CHAPTER 3: NOT AN ACCIDENT

The words sat between them like something sharp.

"It wasn't an accident."

Elena heard them. She understood each word individually. But her brain refused to put them together in a way that made sense.

"What do you mean it wasn't an accident?" she asked.

Alexander didn't answer immediately. He stood up from his desk and walked back to the window, his hands clasped behind his back again. Like he needed distance from what he was about to say.

Elena watched him. She noticed things about him that she hadn't clocked last night. The way he moved, deliberate and unhurried, like every step was a decision. The slight tension in his jaw when he was choosing his words carefully. The fact that he kept his mother's watch in his left hand pocket, touching it briefly before he turned to face her.

She didn't know yet that it was his mother's watch.

She just noticed he touched it when things got heavy.

"Your father discovered something," Alexander said finally. "Inside this company. Inside Knight Holdings." He paused. "Something my father didn't want discovered."

Elena's fingers tightened around the strap of her bag.

"What kind of something?"

"Financial records." Alexander turned from the window. "Manipulated accounts. Money that was moved in ways that weren't legal. Your father was working as an external consultant for Knight Holdings at the time. He had access to files he probably shouldn't have had access to."

Elena's mouth had gone dry.

"He found proof," she said slowly. "Of what, exactly?"

"Embezzlement," Alexander said. "Among other things."

The word landed like a stone in still water.

Elena stood up from the chair. She didn't plan to, her legs just decided they were done sitting.

"My father," she said, "found proof that your father was stealing from his own company."

"Yes."

"And then your father had him fired."

Alexander's jaw tightened. "Yes."

"And the loans." Elena's voice was climbing slightly, not shouting, not yet, but climbing. "The three hundred thousand dollars in debt he left behind. The legal fees. The two years I've been drowning. That was all because your father destroyed him for knowing too much."

Alexander said nothing.

Which was, in its own way, an answer.

Elena pressed her hand flat against her stomach, a habit she had when she was trying to hold herself together. Her other hand found the compass necklace at her throat and held it.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. Her voice was quieter now. Controlled. "You could have just sued me for the champagne and moved on. Why am I sitting in this office right now?"

Alexander came back to his desk. He didn't sit down this time. He stood behind it, both hands resting on the surface, looking at her directly.

"Because someone sent you that text last night," he said. "And that means someone is already watching you. Which means you're already involved whether you want to be or not."

Elena stared at him. "Involved in what?"

"My father isn't finished," Alexander said simply. "He's still inside this company. Still on the board. Still moving money. And I've spent three years trying to build enough evidence to remove him." He paused. "Your father's files. Whatever Thomas Brooks found before he was forced out. I need access to them."

Elena's breath caught on her father's name.

Thomas.

He'd said it like he knew him. Like he'd said it before, more than once, in more than one context.

"You knew him," she said. "Not just professionally."

Alexander's expression shifted. Just slightly. "We were close. For a time."

"How close?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"Close enough that six months before he died, he called me." Alexander's voice was still controlled, still measured, but something underneath it had changed. "He said he was worried about what would happen to you and your sister if something happened to him. He asked me to look out for you."

The silence that followed was enormous.

Elena felt it pressing against her from every direction.

"He asked you," she repeated. "My father asked you. The son of the man who destroyed him."

"Yes."

"Why would he do that?"

Alexander picked up the pen from his desk again, turned it once, set it down.

"Because he knew I wasn't my father," he said quietly. "And because he trusted me to make it right."

Elena's eyes were burning. She refused to cry in this office. Refused to cry in front of this man, in this building, in the middle of whatever this was.

"I need to think," she said.

"I know."

She picked up her bag. Walked to the doors. Stopped with her hand on the handle.

"The text last night," she said, without turning around. "Who sent it?"

Alexander's voice came from directly behind her, closer than she expected.

"Someone who knows you just became very useful to very dangerous people, Miss Brooks."

Elena turned around.

He was standing two feet away.

"And are you one of them?" she asked. "The dangerous people?"

Alexander looked at her for a long moment, his grey eyes steady and unreadable.

"Yes," he said simply. "I am."