Chapter 52

Chapter 52

Harper

Grace was still asleep, blissfully unaware, when Damian pulled me back from the window before I could open it.

“Don’t,” he said, voice low and urgent. “Not yet. Let security check the perimeter first.”

He was already on the phone, voice clipped and controlled in the way I recognized from every crisis he’d navigated since I’d known him, though I could hear the tremor underneath it this time, something raw that rarely surfaced in his voice.

“Front and back, now. Someone’s been on the property.” A pause. “I don’t care what time it is. Now.”

I stood frozen near Grace’s crib, watching her sleep peacefully, utterly unaware that someone had stood close enough to our home tonight to destroy something we’d planted together with our own hands, close enough to leave a message meant specifically to terrify us.

“Harper.” Damian’s hand found my shoulder, steady despite everything. “Come away from the window.”

I let him guide me back, though my eyes kept drifting toward the broken sapling below, moonlight catching the pale edges of whatever had been left resting against it.

Security arrived within minutes, sweeping the property with efficient, practiced urgency while Damian and I stood together in the hallway outside Grace’s room, both of us reluctant to leave her unattended even for a moment.

“Clear,” came the report eventually. “No one on the grounds now. But we found this.”

The guard held up an evidence bag, something folded and pale inside it, and my stomach dropped as I recognized what it contained — a photograph, worn at the edges, clearly old.

“May I see it?” I asked.

Damian hesitated, then nodded to the guard, who carefully passed the bag toward me. Through the plastic, I studied the photograph carefully. A man I didn’t immediately recognize stood beside someone who looked startlingly familiar despite the photograph’s age — my father, younger than I remembered him, standing stiffly beside a man I now suspected must be Victor Hale.

On the back, scrawled in handwriting I didn’t recognize, a single line: Ask Richard what really happened at the marina. Then stop asking questions entirely.

“The marina,” I repeated, showing Damian the message. “What marina?”

“I don’t know,” Damian admitted, though something flickered uncertainly behind his expression, like a memory trying to surface. “We need to ask Richard immediately.”

We called him despite the late hour, and he arrived within forty minutes, visibly shaken by the urgency in Damian’s voice over the phone. I showed him the photograph and the message the moment he walked through the door.

Richard’s face went pale, all remaining color draining as he studied the image carefully.

“You recognize this,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“The marina,” Richard said slowly, sitting down heavily. “There was a meeting. The night before James died, actually. I’d forgotten, or perhaps buried it deliberately, the way I’ve buried so much else.”

“Tell me,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

“James called me directly that afternoon, furious, saying he’d discovered something about a shell company Victor had set up. Something that made our original deal even more corrupt than he’d already realized. He wanted to meet, to confront me directly before going to the authorities.”

“Did you go?”

“I sent Victor instead,” Richard admitted, shame thick in his voice. “I told myself it was simply easier, less personally confrontational. I never asked exactly what happened at that meeting. James called his partner in a panic less than an hour later, according to what Renata told you. The accident happened shortly after that.”

“You think Victor threatened him,” I said slowly, piecing together implications neither of us wanted to voice directly. “At the marina. Hours before he died.”

“I think it’s possible,” Richard said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve spent twenty-four years refusing to examine that possibility too closely, Harper. I’m ashamed to admit that now, watching everything unfold, watching my own family threatened because of choices I made decades ago.”

Damian, quiet through most of this exchange, finally spoke, voice tight with barely restrained anger. “Whoever’s threatening us now knows details about that meeting. Someone connected to Victor, someone protecting exactly what happened there.”

“I need to call Renata,” I said, standing despite the exhaustion pulling heavily at every part of me. “She needs to know about the marina. About this photograph.”

“At this hour?” Damian asked.

“She said she’s not going anywhere,” I reminded him. “Neither is whoever’s threatening us. I’d rather move quickly than wait for them to escalate further.”

Renata answered on the second ring, alert despite the late hour, voice sharpening immediately once I explained what had happened.

“Send me a photo of that photograph and the message,” she said. “I have a source who might recognize the marina location. This could be exactly the break we need.”

I photographed the evidence carefully and sent it through, watching Renata’s typing indicator appear and disappear several times before she finally responded.

“Harper, I think I know where this is. There’s an old marina outside the city, mostly abandoned now, that used to service private boats for exactly the kind of quiet business meetings people wanted kept off any official record. If your father met Victor there, there might still be witnesses. People who worked the docks, maintenance staff, anyone who might remember something from that specific night, even decades later.”

“Can you find them?”

“I can try,” Renata said. “Give me a few days. In the meantime, please, take whatever precautions you can. If someone’s willing to trespass onto your property and leave threats beside your daughter’s window, they’re clearly serious about keeping this buried.”

We ended the call, and I sat back down heavily in the study, exhaustion and fear tangling uncomfortably together as the night stretched later and later around us.

“We should increase security permanently,” Damian said. “Not just temporary measures. Full protection, for you, for the children, for as long as this investigation continues.”

“I don’t want Lily and Grace living like prisoners,” I said, though I understood the necessity even as I protested it.

“Neither do I,” Damian said gently. “But I want them safe more than I want them comfortable, at least until we understand exactly what we’re facing.”

Richard, still seated nearby, spoke quietly, guilt evident in every word. “This is my fault entirely. Decades of cowardice, finally catching up to threaten the people I’ve come to love most in this world.”

“We’ll get through this,” I said, surprising myself with the certainty in my own voice despite the fear still coursing steadily beneath it. “Together. Exactly the way we’ve gotten through everything else.”

Richard nodded, though guilt remained heavy behind his expression, and Damian pulled me close, exhaustion finally beginning to overtake the adrenaline that had carried us through the past several hours.

We eventually returned to bed, though sleep remained elusive, both of us listening carefully to every sound the house made, every creak and settle that might have once seemed ordinary now carrying weight and threat neither of us could fully shake.

Just as exhaustion finally began pulling me toward uneasy sleep, my phone buzzed one final time, and I forced my eyes open, dread pooling immediately in my stomach as I read the new message glowing on the screen.

“Renata Cole just called me asking about a marina. You should have listened to my warning. Now I have to consider a different kind of message entirely.”