Someone had forced her into desperation and his hands curled tighter in his pockets.
And then suddenly Elowen understood what this was costing him, m his family name sat there on those pages like a stain, proof that the world he had spent years trying to escape was somehow tangled in hers.
And if his father truly had orchestrated this.. then Lucian had unknowingly become the weapon fashioned against her.
The thought made her chest ache but then, out of the blue Lucian finally looked at Reyes.
“What else?”
Reyes hesitated and that hesitation sent dread crawling down Elowen’s spine.
“There’s more.” Reyes said.
Lucian’s expression sharpened. “Show me.”
Reyes slid one final page across the desk. “This is why I called you here tonight instead of waiting until morning.”
Elowen leaned forward and the highlighted date stared back at her then recognition struck.
No.. No.. That couldn’t be..
Across from her, Lucian had gone deathly still because he recognized it too. It was impossible not to that date was burned into both of them.
The night everything had shattered.. The night of the championship incident.. The night Lucian had been removed from public view.
The night he had been sent to rehab.
Silence engulfed the room and Reyes’ voice cut through it.
“This transfer was authorized at 11:43 p.m.”
His finger pressed firmly against the line item. “Less than three hours after Lucian and Kieron were admitted to Saint Matthew’s.”
Elowen’s pulse roared in her ears.
No one spoke and no one moved then Reyes lifted his gaze to meet theirs.
“This payment was processed the exact night Lucian was sent to rehab.”
The words slammed into the room like a physical force and for the first time since they’d arrived.. Lucian visibly broke.
It was small and subtle.. it was just a sharp inhale and a slight falter backward but Elowen saw it.
She saw the exact moment understanding cracked through his control and her heart lurched because the implication was horrifyingly clear.
Whatever had happened that night, whatever had destroyed him, shattered Kieron, and rewritten all their lives.. someone had profited from it.
And someone had been prepared.. Prepared enough to move money the very same night.
As though Lucian’s drama had never been an accident as though it had always been part of the plan.