Chapter 25 — The Unlocked Drawer

POV: SERENA

The penthouse was quieter than I expected. There was no staff moving through the halls, and the only sound was the low hum of the air conditioning and my own heartbeat, so loud I could feel it in my throat.

I gave myself a mental countdown as I moved through the hallway. Thirty minutes, maybe forty if I was careful and lucky in equal measure. Long enough to find what I needed. Not long enough to relax, even slightly.

I knew where his office was. Beatrix had mentioned it once, in passing, months ago, back when she still called me to complain about her new life instead of avoiding my calls.

Down the hall, past the kitchen, second door on the left.

I didn't let myself think too hard about why I still remembered a detail like that. I used to be the sister she called first about everything—boy trouble, work drama, whatever small crisis needed to be talked through before she could actually deal with it.

Now she called Maya, some friend from her old job I'd never even met, or worse, didn't call anyone at all, just handled things quietly with her billionaire husband, as if the rest of us had simply stopped mattering to her life.

The door wasn't even locked.

I stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind me, taking in the room with one quick glance. A desk. Bookshelves. A window overlooking the city that probably costs more per square foot than my entire apartment.

Everything in the room looked expensive in the particular way only old money, or very new money, manages: nothing flashy, just quietly, aggressively correct.

I didn't stop to admire any of it. I went straight to the desk.

The top drawer stuck slightly before it slid open. Mostly files, nothing useful.

The second drawer held office supplies, a spare phone charger, and a stack of business cards held together with a rubber band.

My hands moved faster than my nerves wanted, flipping through file after file of things that meant nothing to me: tax documents, old contracts for hockey players whose names I didn't recognize, nothing worth the risk I was taking.

I'd expected at least one drawer to give me trouble. A man who ran a company that size should have known better than to leave anything worth hiding in a place a determined enough person could simply pull open.

I tried the bottom drawer, and it wasn't locked either.

A man like Nikolai Ashcombe, with everything he owned, couldn't even be bothered to lock a drawer holding the one document that could actually hurt him.

I almost laughed out loud while standing in his office.

All that careful control he'd shown at the dinner table, all that icy composure, and this was the level of security he'd bothered to give the one thing that could actually cost him everything.

Maybe he simply never imagined anyone in his own family would be desperate enough to look for it.

That was, in its own way, the most insulting part of all. He hadn't even considered me a threat worth planning for.

The contract sat right on top, a clean copy in a plain folder, as if he'd recently pulled it out to review it and simply hadn't bothered putting it somewhere more secure afterward.

I flipped it open with hands that were barely steady and started photographing every page one by one, the terms, the signatures, the specific clauses about appearances and duration, and the exact language that made it clear in writing that this marriage had never been anything close to real.

Section three alone would be enough.

Public appearances required. Physical intimacy is not required or expected. A duration clause with an actual end date typed in black and white, like a lease agreement instead of a marriage.

Fifteen pages. It took less than two minutes.

Less time than it takes most people to order coffee, and worth far more than anything I would have paid for at a coffee shop.

I was on the last page, angling my phone to catch the light better, when I heard it.

A door farther down the hall.

Footsteps, brisk and familiar, moving with the efficiency of someone who worked here and knew exactly where they were going.

I froze for exactly one second before my body caught up with my brain.

My mind ran through every possible outcome in that single second: security called, police, some humiliating scene where I got dragged out of a building I had no business being inside at all.

I shoved the folder back into the drawer, not quite as neatly as I'd found it, and pushed it shut with my hip before already moving toward the door.

The footsteps were getting closer, close enough now that I could hear someone humming under their breath, a tune I didn't recognize and didn't have time to place.

I cracked the office door open just enough to peek into the hallway.

Empty for the moment, the humming came from somewhere around the corner near the kitchen.

I recognized the tune now, something upbeat and completely inappropriate for the amount of adrenaline currently surging through my body.

I stepped out, pulled the door shut behind me as quietly as I could, and hurried in the opposite direction, toward the service entrance Beatrix had mentioned once before, back when she still complained about the staff using a different door than the family did.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it behind my eyes, and every step down that hallway sounded twice as loud as it probably was.

I slipped through just as I heard the housekeeper greet someone in a cheerful, ordinary voice, completely unaware she'd missed me by seconds.

The service hallway spat me out into a narrow side street I hadn't even known existed, and I walked fast, head down, until I was three full blocks away before I let myself stop and breathe.

My hands were shaking. Actually shaking, worse than I wanted to admit, adrenaline finally caught up with everything I'd just done.

I hadn't felt anything like this in years, not since I was seventeen and stole lipstick from a drugstore just to feel something other than invisible in my own house.

This felt bigger than that. It felt like it actually mattered.

I leaned against a building and pulled out my phone, checking the photos one more time to make sure they had actually saved and that I hadn't imagined the whole thing in a panic-induced blur.

They were there. All fifteen pages, clear enough to read every word..

I pulled up Julian's number, the one I'd typed into my phone outside Evelyn's building less than a week ago, and hit call before I could talk myself out of it.

He answered on the second ring.

"What."

"I have it," I said, still a little out of breath. "The contract. All of it. Every page."

There was a pause on the other end, long enough that I almost thought the call had dropped.

"You actually did it," he said finally, with something in his voice I hadn't expected to hear. No doubt. Something closer to respect.

"Most people talk about doing things like this," I said. "Most people don't actually walk into a billionaire's home and pull it off."

"I'm not most people."

"Where are you now?"

"Three blocks from the building. I need somewhere to go that isn't my own apartment, in case anyone starts asking questions."

"Come to Evelyn's," he said, then paused. "No. Not Evelyn's. Give me an hour. I'll figure out somewhere better."

"What are we going to do with it?"

"I don't know yet. But whatever it is, it's going to be worth a lot more than either of us has been worth to anyone in a very long time."

I stood on the sidewalk, my phone still pressed to my ear, and watched my hands finally steady as something that had been missing for weeks settled into place.

For the first time since that dinner, since Nikolai's voice threatened to have me thrown out of his own house, I finally had something worth using.

I tucked the phone back into my coat pocket and started walking, with no particular direction in mind, just the need to keep moving while I waited for Julian to call back with somewhere to go.

For the first time in longer than I wanted to admit, I didn't feel like the forgotten sister anymore.

I felt like someone who mattered enough to be called first, for once, instead of last.

Whatever happened next, I intended to make sure everyone involved remembered exactly whose idea this had been.