Chapter 50
Sebastian's eyes went cold.
Not sad. Not angry. The kind of chill that comes after extreme clarity.
Arianna had just told him about a posthumous child using a pregnancy test that only hit the market three months ago.
She was lying.
But why now? Why tonight, the same night Evelyn got the divorce certificate, did she show up with this?
The timing wasn't a coincidence.
She was trying to plug a hole.
Sebastian's fingers dropped to the keyboard. He opened a permissions interface in an internal system.
He pulled up Arianna's whereabouts records for the past three months.
The system was an old one the Ashford family had kept for handling family business. His father had built it years ago to track asset flows. Sebastian now used it for internal risk control.
Arianna lived at the Ashford Estate. Her car's exits and entries through the gate were all logged.
Sebastian started scrolling back from three months ago.
Dense records.
Arianna had gone out almost every three to four days. Departure times mostly clustered in the afternoon to evening. Return times mostly between ten and eleven at night.
He isolated the dates with outing records and counted them.
Three months. Eleven trips.
He listed out each trip's route and duration. A few stops were at malls or restaurants. But four times, the vehicle's location showed a coordinate in the north district, with stays exceeding three hours.
Sebastian copied that coordinate and entered it into a search engine.
The page loaded.
[Moonlight Club. Membership & Reservations Only. Not open to the public.]
The next morning.
Parker Group Tower, thirty-sixth floor. Evelyn's desk.
She finished proofreading the final data set for the Pine Hill Phase Two supplementary proposal, sent it to Luna, then grabbed her mug and headed to the break room for water.
She ran into Cedric in the hallway.
He had a stack of documents in hand, didn't slow down, just tilted his head slightly as he passed. "Yesterday's thing—all done?"
"All done."
"Good." He didn't say more.
His footsteps continued forward.
Evelyn returned to her desk and sat down. Opened her email.
A new message in her inbox. Sender: "Nason." Sent at seven-fifty this morning.
Subject line: About Benjamin. New lead.
Evelyn clicked it open. The body was brief.
[Got a lead on what you asked about last week. Today, 3 PM, Emerald Abbey parking garage, same spot as before. Coming alone.]
Evelyn finished reading, closed the email, opened her phone calendar, and set a reminder for three PM.
Then she opened Cedric's chat and sent him a screenshot of the email.
[Nason set a meeting for 3 PM this afternoon. Says he's got something on Benjamin.]
Cedric's reply came quickly.
[Got it. I've got an investment committee meeting this afternoon. Go on your own, but send me the location first.]
Evelyn sent back "Okay" and set the phone down.
She opened a document to keep working on the Phase Three preliminary report for the Eastside project.
Two lines in, her phone buzzed again.
This time it was Sophie.
[Did you see today's industry news?]
Evelyn frowned, opened the industry news platform, and skimmed the headlines.
Ashford Group. Eastside tourism project. Phase Three planning officially announced.
She scrolled down.
The announcement stated that Ashford Group's Eastside Phase Three would continue to be led by Ashford Group's in-house team, with two top domestic investment firms brought in for joint operations.
The wording was standard. Polished.
But there was one line embedded mid-announcement, like an inconspicuous thorn—
[This company declares that the project has been independently completed in full by our internal core team. All intellectual property rights for work completed at every stage belong to Ashford Group and are unrelated to any former employees.]
Evelyn stopped on that line for three seconds.
She set the phone down. Picked it back up. Screenshotted that passage and saved it to the encrypted folder labeled "Evidence."
Then she opened Sophie's chat and sent a reply.
[Saw it.]
Sophie's response popped up immediately. [He's covering his bases. Doesn't want you using the Eastside project results against him. Eve, what are you going to do now?]
Evelyn's thumb hovered over the text box.
She didn't type right away.
Her gaze landed on the desk. She paused for a few seconds, turning over the logic of Sebastian's move in her mind.
The announcement was drawing a line in advance, cutting off any connection between her and the Eastside project. Then if the client got pressure from Ashford Group, they'd probably stay quiet about reaching out to Parker Group.
It was a preemptive strike.
Evelyn typed a few words to Sophie.
[Not making a move yet. Waiting to see what the client does.]
She set the phone down and reopened the document. Her fingers returned to the keyboard.
But after finishing the first line, her fingers stopped.
She remembered something Cedric had said in the hallway yesterday—
"Some truths, the sooner you know them, the better."
He'd been talking about her father then.
But now that line took on a different meaning in her head.
What Sebastian was doing. What Arianna was doing. What that person watching her and sending anonymous texts was doing—
She needed to know earlier than all of them.
Two-fifty in the afternoon. Emerald Abbey underground parking garage.
Evelyn arrived ten minutes early.
The garage was semi-open. A guard at the entrance. The underground level was quiet, just a few cars parked within the lines. The lighting was cold-toned, falling on the gray concrete floor with a metallic chill.
Three o'clock sharp. A black SUV drove down the ramp and stopped five meters to Evelyn's left.
The door opened. Nason got out.
He wore a charcoal gray jacket today, hair neatly combed, but he looked thinner than when she'd last seen him at the gala. Weariness shadowed his eyes.
He walked toward Evelyn and stopped in front of her, clasping his hands briefly. "Ms. Kendall. Sorry to keep you waiting."
"You didn't." Evelyn got straight to it. "What's the lead?"
Nason took a deep breath and pulled a phone from his jacket's inner pocket. A screenshot was displayed on the screen. He handed the phone over.
Evelyn took it and looked down.
The screenshot showed a private message record. The sender's account name was blurred out. The recipient was one of Nason's old social media accounts.
The message was short.
[Nason, I know Lily's daughter is looking for me. I can't show myself right now, but I want her to know one thing: What happened back then wasn't her mother's fault. And it wasn't mine. Someone wants this buried forever, but I don't plan to let them have their way. Please tell her—wait for my word.]
Sent: Three days ago.
Evelyn zoomed in on the screenshot, read it twice, then handed the phone back to Nason.
"Is the person who sent this Benjamin?"
"I can't confirm it a hundred percent." Nason pocketed the phone. "But the account's registration info—the sender's IP location is in London. That matches the destination he flew to fifteen years ago."
Evelyn nodded once. "He said 'someone wants this buried forever.' Do you know who he means?"
Nason's expression darkened.
"I'd guess it's connected to the Ashford family."
Evelyn didn't nod. Didn't shake her head either.
Her gaze shifted toward the garage entrance. The lighting formed a sharp line between light and shadow there.
"Mr. Hawk," her voice was even, "if Benjamin really does plan to show up, can you let me know the second he contacts you?"