Chapter 13

Elena read the message four times before she called him.

*Ask Lucien what happened to the last woman who got too close to this.*

Lucien picked up on the second ring.

"I need to see you," she said, before he could speak.

"Elena—"

"Now."

There was a pause on the line, the kind that told her he'd already guessed why.

"Come to the tower."

---

He was standing by the window when she arrived, the way he always was, as though the city gave him something a chair couldn't. He didn't turn when she walked in this time either, but his shoulders were different. Tighter.

"You already know," Elena said.

"I received the same message an hour ago."

She stopped in the middle of the room. "An hour ago. And you didn't call me."

"I was deciding how to say it."

"Say what?"

Lucien finally turned around, and for the first time since she'd met him, Elena saw something in his face that looked less like control and more like a man choosing his words the way other people defused something live.

"Six years ago, I was involved with a woman named Claire Renner. She worked for a research firm that had been quietly investigating the same holding structures you've been digging through this week. Vantage Meridian existed then too, under a different name."

Elena felt something cold settle low in her stomach.

"What happened to her?"

"She disappeared."

The word sat there between them, plain and terrible.

"Disappeared," Elena repeated.

"No body. No note. Her apartment was untouched. Her accounts were never accessed again. The police called it a voluntary disappearance because there was no evidence of anything else, and because the people asking them to close the file were more powerful than the people asking them to keep it open."

"You think she found something."

"I know she found something. She told me two days before it happened. She wouldn't say what."

Elena sat down slowly, the strength going out of her legs in a way that had nothing to do with alcohol this time.

"And you let me keep pulling on this thread anyway."

"I told you not to confront Adrian yet. I told you to be careful."

"You didn't tell me people disappear."

"Would you have stopped?"

The question landed harder than she expected, mostly because she already knew the answer.

"No," she admitted quietly. "I wouldn't have."

"Then telling you sooner would only have frightened you without changing anything."

"That's not your decision to make."

"I know."

"Say it like you mean it."

Lucien crossed the room and stopped in front of her chair, closer than he usually allowed himself to stand. "I mean it. I should have told you the moment the message came through. I didn't, because some part of me was hoping I could find whoever sent it before you had to be afraid of anything."

"I'm not afraid."

"You should be a little afraid, Elena. It would make you more careful."

"Careful didn't save Claire."

Something flinched behind his eyes, quick and gone.

"No," he said. "It didn't."

The silence that followed wasn't the comfortable kind they'd built over the last week. It was heavier, full of a grief Elena hadn't expected to walk into.

"You loved her," she said.

"I cared about her."

"That's not what I asked."

Lucien looked away, toward the window, toward the city that didn't ask him uncomfortable questions the way she did.

"I was young enough to think caring about someone meant I could protect them from what I did for a living. I learned otherwise."

"And you've been alone since."

"I've been careful since."

"Those aren't the same thing."

"They've served the same purpose."

Elena studied him, and for the first time she understood something about the version of Lucien Vale the city talked about in lowered voices. It wasn't only power that made people afraid of him. It was the absolute stillness underneath it, the sense that he had already survived losing something that would have broken most people entirely, and had simply decided never to let anyone close enough to matter again.

Until, apparently, her.

"I'm not going to disappear," she said.

"You don't know that."

"Neither did Claire, probably. That's not a reason to stop."

"It's a very good reason to stop."

"It's a very good reason for you to help me finish this faster," Elena corrected. "The longer this drags out, the more time whoever sent that message has to decide I'm worth the trouble of removing."

Lucien's jaw tightened at the word.

"Don't."

"It's the truth."

"I'm aware. I'd prefer not to hear it out loud."

Something about the rawness in his voice softened her, just slightly. "You're not used to this."

"To what?"

"Someone refusing to be protected."

"No," he admitted. "I'm not."

"Get used to it."

For a moment, the corner of his mouth almost moved, grief and something warmer sitting side by side in the same expression.

"I found something else," he said finally, turning back toward his desk.

Elena straightened. "About Claire?"

"About Marcus." He picked up a folder and handed it to her. "After you left his office yesterday, he made three calls within twenty minutes. Two to numbers we can't trace. One to a private account registered to Vantage Meridian's parent holding."

"So he reported me."

"He reported the conversation. Word for word, based on how quickly the response came."

Elena opened the folder. Inside was a single sheet, a call log with times and durations, nothing else.

"This doesn't tell us who's on the other end."

"No. But it tells us Marcus isn't just protecting himself anymore. He's answering to someone."

"My father's business partner is answering to whoever might have killed a woman six years ago."

"We don't know she's dead."

"You don't believe that."

Lucien didn't answer, which was its own kind of answer.

Elena closed the folder and set it on the desk, her hands steadier than she expected them to be.

"I want to talk to my father."

Lucien's eyes sharpened. "Why?"

"Because Marcus is his business partner, not yours. If Marcus is protecting himself by feeding information to a parent company none of us can trace, my father is either involved or being used exactly the way I was. I need to know which."

"He accused you of theft two days ago."

"I'm aware."

"He might not listen."

"He might not." Elena stood, straightening her coat with hands that had finally stopped shaking. "But if I do nothing, whoever is behind Vantage Meridian gets to keep deciding what happens to my family without either of us in the room. I'm done letting other people make that decision for me."

Lucien watched her for a long moment, something unreadable and quietly proud moving behind his eyes.

"Then I'm coming with you."

"I didn't ask."

"I know."

Elena almost smiled despite everything. "You're not going to let me do this alone, are you."

"No."

"Even though I told you I could."

"You can," Lucien said. "That's not the same as needing to."

She looked at him for a moment longer than the conversation required, then nodded once, sharper than she felt.

"Fine," she said. "But if my father throws something at you, that's on you."

"I've survived worse."

"I don't doubt it."

They left the office together, and neither of them noticed the folder Isabelle had left behind on Lucien's side table two days earlier, its edge just visible beneath a stack of unrelated papers, a name written across the top in her handwriting that neither of them had thought to ask about.

Claire Renner.