The General's Return

Chapter Ten – Shadows in the Files

The Carter family library was a fortress of leather-bound volumes and locked drawers, a place where secrets wore dust like armor. Selene Carter stood alone in it, the tick of the grandfather clock loud against the silence.

She had not planned to be here. She had planned to bury herself in work, to drown out the memory of Fowler’s eyes steady, unflinching, unbroken. Instead, she had found herself drifting here, to the one room in her father’s estate where answers might be buried.

Her hands were steady as she slid open the drawer of her father’s desk. Steady, but her heart hammered. She had never snooped in Charles Carter’s domain before. To do so was to trespass against the iron rule of her family.

But doubt gnawed like acid. Damon’s smirk. Charles’s slip. The word “treason” said too deliberately. The shadow in her father’s eyes when she questioned him.

Something was wrong. She sifted through neatly arranged files ledgers, contracts, corporate memoranda. Nothing unusual. Her father’s e