Sleep was a luxury I didn't have that night, or the two nights that followed.
The "White Snakeroot" file was a masterpiece of plausible deniability. For seventy-two hours, I lived and breathed its contents. It was a web of perfectly legal-looking documents: merger agreements, asset transfer forms, consultant fee payments. All of them, in some convoluted way, led back to the "Arachne Trust." But the trust was a ghost—registered offshore, a Russian nesting doll of shell corporations. No signatures. No direct transfers. Just a pattern, a hauntingly familiar scent of rot I couldn't pin to a single source.
It was like chasing smoke. I knew the fire was there, but I had nothing to point to and say, "Here. This is it."
The only personal touch was the grainy photo: a younger, breathtakingly beautiful Diana, her smile a perfect blend of innocence and cunning, standing beside a besotted Michael Crestwood Sr. His hands were wrapped around her waist, his posture screaming possession. It proved she was there. It didn't prove she was the architect of his ruin.
She was a phantom, and I was tired of chasing shadows. To catch a ghost, you have to make it think it's already won. It was time to provoke the viper.
I was deep in thought on the fourth morning, tracing the lines of a corporate structure chart with a furious red pen, when my phone buzzed.
Kaelen.
3:02 PM: I'll be at your office at 7.
I frowned, my mind still half in the labyrinth of the Arachne Trust.
3:02 PM: ?
3:05 PM: There is something you should know.
The ambiguity was a hook in my gut. What was it that I should know? He didn't elaborate, leaving me to stew in a broth of my own anxieties for two hours.
At seven sharp, I stepped out of the Sterling Group's revolving doors. The black Maybach was already there, a predatory shadow at the curb. I slid into the cool, leather-scented interior, and the car pulled away the moment the door closed, seamless and silent.
Kaelen sat beside me, his gaze fixed on the city scrolling past his window. His expression was a mask, but the energy around him was taut, a coiled spring of suppressed aggression. The silence in the car was thick and suffocating, broken only by the faint hum of the engine.
"Where are we going?" I finally asked, the words sounding too loud in the quiet.
"V Hotel." His voice was clipped, devoid of its usual mocking cadence. He didn't look at me, instead picking up his phone, effectively dismissing me.
The V Hotel. A Vancourt property. The crown jewel of their hospitality empire, managed directly by the holding company, run by Kaelen. Dread, cold and sharp, began to coil in my stomach. This wasn't a social call.
Another twenty minutes passed in the heavy silence. When the car finally glided into the hotel's impeccable circular drive, I felt my nerves were stretched to their breaking point.
"Why are we here?" I asked again, my voice barely a whisper, the frustration and fear making it thin.
Kaelen finally set his phone aside and turned to look at me. His beautiful eyes were intense, unreadable. "There is something you should know."
He made no move to get out. We just sat there, in the idling car, for another five agonizing minutes. I was about to demand answers, my patience frayed to nothing, when I saw them.
Two figures emerged from the hotel's grand entrance, laughing.
The world slowed, then stopped.
It was Liam and Chloe.
They were tangled together, a single entity of sun-kissed skin and easy intimacy. Liam's hand wasn't just on her shoulder; it was splayed possessively against the small of her back, his fingers dipping just below the waistband of her linen shorts. Her arm was wrapped around his waist, her hand tucked into his back pocket, pulling him closer with each step.
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, whispering something that made her throw her head back with a laugh that was both silken and exclusive. In response, she playfully nipped at his jaw, her teeth grazing his skin in a gesture that was primal and claiming. He chuckled, and captured her mouth in a quick, deep kiss that was far too passionate for a public entrance. It wasn't a peck; it was a promise of what had just transpired upstairs.
When they broke apart, breathless and grinning, Chloe smoothed the collar of his shirt, her fingers lingering on his neck. He caught her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, his eyes locked on hers with a raw, unguarded hunger that made my stomach clench. She was wearing a delicate gold necklace with a small pendant that caught the sun. I didn't need to see it clearly to know it was his. The way he touched it, running his thumb over it as he looked at her, said everything.
They looked like a couple in a magazine spread for a honeymoon resort—utterly absorbed in each other, their bodies speaking a language of recent and familiar passion. Every touch, every glance, was a private joke and a public claim. He looked younger, the tension he always carried around me completely gone, replaced by a lazy, satiated contentment.
They weren't hiding. They were strolling out of a Vancourt hotel in the middle of the day with the comfortable air of a couple leaving their own home.
I had already knew what was going on between them. But to see it with my own eyes was different.
The pain was immediate and physical, a white-hot blade twisting deep in my chest. I felt the air leave my lungs in a silent, shocked gasp. I had seen the kiss in the car, a furtive, hidden thing. This was a declaration. A flag planted on territory they had claimed as their own.
I couldn't look away. I was trapped, forced to watch the final, brutal dismantling of my own engagement.
Then, Kaelen's voice cut through the static in my head, low and dangerously calm.
"You knew."
It wasn't a question. It was an accusation.
I tore my eyes from the heartbreaking scene outside and met his gaze. The look on his face was one of pure, unadulterated fury. His jaw was clenched, a muscle ticking in his cheek.
"You knew," he repeated, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "You knew about this, and you're still planning to marry him."
The car was suddenly a cage. His anger was a tangible force, pressing in on me from all sides. He wasn't agitated for me; he was furious at me. For my compliance. For my silence.
"Why, Elara?" he bit out, his eyes searching mine, demanding an answer I didn't have. "What possible strategy could this be? To martyr yourself for a man who doesn't even have the decency to be discreet?"
He saw my inaction not as patience, but as weakness. A fatal flaw.
In that moment, under the scorching weight of his judgment and the searing image of Liam and Chloe, the last of my defenses crumbled. The cool, calculating heiress vanished, leaving only a raw, betrayed woman.
A single, traitorous tear escaped, tracing a hot path down my cheek. I didn't bother to wipe it away.
I just looked at Kaelen, my voice a broken whisper.
"Take me away from here."