Kellan stared at the message a long moment, exhaustion warring with a fresh, sharp jolt of suspicion. "Another stranger claiming to know the truth. Reginald, can we verify this before I agree to meet anyone else tonight?"Reginald took the phone, scrolling through the message twice, his expression tightening. "Corbin Ashworth Jr. If this is real, it fits, Adaeze mentioned a Corbin Ashworth by name, someone who died years after your mother. A son surfacing now, with claims of proof, could mean exactly what it says. Or it could mean Meridian is testing how far you'll go before signing their agreement, manufacturing a rival source to see whether you'll chase it instead of complying.""Or it's real, and it's the only chance I get to actually understand what happened to my mother instead of accepting Meridian's convenient half-truth," Kellan said."Both can be true," Vivian said quietly from the back seat. "It could be genuine information, and still be something Meridian anticipated, allow

Kellan was on his feet before he'd fully processed the image, adrenaline surging cold through his exhaustion. "They moved already. Before the deadline even arrived.""A warning shot," Reginald said grimly, already reaching for his phone. "Not destruction. If they wanted to hurt her, truly hurt her, they wouldn't announce it with a note taped to the glass. This is intimidation, timed precisely to remind you what's at stake before you make your decision tonight.""That doesn't make it acceptable," Kellan snapped, already moving toward the door. "I need to see her. Now."They found Sienna standing outside her own darkened shop twenty minutes later, staring at the padlock with an expression caught somewhere between fury and exhaustion, the note still taped exactly where the photograph had shown it, rain beginning to blur its ink at the edges."They didn't even bother hiding who did this," she said as Kellan approached, voice tight with controlled anger. "Two men, this afternoon, calm as a

Kellan read the message twice, the accusation against Adaeze landing with uncomfortable weight, another layer of doubt stacked atop an already impossible decision."They're trying to discredit her before she can testify," Reginald said, reading over his shoulder. "Which either means she's lying to you and they're protecting themselves from a liar, or she's telling the truth and they're scrambling to control the narrative before she can expose them.""How do we tell the difference?" Vivian asked."We don't, not with certainty," Kellan admitted. "Not tonight, not with the time we have left." He looked around the room, at Marcus still pale from his ordeal, at Damian watching him with something that looked, for the first time, like genuine hope rather than calculation, at Vivian's exhausted, determined face. "But I think the answer doesn't actually depend on which version of Adaeze is true.""What do you mean?" Marcus asked."I mean the flash drive either contains real, verifiable documen

Kellan read the article a second time, then a third, each pass making the words settle heavier in his chest instead of easier to absorb. Vivian's hand found his arm, steadying him more than she probably realized."This could be a fabrication," she said quietly. "Meridian's retaliation. A story planted to muddy the narrative right when it's working against them.""Maybe," Kellan said, though something cold and uncertain in his gut told him it wasn't that simple. "But Vivian, I don't actually know enough about my grandfather's early years to rule it out. Everything I know about Sebastian Whitmore came from a handful of letters, a few conversations with people who loved him. I never once asked what his empire cost to build."Reginald's voice came through the phone still in Kellan's hand, careful and grim. "Sir, I've been going through Sebastian's original shipping ledgers while the story broke. I need to be honest with you. There are gaps in the early records, entire years unaccounted fo

Damian sat by the window when Kellan entered, pale and thinner than he'd been even hours earlier, exhaustion and something like resolve settling into his features in equal measure. He gestured toward the chair across from him without preamble."Sit," he said. "This won't take long, but I needed to say it while I still had the nerve."Kellan sat, watching him carefully. "You said there's something you haven't told me yet.""About the marriage certificate," Damian said. "Between your mother and my father. I told you it was real, and it is. What I didn't tell you is that I found something else in my mother's belongings, alongside it, something I've kept hidden because I was afraid of what it would mean once you knew.""What is it?"Damian reached into a small bag beside his chair, hands trembling slightly with the effort, and withdrew a faded photograph, handing it to Kellan without a word.Kellan studied it a long moment. Two infants, swaddled together in a hospital bassinet, a date sta