CHAPTER 4 — THE DIVORCE WAS A LIE

Sophie POV

I didn't go straight home.

I told myself I would. I even started the car in that direction.

Then I turned toward Cross Industries instead.

If someone already knows what I know, hiding in my apartment isn't going to save me. I need to see his face. I need to know what I'm afraid of.

The lobby of Cross Industries hadn't changed since the last time I'd walked through it as Adrian's wife. Marble floors. A wall of glass. My heels echoed too loud against the silence.

"Mrs. Cross," the receptionist said, then caught herself. "Ms. Bennett. I'm — I'm so sorry for your loss."

"I need to see Marcus Whitmore," I said. "Is he in?"

Something flickered across her face — surprise, maybe caution. "Let me check."

I waited exactly four minutes before a door opened down the hall.

"Sophie."

The voice was warm. Practiced. The kind of warmth men like him wore like a suit.

Marcus Whitmore stepped into the lobby, silver-haired, tailored, smiling like we were old friends instead of two people who'd once tried to destroy each other's business dealings.

"Marcus," I said, keeping my voice level.

"I was so sorry to hear about the divorce," he said, tilting his head with practiced sympathy. "And now this. Terrible timing, all of it. Terrible."

Terrible timing. Like his death was a scheduling conflict.

"I wanted to see how the company was handling things," I said carefully. "Adrian would have wanted continuity."

"Of course, of course." He gestured for me to walk with him, and against every instinct screaming at me to keep my distance, I did. "The board is meeting next week to discuss leadership transition. It's a complicated time. Lots of moving pieces."

"I imagine so," I said. "Especially with the accounts under review."

His smile didn't move. But something behind his eyes did.

"Which accounts?" he asked, too casually.

"I heard there were some irregularities," I said, watching him closely now. "In a few of the subsidiaries."

"Adrian was always thorough," Whitmore said smoothly, recovering fast. "Sometimes overly cautious. It's a shame that caution didn't extend to helicopter maintenance schedules."

The comment landed like a slap, delivered with a smile.

Did he really just say that to my face?

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, my voice sharpening despite myself.

"Nothing at all," Whitmore said, spreading his hands innocently. "Grief makes us say strange things. I only meant it's a shame such a careful man met such a random end."

Random. He said random like he was testing whether I believed it too.

"I should let you get back to work," I said, forcing my voice steady. "Thank you for your time, Marcus."

"Anytime, Sophie." He smiled again, and this time it didn't reach his eyes at all. "Do be careful driving home. The roads have been unpredictable lately."

I felt the threat under those words long before I understood why.

I walked out of that building with my hands shaking so badly I could barely find my keys.

He knows I'm asking questions. He knows exactly what I know. And he just told me, without saying it outright, that he isn't afraid of me finding out.

I drove straight to Whitfield's office instead of home. He looked up in alarm the moment I walked through the door.

"You went to see him," he said, reading my face instantly. "Didn't you."

"I needed to see for myself," I said, dropping into the chair across from him. "Whitfield — he as good as threatened me. He mentioned the roads. He mentioned helicopter maintenance like it was a joke."

Whitfield's face went pale.

"Sophie," he said — and I noticed he'd dropped the formality entirely — "I need to tell you something, and I need you to sit down while I do it."

"I'm already sitting," I said.

"The divorce," he said. "It wasn't Adrian's idea."

My chest tightened. "What are you talking about?"

"Three weeks before you filed, Adrian came to me," Whitfield said. "He told me that if you ever asked for a divorce, I was to process it immediately. No delays. No contest. No matter what."

"That doesn't make sense," I said. "Why would he agree to something he didn't want?"

"He said one thing," Whitfield said, choosing his words with obvious care. "He said: 'If she's out of the marriage, she's out of the blast radius.'"

I went cold. "Blast radius. What does that mean?"

"I asked him the same question," Whitfield said. "He wouldn't explain. Just told me it was safer for you if the world believed you'd left him."

He wanted the divorce to look like my decision. He built the whole thing to protect me, and I thought it meant he never cared.

"Two months before that," Whitfield continued, "Adrian asked me to update his will. He wanted financial safeguards in place. And he opened an internal investigation into senior leadership."

"Whitmore," I breathed.

"He never said the name to me directly," Whitfield said. "But he hired an outside security firm. Not the company's usual auditors. People who specialize in corporate espionage investigations."

"He thought Whitmore was stealing from him," I said.

"Not just stealing," Whitfield said. "I believe he thought someone was trying to seize control of Cross Industries permanently. Adrian held sixty-one percent of voting shares. No boardroom maneuver could touch him."

"So they didn't need a boardroom maneuver," I said slowly, the horror of it settling into my bones. "They needed him gone."

Whitfield didn't answer. He didn't need to.

"Why didn't he just tell me?" I demanded, my voice cracking. "I could have helped. I could have gone to the police, I could have—"

"Helped how?" Whitfield asked, not unkindly. "Gotten yourself killed alongside him?"

I pressed my palms against my eyes, my whole body shaking.

"He thought he was protecting me," I whispered.

"I believe he was," Whitfield said quietly.

"And it didn't work," I said. "He's dead anyway. And now Whitmore knows I'm asking questions, and he as good as told me to my face he isn't worried about me finding out why."

Whitfield was silent for a long moment.

"There's something else," he said finally. "Something I haven't shown anyone. He gave it to me the week before he died, with instructions to release it only if something happened to him. And only to you."

He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small digital voice recorder.

I stared at it like it might detonate.

"He recorded something," I breathed.

"I haven't listened to it," Whitfield said. "He said it was for you and you alone."

He slid it across the desk.

"He told me one more thing before he died," Whitfield added, his voice dropping. "I didn't understand it at the time. I think I do now."

"What did he say?" I whispered.

Whitfield met my eyes, and something in his expression made the room feel suddenly, unbearably small.

"He said: 'If anything happens to me, it wouldn't be an accident.'"

Outside, I heard a car door close on the street below — too close, too deliberate.

I froze, my hand tightening around the recorder.

Whitfield saw my face and moved to the window fast, peering down through the blinds.

"Sophie," he said, his voice low and urgent. "There's a man out there. Gray suit. He's been standing across the street for the last ten minutes."

My heart stopped.

"Is it him," I breathed. "Is it the man from the funeral?"

Whitfield didn't answer.

He didn't have to.

The look on his face told me everything I needed to know — that whatever had gotten Adrian killed hadn't finished its work yet, and it had just found me sitting in a locked office with the one piece of evidence that could bring the whole thing down.