The lawyer met Eleanor in a private room at Weller and Cross two days after Ghost's visit to the house, and this time he wasn't the only one at the table. A second man sat beside him, silent at first, unremarkable, the kind of face that belonged to whoever Ghost sent when he didn't feel like coming himself."You said you could get me an introduction," Eleanor said. "You got me a house call instead.""He prefers to assess things personally before anything's formalized," the silent man said, the first words he'd offered. "Consider this the formal part. What is it you actually want, Mrs. Lincoln."Eleanor folded her hands on the table, steadying herself. "I want leverage. Real leverage, not another stock maneuver that collapses the moment someone matches my offer. Something Caleb doesn't already have counted against him publicly. Something private."The man considered her a long moment, unhurried. "There's a name that already means a great deal to your former son-in-law, more than he cur

Toby didn't move. Every instinct in him said moving first was how people ended up dead in situations like this."I'm not here to hurt you," the voice said, unhurried, somewhere behind his left shoulder. "I'm here because you touched something that doesn't belong to you yet.""Who are you.""Wrong question." A hand reached past him in the dark and lifted his primary drive clean off the desk, cables trailing. "The right question is whose name you just found attached to a car registration, and whether you understood, even for a second, what finding it might cost you.""I didn't tell anyone.""You were reaching for your phone when the lights went out." A soft, almost amused exhale. "Let's not lie to each other. It wastes both our time."Toby's pulse hammered in his throat. "Please.""I'm not going to kill you tonight." Something settled on the desk in front of him, small, deliberate, a single flash drive. "Everything you found is on there now. Everything on your systems is gone. Consider

By eight the next morning, Caleb had already made eleven calls."I understand the offer looks attractive on paper," he said into the phone, pacing the length of his office while the city woke up beneath him. "But Meridian Holdings doesn't have a name attached to it that anyone can verify past three shell layers. I do. I'm asking you to bet on the person who's stood in front of you and answered your questions directly, not the one hiding behind a filing." A pause. "Good. I appreciate that, Diane. I'll have Marcus send the counter-offer paperwork within the hour."He hung up, exhaled, and dialed the next name on the list without stopping to enjoy the small win.Two floors down, Lora had been at her desk in the anteroom outside caleb office since seven, sorting through the correspondence Caleb hadn't gotten to yet, when Regina Cole's heels announced her a full corridor away."This isn't how I asked for the deck formatted." Regina dropped the printout onto Lora's desk hard enough to scatte

Marcus was waiting in the penthouse living room when Caleb got home, a single folder open on the table in front of him, and he didn't stand when Caleb walked in."Sit down," Marcus said. "This is going to take a minute to explain properly, and I want you to hear all of it before you react to any of it."Caleb sat."The presumption of death petition for your mother," Marcus said, "under standard procedure, requires a minimum waiting period. Years, typically, before a court will formally declare someone dead without a recovered body. It exists specifically to prevent exactly what I think happened here." He slid a photocopied document across the table. "This petition was filed and approved six weeks after the crash. Six weeks, Caleb. Not years. Six weeks.""How is that possible.""Because whoever filed it didn't go through the normal court. He went to a judge he already had a relationship with, a man who owed your father a considerable favor from years before any of this, and that judge a

The woman's name was never offered, and Marcus never asked Toby to use one either, just led him past the steel door into a room lined with monitors and told him to sit."Isabella Devereaux," she said, studying the photograph on her largest screen without looking up. "I assumed she'd been dead for over two decades. I read the file on her once, years ago, for a client who never told me why he needed it. Where did this come from.""That's part of what we need you to tell us," Marcus said."Then let me work."She worked in near silence for the better part of an hour, running the image through pass after pass, and Toby watched over her shoulder, occasionally murmuring something technical she either agreed with or corrected without breaking focus. Marcus paced. Neither of them rushed her.Finally she sat back. "I have an answer. I don't think you're going to like all of it.""Say it anyway," Marcus said."Wait." He pulled out his phone instead, dialing, and when Caleb picked up, Marcus set