Chapter Nine. The Coming

It was someone who had been in my life before Daven. Long before Elena. Someone who had been there at the beginning of everything and had never once made me feel like I should be afraid.

My mother made a sound behind me.

A small broken sound that told me she recognised the name too.

I turned to look at her. Her face had gone completely white.

"Mum, " I said.

She sat down heavily in the chair behind her, her hands in her lap staring at the floor. She looked like a woman who had just been told something she had been afraid of for a long time.

"Mum did you know?" I asked.

She looked up at me and in her eyes I saw something that stopped my breath completely.

Not a shock.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

"I suspected, " she whispered. "A time ago.. I told myself I was wrong. I told myself I was being paranoid. I did not want to believe it could be -"

She stopped.

I looked at my mother sitting in that chair looking smaller than I had ever seen her.. I understood at that moment that whatever was coming next was going to be worse than everything that had come before it.

Because this was not about a forged document or a failed wedding or a business deal.

This went back further than any of that.

The person behind it had been in our lives the whole time.

My phone buzzed.

The unknown number.

"They know you are at Voss Holdings. They are moving faster than we expected. Sofia. It is time. I am coming to you. Do not leave that building."

I showed the message to Ethan without a word.

He read it then looked at me.

"How long have you been getting these?" he asked.

"Since the night of the wedding " I said.

His expression changed. Not anger. Something complicated than anger.

"Why did you not tell me?" he asked.

"They told me not to, " I said.

He stared at me for a moment then picked up his phone and made a call. One word to whoever answered.

"Lockdown."

He put the phone down. Looked at me and my mother.

"Nobody leaves this floor, " he said. "Not until I know who is walking through that door."

We waited.

The office was completely silent. My mothers breathing. The faint sound of the city below. Ethan standing by his desk still and watchful his eyes on the door.

I walked into this building three days ago with nothing. No home. No job. No idea who to trust. I had signed a contract with a stranger. Told myself it was just business.

Now I was standing in the middle of something much bigger than a broken engagement. Something that had been planned long before Daven ever put a ring on my finger.

Whoever had built it was on their way up right now.

The elevator at the end of the corridor hummed.

Tension Began to rise.

I reached out. Gripped the edge of Ethan's desk.

He looked down at my hand up, at my face.

For the first time since I had met him Ethan Voss looked like a man who was not completely certain what was about to happen next.