The Billionaire They Buried

Chapter 10: A Target

The walk back to my cell was quiet, my mind still on Isabella. She was the first person who'd looked at the evidence instead of looking at me — everyone else saw a murderer, she saw questions that still needed answers. For the first time since my arrest, I wasn't running on hope alone, and something about that felt almost dangerous, like I had forgotten how easily hope could be taken back.

Daniel looked up from the lower bunk when the door shut behind me. "You're back. How did it go?"

"I have a lawyer."

"The woman?"

"You saw her?"

"Saw someone in a suit come through this morning. Figured she wasn't visiting anybody in here." I couldn't help smiling at that, the first real smile I've gotten in days. "Her name's Isabella Carter." "And?" "I think she believes me." He looked relieved, though not surprised, like he had been expecting me to come back with something to hold onto. "If you're telling the truth," he said, "you need somebody fighting for you on the outside. Somebody who isn't afraid of who your family is." I told him what she said about the timeline — that the poison might not have entered my grandfather's system during dinner at all, that the whole story the prosecution had built might be resting on an assumption nobody had ever actually proven. He raised an eyebrow, considering it. "If she's right, a lot of people are going to have problems."

"I hope so."

The prison speaker crackled before either of us could say more. "All inmates are to remain inside their assigned cells until further notice." The announcement ended as abruptly as it began, no explanation offered, no follow-up. I looked at Daniel. "Is that normal?"

He stood slowly, moving to the bars like he could read something in the corridor that I couldn't. "No."

"What does it mean?"

"Something has happened." The whole block felt different in a way I couldn't quite name — the usual shouting gone quiet, even the neighboring cells unusually still, like the entire building was holding its breath at once. A few guards hurried past without a word, faces tight, eyes forward, moving with a purpose that had nothing to do with routine.

A few minutes later, two officers stopped outside our cell. "Hayes. Step back." I did, and one of them unlocked the door just enough to slide an envelope onto the floor before locking it again and walking off without a single word of explanation, their footsteps already fading down the corridor before I even picked it up.

Daniel frowned. "That's strange. Never seen that before."

I picked it up carefully, like it might be something other than paper. No return address — just one word across the front, in handwriting I didn't recognize. *Ethan*. A chill ran through me as I opened it and unfolded the single sheet inside.

*Stop digging.*

Three words, no signature, nothing else to explain who sent it . My pulse quickened. They weren't just watching me from a distance. They knew exactly what I have been doing — who I have spoken to, what questions I started asking, as if the walls of this place meant nothing to them at all. Daniel held out his hand and I passed him the note without a word. He looked it over slowly, turning it once in his fingers, then shook his head. "No prison stamp. It didn't come through the normal mail system. Somebody brought it in themselves."

"And that means someone on the inside is helping whoever wants me dead."

The room felt smaller all at once, the walls a little closer than they had been a minute ago. They knew about Isabella. They knew I wasn't giving up. Daniel handed the note back. "Don't leave that lying around. If the wrong person finds it, you'll have more problems than you already do."

I folded it carefully and slid it into my pocket. "They're trying to scare me."

"No," he said, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite place. "They're warning you. There's a difference. They're letting you know they can reach you anytime they want, wherever you are, and there's nothing you can do to stop them."

Shouting cut through the corridor before I could respond to that, growing louder , then the unmistakable sound of a fight breaking out somewhere down the block — metal against metal, a scream that cut off too quickly. Daniel pulled back from the bars, motioning for me to do the same. "Stay back."

"What's happening?"

"I don't know." The noise cut off as fast as it had started, an abrupt silence that felt worse than the chaos before it. A few seconds later several guards ran past carrying medical bags, boots pounding against the concrete floor. Someone farther down the block yelled, "Who's hurt?" No one answered. The whole corridor seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for information nobody was willing to give.

After a few minutes, two medical staff pushed a stretcher past our cell toward the infirmary. Someone lay beneath a white sheet, one side soaked dark with blood, an arm hanging loose off the edge. I couldn't tell who it was, and something about that — not knowing, not being able to ask — made the whole thing feel worse than if I had.

"Back away from the door," the officer said, catching me watching, and I stepped back without arguing as the stretcher disappeared around the corner and the sound of footsteps faded with it.

Daniel rubbed a hand over his face, the first time I had seen him look genuinely unsettled. "This place just got a lot more dangerous."

"You think that has something to do with me?"

"I don't know." He looked at the note still sticking out of my pocket. "But the timing isn't something I would ignore. Things like this don't just happen the same night somebody slides a warning under your door."

Neither of us slept much that night. *Stop digging* kept circling through my head, over and over, until the words started to lose their shape. The strange part was, I hadn't even started — not really. I still didn't know who killed my grandfather, why I had been framed so completely, or what was waiting inside Safe Deposit Box 317. Whoever had sent that note seemed to believe I was already closer to the truth than I actually was, and I couldn't decide if that was terrifying or the first real piece of good news I had got all week.

The lights dimmed, most of the block went quiet, and I was just starting to drift when footsteps stopped outside our cell.

Whoever it was didn't knock. Didn't speak. Just stood there, watching, close enough that I could hear the faint shift of weight from one foot to the other. I held my breath. Beside me, Daniel stayed perfectly still, and neither of us made a sound until the footsteps finally moved on, unhurried, like whoever it was had gotten exactly what they came for.

"They're making sure you don't forget," Daniel said into the dark, once the corridor had gone silent again.

"Forget what?"

"That you're a target."

I lay awake long after the footsteps faded, turning it over and over. Whoever had framed me wasn't waiting for the trial and wasn't afraid of the truth coming out in some courtroom months from now.

They were afraid i would live long enough to find it myself — and that fear, more than anything else that had happened since the night my grandfather died, told me I was finally looking in the right direction.