The rain didn’t stop for hours. It fell in heavy sheets that blurred the city into a smear of lights and reflections. Finn stood by the window, staring at nothing, the name Eleanor echoing in his head like a distant bell. Audrey’s revelation kept replaying, every word more surreal than the last.He turned slowly to face her. “You’ve met her?”Audrey’s coat was still damp, her hair clinging to her temples. She looked exhausted, but her voice was steady. “Not met, exactly. I… ran into her while checking some of Ruth’s old holdings.”“Start from the beginning,” Finn said, his tone low, almost dangerous. “Everything.”Audrey exhaled, pacing the length of the living room. “After Ruth’s passing, there were discrepancies in her asset declarations. Funds that didn’t match up. At first, I thought it was fraud—until I noticed that one of the accounts was still active. Money was being transferred regularly to a small trust in Marseille, under the name E. Callahan.”Finn froze. “You’re saying Rut

The night was unusually still over Sanbergh. The city lights shimmered below like an ocean of dying stars, and from the balcony of his penthouse, Finn stood with a glass of bourbon in his hand, his reflection fractured against the window. Behind him, the faint hum of the city felt miles away—distant, irrelevant.Everything he had built—every lie, every manipulation, every corpse—had led him here. The richest man in town, the most feared name whispered in business circles… and yet, it all felt paper-thin tonight.The door clicked open softly. Audrey’s heels echoed as she approached, her perfume drifting through the air before she spoke. “You didn’t show up to the meeting, Finn.”He didn’t turn around. “I didn’t feel like playing polite today.”Audrey sighed. “You’re losing focus. Shawn’s lawsuit isn’t going away, and the board’s getting restless. If you keep acting like—”“Like what?” Finn finally turned, eyes sharp as glass. “Like someone who refuses to be outplayed?”She flinched but

The city was still wrapped in dawn’s pale gray when Finn returned to his penthouse. The skyline looked sterile, silent—like the world was holding its breath. Inside, the air felt heavy with tension. Audrey was waiting by the window, barefoot, a cup of coffee trembling in her hands.“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded, voice cracking between worry and anger. “It’s six in the morning, Finn.”He ignored the question and placed a small folder on the counter. His knuckles were still scraped from punching the table at the greenhouse. “Wake up the legal team. I want every document on Ruth Callahan’s estate reviewed—again. Bank transactions, real estate holdings, hospital records, everything from the last twenty-five years.”“Finn—”“Now,” he snapped.Audrey set the cup down, her calm finally breaking. “No. Not until you tell me what’s going on. You disappear in the middle of the night and come back looking like you’ve seen a ghost.”He stared at her, silent for a long moment. Then,

The rain hadn’t stopped. It fell heavier now, a constant percussion against the black asphalt as Finn’s car sliced through the night. Streetlights flickered over the windshield in rhythmic bursts—gold, silver, gold—like the heartbeat of a city that refused to sleep.Audrey drove, silent and tense. She didn’t dare look at him through the rearview mirror. Finn sat in the back seat, one hand pressed to his temple, the other gripping Ruth’s crumpled letter.“Are you sure about this?” Audrey finally asked. “Confronting Shawn like this—it’s not strategy, it’s rage.”“Sometimes rage gets results,” Finn muttered.She shook her head. “Or gets you killed.”He ignored that, eyes fixed on the rain. “He was there, Audrey. The night Ruth died. All this time, I thought she overdosed. But he was with her. He knew.”Audrey’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “What if the video was manipulated? You know he’s capable of that.”“I’ll decide that when I see him.”They arrived at the Penton Ware

The rain had calmed into a slow, cold drizzle by the time Finn’s breath evened again. The silence between him and Clara stretched, taut and heavy, broken only by the faint dripping from the leaking roof above.He couldn’t look away from the photograph. Ruth—glowing, younger, standing between two men. Shawn on her left, smug as always. And on her right—William Hargrove. Finn’s father. The same man who’d vanished when Finn was fifteen, leaving only a rumor and a trail of debts behind.Finn’s voice was quiet, almost disbelieving. “That’s not possible. My father died twenty years ago.”Clara folded her arms, watching him carefully. “No. He disappeared. And Ruth helped him do it.”He looked up sharply. “What are you talking about?”“She covered his tracks,” Clara said, her tone firm, though her eyes were uneasy. “He was facing embezzlement charges—Callahan’s early expansion years. He siphoned millions through dummy companies. Ruth used her influence to bury it, to make it disappear. In exc