Chapter 41
Evelyn read the message twice.
Disappeared fifteen years ago? A pretty thorough vanishing act—social media accounts deleted, companies transferred.
An heir from an elite family voluntarily erasing his public presence... What was he hiding from? Or what was he looking for?
Evelyn darkened her phone screen and pushed it to the right side of her keyboard. She forced her attention back to the construction bidding timeline on her computer. Phase One had been a consortium of three companies. Phase Two's volume was bigger—it needed to be split into at least five separate bid packages.
She opened the Phase One bidding archive to pull up the subcontractor details, cross-checking the bill of quantities line by line.
Two-thirty in the morning. First draft of the construction section done. Evelyn rubbed the back of her neck. Her cervical joints made a muffled crack under the pressure of her fingers.
She got up, went to the break room, poured herself a cup of hot water, and stood by the window drinking it before walking back to her desk.
The Phase Two brand tenant proposal was the section that required the most experience. Four of the brands signed for Phase One had contract clauses that included priority renewal rights for Phase Two. Three new retail spaces needed to be filled with the best-matched candidates from the reserve brand pool.
Evelyn muttered to herself as she pulled up the brand evaluation spreadsheet, comparing the scores of twenty-seven reserve brands one by one against Phase Two space sizes, locations, and target demographics.
Four-ten in the morning. The framework for the brand section was done. The specific evaluation data still needed one more round of cross-verification.
Evelyn leaned back in her chair. Where sweat had soaked through her collar, the fabric showed a faint line of salt residue.
Her alarm was set for six. By her count, she could sleep for an hour and a half.
Evelyn closed her laptop. She folded her arms on the desk, rested her head sideways on her forearm, and closed her eyes.
The last image that flashed through her mind wasn't the calculation model or the numbers on the approval documents—it was that figure standing at the Cambridge gate. Walking through that archway, left foot forward, right foot not yet fully off the ground.
Twenty-eight years ago.
That year, her mother was twenty-three, freshly expelled from the Hawk family, two months pregnant with her.
That man was walking into a university, carrying a brown briefcase.
He didn't know she existed.
Even today, he might still not know.
When the alarm went off, Evelyn's arm had gone numb.
She lifted her head. The edge of the keyboard had left an impression on her right forearm.
Washed her face, changed into a spare blouse. Her reflection looked puffy, the dark circles under her eyes only barely covered after two layers of concealer.
Nine in the morning.
Evelyn was at her desk adding supplemental data to the brand evaluation when her email notification chimed.
Sender: Luna Baker.
Subject: Tomorrow's meeting arrangements.
Body was a single line.
[Tomorrow 10 AM, meeting with the Southern District Management Committee. You're presenting. Send me the materials for review by 3 PM today.]
Evelyn stared at the email for five seconds.
This was the first time Luna had handed her the lead on a core presentation.
Since she'd started, every government-level coordination meeting had been led by Luna herself. Evelyn's role had been data prep and behind-the-scenes proposal support.
Now Luna was passing her the mic.
Evelyn clicked reply.
[Received.]
She closed her email and opened the Pine Hill Phase Two proposal document.
The supplemental proposal and the government meeting presentation materials had to move forward simultaneously. Two tracks, three days. Wednesday at 5 PM was the hard deadline.
As she re-verified the cross-checked brand evaluation data, a small corner of her mind refused to shut down—
That silhouette at Cambridge. The elite family heir who'd vanished for fifteen years. Cedric's "let's discuss in detail Tuesday."
Tomorrow was Tuesday.
She pushed that corner of her mind down and nailed her focus back to the numbers on screen.
Two-fifty in the afternoon.
Presentation materials compiled. Evelyn sent the file to Luna, noting page numbers and revision tracking in the subject line.
Two fifty-six. Luna replied.
[Update the policy citation clause on page seven to the latest version. Everything else looks good.]
Evelyn opened page seven, corrected the clause number, and resent.
She was checking the final formatting when her phone buzzed on the desk. An unknown number she'd never seen before.
Evelyn opened it to find a text message. One sentence.
[Stop looking for your father.]
Evelyn's finger hovered above the screen.
She didn't lock it. She took a screenshot of the message and saved it to her encrypted folder labeled "Evidence."
Then she opened her archived records.
That anonymous text from three months ago cursing her mother. Different sending number, but she pulled up the cell tower location Cedric had provided at the time.
Within three kilometers of Ashford Group headquarters.
She copied today's text number and sent it to Cedric.
[Just received anonymous text. Content: "Stop looking for your father." Number attached. Please check the cell tower.]
Cedric's reply came four minutes later.
[Same tower.]
Evelyn's thumb pressed against the edge of the screen for two seconds.
Same person.
The person who called her mother a mistress and the person warning her not to search for her father—same person.
This person knew she was investigating her father's identity.
This person had been watching her.
Evelyn set the phone back on the desk. Cedric's three-word reply still glowed on the screen. Her gaze moved from the phone to the computer screen. The cursor in the proposal document blinked at the end of page seven.
Evelyn took a deep breath. Her fingers returned to the keyboard.
Outside the window, the sky had darkened by a shade. The fluorescent tubes overhead hummed once, then automatically brightened.
A fine layer of sweat covered the back of Evelyn's neck. She didn't wipe it away.
She typed the final period on the policy clause.
By then, that sweat on the back of her neck still hadn't dried. She'd already sent the anonymous text screenshot into three conversations.
Cedric, Sophie, and a newly created encrypted group chat with just three people.
The moment Evelyn's message went through, Sophie's voice message popped up. Her voice carried the rushed quality of someone bouncing off a couch. "Stop looking for your father? That's loaded."
Evelyn didn't send a voice message back. She typed instead.
[They know I'm investigating my father's identity. I can count on one hand the people who have access to that information.]
Sophie replied instantly. [Cedric, Nason, Zack, Richard, Sebastian... just those few. But if you're counting carefully, aren't you missing one?]
Evelyn's fingers paused. [Who?]
[The person who helped Sebastian's grandmother—the Ashford family matriarch—forge those photos back then. The executor. If that person's still alive, they should know better than anyone who your dad is.]
Evelyn leaned back in her chair, thumb pressing against the edge of the screen.
Sophie was right.
Twenty-seven years ago, Sebastian's grandmother absolutely would not have gotten her hands dirty forging those intimate photos of Lily with a married businessman. She must have needed an executor—
Someone who knew the identity of Lily's real lover. That way they could precisely design fake evidence convincing enough to fool Frederick.