THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 148

Henry was cautiously supportive of the idea when I brought it to him that afternoon, though his careful reservations were, as always, thorough and specific.

"If she is genuinely innocent, her knowledge of that particular world could prove genuinely valuable," he said. "The influencer economy she once operated within has its own networks, its own currency, its own particular willingness to trade access and information that our own investigators, coming from outside that world, would find considerably harder to penetrate."

"And if she's not innocent," I said, forcing myself to consider the possibility fully, "involving her directly gives her an opportunity to obstruct or mislead our investigation from the inside."

"Precisely," Henry said. "Which is why I would suggest a careful structure — she pursues her own inquiries within that world, reports what she finds to us directly, and we independently verify anything significant before acting on it. That way, her involvement remains genuinely useful, without requiring us to extend more trust than we're currently able to fully justify."

I nodded, understanding the careful logic of it, though something in me still felt, sitting there, a particular reluctance to treat Sophia's genuine offer of help as something requiring this much careful, structured suspicion.

"I want to believe her," I admitted. "I think I already do believe her, honestly. But I also know I've been wrong about people before, this past year, when I wanted to believe the best about them."

"I understand exactly that tension," Henry said quietly. "I have been carrying a considerably more painful version of it myself, this past month, regarding Richard." He paused. "I think the structure I've proposed allows you to extend genuine trust, while still maintaining the careful verification this family has learned, at real cost, that it needs. That doesn't mean you don't believe her. It means you're being appropriately careful, the same way Patricia has taught us to be careful about every claim this past year, regardless of how much we want it to be true or false."

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Sophia began her own quiet investigation that same evening, and I found myself, over the following days, receiving a steady stream of updates from her — careful, methodical, the particular thoroughness of someone determined to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the trust this family had extended to her had been genuinely earned.

"I found the account that first started spreading the rumour about me arranging the photographs," she told me, five days into her investigation, her voice carrying a particular controlled urgency over the phone. "It's a burner account, created two weeks ago specifically to seed this narrative across a few key influencer forums I still have access to, given my old reputation in that world."

"Can you trace who's behind it," I asked.

"Not directly," she said. "But I recognise the writing style. I spent years in that world, Ethan. You learn to recognise certain patterns — specific phrases, specific ways certain accounts try to manipulate narrative without leaving obvious fingerprints." She paused. "I think this is the same person who tried to broker access to exclusive photographs of you and Emma, back before any of this trial happened. A fixer, of sorts — someone who doesn't take photographs himself, but connects people who want exclusive access to people willing to provide it, for a price, and takes a cut in between."

"Do you have a name," I asked, feeling my chest tighten with anticipation.

"Not yet," Sophia said. "But I have a username, and a pattern of behaviour I recognise well enough to keep pulling on the thread. Give me a few more days."

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It was nearly a full week later, on a grey, unremarkable Thursday afternoon, when Sophia called again, her voice carrying a particular breathless urgency that told me, before she said anything, that she had found something significant.

"I need you to come to my apartment," she said. "Now, if you can. I don't want to say this over the phone, and I don't want Henry's team monitoring my calls picking this up before I've had the chance to explain it to you properly, in person."

I went, Brandon insisting on accompanying me despite my own reservations, and found Sophia waiting in the small, carefully tidy apartment she had moved into after the last of the Pierce family assets had been formally settled, her laptop open on the coffee table, her expression carrying a particular tight, controlled intensity I had rarely seen from her.

"I found him," she said, without any preamble. "The fixer. His real name is Marcus Whitfield — no relation to our family, just a coincidence of surnames. He's run this kind of exclusive-access brokerage for nearly a decade, mostly for tabloid outlets who want deniability about how their exclusive photographs actually reach them."

"Can you connect him to Doyle," I asked. "Or to whoever actually commissioned the surveillance?"

"That's the part I need to show you," Sophia said, turning her laptop screen toward me. "I managed to get him talking, through a burner account of my own, pretending I was interested in brokering my own comeback story through exactly the kind of access he specialises in. He didn't know it was me, obviously. He thinks he's talking to a genuine new client."

I looked at the screen, at a scrolling conversation thread, Sophia's careful, patient questions drawing out increasingly specific responses from someone clearly comfortable discussing the mechanics of their business with someone they believed to be a potential customer rather than an investigator.

"Read this part," Sophia said, scrolling to a specific exchange, her finger tapping the screen.

*You want something like the Blackwell piece? That was a good one. Client paid triple my usual rate for exclusivity and speed. Wanted it published fast, before some legal thing got resolved. Didn't ask questions about why.*

I felt my chest tighten. "Who was the client. Does he say."

"He wouldn't give me a name directly," Sophia said. "But look at this." She scrolled further. "I asked him, casually, whether the client was connected to the family directly, or an outside party looking to profit off the story. He said this."

*Not family exactly. More like family-adjacent. Someone with money and a grudge, if you know what I mean. Paid through some complicated offshore thing, three separate accounts, real careful about it. I don't ask too many questions when someone's that careful about the money trail. Not my business.*

I read it twice, the particular careful, deliberate structure of the payment — three separate accounts, offshore, real careful about the money trail — landing with an unmistakable, familiar weight.

"That's the same pattern Henry found with Daniel's appeal funding," I said slowly. "The same careful compartmentalisation."

"I thought so too," Sophia said. "I don't have definitive proof it's Margaret Vane specifically. But the pattern is unmistakable, and I don't think it's a coincidence that whoever commissioned this wanted it published, specifically, before some legal thing got resolved — which lines up exactly with the timing of your board meeting, and the stock drop, and everything else that's happened around the litigation."

I sat back, the full shape of it settling into place — not proof, not yet, not the kind of definitive documentary evidence that had finally brought down Doyle's earlier connection to Victoria. But something close, something real, uncovered not through Henry's careful institutional investigation, but through Sophia's own patient, personal risk, undertaken entirely to prove a loyalty this family had genuinely doubted.

"You did this yourself," I said, looking at her properly for the first time since I'd arrived. "You put yourself at real risk, going back into that world, talking to someone like this Whitfield, just to prove you weren't the one who did it."

"I would have done it even if you hadn't suspected me," Sophia said quietly. "Once I understood someone had actually photographed Lily, deliberately, for weeks, I couldn't just sit with that. I needed to help fix it, regardless of what anyone believed about my own involvement."

I looked at her for a long moment, understanding, fully, the particular quiet courage of what she had just done — not simply defending her own innocence, but actively risking her own carefully rebuilt reputation, her own fragile new relationship with the world that had once destroyed and then rebuilt her, in order to genuinely help protect a family that had, only a week earlier, seriously considered whether she might be its enemy.

"Thank you," I said finally, my voice not entirely steady. "I don't think I can properly express how much this means. Not just the information. The fact that you did this at all, after everything."

Sophia's careful composure finally cracked slightly, something raw and vulnerable breaking through.

"I needed you to know," she said quietly. "That whatever I used to be, whoever that anonymous tip was trying to make you believe I still am — that's not who I want to be anymore. I needed to prove that, not just tell you."

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