Novels by Ilelaboye Demilade

The Closest I Have Ever ComeDamian's POVI was already in a moving car before she finished the sentence.Carter answered on the first ring when I called him from the road. I told him about the photograph, the courier, and the four words on the back. He was quiet for three seconds, then he said, "Don't let her touch it again. If Cole handled that photograph personally rather than through a third party, his fingerprint puts him at the scene." I told him I understood and ended the call and stared out at the city moving past and thought about a woman standing alone on a West Village pavement this morning, two minutes of private grief, believing she was unseen.Someone had been there watching, close enough to frame her face in a photograph. That thought sat in my chest the whole drive over, sharp and specific, and it did not move.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>She opened the door before I knocked. She had changed out of her work clothes into something simpler with her hair down. The performance part o

I See YouBella's POVI had learned a long time ago that the most productive thing you could do with fear was to make it work for you and not pretend it wasn't there. Fear had a way of finding the cracks in pretending and seeping through anyway. What worked was acknowledging it quietly and redirecting its energy into something useful. Focus and precision, the next move. That was what I had been doing all evening.The information Victor had handed over this morning had not left me. It had settled beneath my ribs and stayed there, cold and specific. Margaret had built a physical failsafe into the plan before I ever came home. She had used the phrase make it impossible for her to continue three times in a single typed document. I had been holding that knowledge like a stone in my pocket all day, feeling its weight but refusing to let it slow me down.I was going through the financial records Elena had compiled on Margaret's asset movements when my office door opened at half past nine.E

Loose EndsDamian's POVThere is a particular kind of guilt that does not announce itself.It does not arrive with a loud noise or a dramatic moment. It settles quietly, the way dust settles on a surface when a room has been closed for too long. You stop noticing it is there until something makes you look directly at it, and then you cannot look away.That was what sitting across from Bella in her conference room had done to me this morning. Watching her read Victor's document with those steady hands, watching her absorb the news that her stepmother had been planning something physical against her before she even came home, watching her say I know in that quiet firm voice of hers when I told her we would not let it happen. That was what brought the guilt back up clean and sharp, the way it had been in the beginning before I learned to carry it more carefully.Because the truth was that every threat Bella was facing right now had a point of origin. And that point of origin was a foyer

Across the TableBella's POVVictor Kane looked different without an audience. I had always seen him in rooms where he was performing. The gala, the investor lunch, the private restaurant where he had offered me an alliance and I had smiled and taken notes while he believed he was winning. In every one of those settings he had moved with the particular ease of a man who had spent decades being the most powerful person present.He did not look like that this morning. He sat across my conference table at 8:00 a.m. with Carter beside him and Damian two chairs to my left and Elena at my right hand. He was still dressed impeccably, still carrying himself with the posture of a man who had never learned how to shrink. But his eyes were different. There was something in them that I had not seen there before."He was afraid, very good." I said quietly to myself. Fear was information, and a man who was afraid would tell me things a comfortable man never would."You have twenty minutes," I said.

The Devil CallsDamian's POVElena's message came through at 2:17 in the morning.I read it twice, it was a planted paralegal inside Patricia's office. Daniel crews, 26 years. On Margaret's payroll for four months before we even started building the case. She had anticipated us so completely that she had placed someone inside our legal team before we had decided to engage one. The patience of the woman was the most frightening thing about her.I called Carter immediately. He confirmed everything Elena had found and added more. Daniel crews had been careful but not careful enough. The phone records were clean and the payment trail was traceable all the way back to Margaret's offshore structure. We had everything needed to go to Patricia in the morning with the full picture."Don't tell Patricia tonight," I said. "We do this in person. First thing. I want to see her face when she hears it and I want to be watching her reaction before I decide what to say next.""Understood," Carter said

Money TalksElena's POVI have always believed that if you follow the money far enough and carefully enough, it will eventually tell you everything you need to know about a person.Margaret Adeniran was no exception.I started the financial trace the moment I left Patricia's office. Carter had his team working the Cole Enterprises side and I had mine pulling everything connected to the Adeniran estate accounts. Neither of us was sleeping tonight. Patricia had said twelve hours and we all understood that was generous.By midnight I had the first thread. Three Adeniran estate accounts had registered outgoing transfers in the last 72 hours. Not large amounts individually and small enough to fall below automatic flagging thresholds. But when you mapped the pattern and added them together, the total was significant. And every single transfer had landed in the same offshore holding structure we had already connected to Margaret through the earlier shell company records.I sat back and looke