Chapter 40
These fragments pieced together made the hairs on the back of Arianna's neck stand up.
Will.
The word jumped into her mind.
Richard's health was deteriorating day by day. He'd had Evelyn come to the estate at a time like this, had some stranger she didn't know sitting in the living room with a manila envelope—
Arianna's grip tightened on her cup.
She went back to the bedroom and closed the door.
She needed to confirm this with Sebastian.
Twenty minutes later, the living room door opened. Sebastian's footsteps came up the stairs, passed through the second-floor hallway without stopping.
He went straight into his room. Door closed.
Arianna came out of her bedroom and walked to Sebastian's door.
She knocked twice.
"Seb?"
No response from inside.
She knocked twice more.
The door opened a crack.
Sebastian stood behind it, suit jacket already off, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. His face was ashen, bloodshot lines webbing his eyes.
"What is it?"
"I heard Eve came by." Arianna's voice was gentle, concerned. "I'm just worried about you... Grandpa's health is so bad, and her coming here to make trouble at a time like this—don't take it too hard."
Sebastian looked at her for three seconds.
"Family business."
Two words. Then his hand returned to the door.
"Get some rest."
The door closed.
Arianna stood in the hallway. Cold air from the AC vent blew over her. Her fingers gripped the cup, condensation from the sides wetting her fingertips.
Family business.
He'd used those two words to shut her out.
Three months ago, this man would call her in the middle of the night asking if she'd taken her medication on time. Two months ago, he'd still sit with her in the living room talking until one in the morning. A month ago, he'd started leaving her messages on read.
And now, the way he looked at her through that crack in the door was cold—like she was a stranger.
Arianna turned and walked back to the bedroom.
She sat on the edge of the bed and set the tea on the nightstand.
Pulled her phone from her pocket.
She scrolled to a number with no contact name and dialed.
The other end picked up on the third ring.
"That matter. Move it up."
Arianna's voice was low but clear.
Silence on the other end for two seconds.
"When?"
"As soon as possible. Five days left in the cooling-off period."
The call ended.
Arianna placed her phone face-down on the pillow beside her and turned off the bedside lamp.
In the darkness, the AC's hum ran at a steady rhythm.
Parker Group Tower, thirty-sixth floor.
Evelyn's email notification chimed.
Sender: Cedric Parker.
Subject line: Pine Hill Phase Two Supplemental Proposal (Submit within 3 days)
The body was only two lines.
[Government approval came through early. Supplemental proposal deadline: Wednesday, 5 PM. Attachments include scanned approval documents and related data.]
Evelyn opened the attachments. The scanned approval had three pages, plus two pages of data tables.
She opened the file. Page one was the construction land planning permit. Page two was the environmental assessment approval. Page three listed investment amounts and construction timeline requirements. Page four was a data table. Page five...
Evelyn's finger stopped on the trackpad. Page five wasn't a data table—it was a photograph. Low resolution, looked like it had been scanned from old film and converted to digital. The image had a slight color shift, overall yellowish tone. The photo showed a young man's back. He stood in front of an arched stone gateway, sunlight illuminating carved letters on the lintel above, each one clearly legible: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
The man wore a dark blue coat with the collar turned up, holding a brown leather briefcase in his right hand. His height looked to be over six feet. Broad shoulders, narrow waist. Black hair. The overall impression suggested exceptional bearing.
The photo captured him walking through that gate—you could tell because the lens had caught the instant his left foot stepped forward, his right heel not yet fully off the ground.
Evelyn noticed a line of text at the bottom of the photo, in the Microsoft font Cedric typically used—
[Suspected target individual, photographed 28 years ago.]
Evelyn enlarged the photo. She could clearly see the outline of the man's back—the angle of his shoulders, the position of his waistline. She frowned and pulled her bag over, digging out that half photograph her mother had cut. The man in that photo was just a partial silhouette now—the outline from shoulder to arm and half a sun-lit coat hem.
Evelyn placed both photos side by side on the desk. The curve of the shoulder line in the half photo and the curve of the shoulder line in that Cambridge gateway silhouette—within the range of visual estimation, they matched perfectly.
Evelyn's finger pressed against the edge of the Cambridge photo, her fingertip creating a shallow indent on the paper's edge. Her phone screen dimmed. Overhead, the emergency lights in the office area hummed at a low frequency.
She stared at that twenty-eight-year-old silhouette for a long time without moving. That man walking into the Cambridge gate was very likely her father.
Evelyn enlarged the Cambridge photo on the screen three times.
First time, looking at the shoulder line. Broad shoulders, the outline of his trapezius muscles creating a natural curve beneath the coat fabric.
Second time, looking at his hand. The way his right hand gripped the briefcase handle, the space between thumb and forefinger open, index and middle fingers pressed together on the grip.
Third time, looking at that strand of hair blown up by the wind. From what she could see in the photo, the man's hair was thick and coarse, black, no curl to it.
Evelyn pushed the half photograph to the position directly below the computer screen. The man in the combined photo now showed only half an outline from shoulder to arm, but the angle of that shoulder line and the way the upper arm muscles moved beneath the fabric—all those features matched the silhouette in the Cambridge photo.
Evelyn used her phone to photograph both images for a comparison set and saved them to an encrypted album.
She opened her conversation with Cedric.
[Photo received. Did preliminary comparison with the photo my mom left. Shoulder line contours match highly. Who's the name Nason gave you?]
Message sent.
She didn't wait for a reply.
She exited the conversation, closed the Cambridge photo screenshot, and reopened the scanned approval documents for Pine Hill Phase Two.
Three days. The supplemental proposal deadline was Wednesday at 5 PM. Today was Sunday night. She had less than seventy-two hours.
The investment amount listed in the government approval was forty percent higher than Phase One, and the timeline had been compressed by two months. That meant the cash flow schedule needed to be completely reworked, the construction bidding proposal redone, even the original brand tenant timeline had to be moved up.
Evelyn opened a work document and created a new file. Her typing speed gradually accelerated from the initial slow minutes. Her fingers hitting the keyboard settled into a steady rhythm.
Eleven o'clock. Framework complete. Three major sections: cash flow schedule revision, construction bidding timeline, Phase Two brand tenant proposal.
Midnight. First draft of the financing section complete, key data entered into the calculation model.
One in the morning. Evelyn's phone suddenly buzzed. Cedric's reply.
[Can't send the name via text right now, but this person has lived abroad for many years. 28 years ago he was getting his master's at Cambridge. Timeline overlaps with when your mother got pregnant. But 15 years ago he vanished from public view—social media accounts deleted, all companies under his name transferred. Current identity and location still under investigation. Will discuss in detail Tuesday when we meet.]