CHAPTER SEVEN: SOMEONE TRIED TO WHAT?.

Emma's POV

I didn't go back to bed.

The drawer wasn't empty. There was something else under the notebook. I felt it before I saw it flat, stiff, folded too many times.

I pulled the drawer open again.

A slim folder. No label. My hands shook as I opened it.

Inside were copies of papers. Share transfer forms. My grandfather's signature at the bottom of one. The date made my stomach drop three years ago, the same month I married Lucas.

Transfer of Carter Holdings shares 40% to Ashford Group, effective upon completion of marriage contract.

My grandfather's old company. The one everyone said was worth nothing. He never once mentioned Ashford Group. Not in twenty years of raising me. Not one time.

But there was his signature. Three days before my wedding.

My hands went cold.

I flipped to the next page. A letter, typed on Ashford letterhead, sent to him.

Once the marriage is finalized as agreed, the remaining shares will transfer as discussed. Please advise Emma only what is necessary. V.A. V.A.

Victor Ashford.

I sat down hard in Lucas's chair. My heart was pounding so loud I could hear it.

This was never about honoring his grandfather's wish. It was never about family or duty, no matter how many times Lucas said those words to me. Victor wanted what my grandfather owned. Marrying me off to Lucas was just the easiest way to get it.

Advise Emma only what is necessary.

They had decided, ahead of time, exactly how much I was allowed to know. Like I was a problem. Not a person.

I thought about my grandfather in his last year. Thin hands. A shaky voice. Telling me how glad he was that I'd found someone to take care of me.

Had he known what he was really signing? Or had someone talked him into it, the same soft way they'd talked me into it?

I didn't have time to sit with that question. My phone buzzed on the desk. Henry.

Emma. Are you awake? We need to talk. Not on the phone. Meet me at the café on 5th. Ten minutes.

Henry never texted me. Not once in three years.

I looked down at the folder in my lap, then at the door Lucas had walked out of twenty minutes ago, chasing a call from the same man whose name was on that letter.

This had to be connected.

I pushed the folder into my robe and shut the drawer, careful to leave everything exactly how I found it. I grabbed a coat from the hall closet, didn't even bother changing, and slipped out the side door before the staff woke up.

The morning air outside was sharp and cold. I walked fast, my mind racing faster than my feet.

I saw Henry through the café window before I even reached the door. He was pacing. Phone in one hand, gripped so tight his knuckles were white. He kept glancing at the door like he was counting the seconds until I got there.

He wasn't just worried. He looked scared.

I had never seen Henry Brooks scared. Not once. He was the one who stayed calm when everyone else lost it in board meetings, at family dinners, even the night Lucas nearly punched a reporter outside a hotel. Nothing shook Henry. This did.

He saw me and crossed the café fast, glancing past me at the street like he needed to be sure no one had followed.

"Emma." His voice was low. Tight. Not like him at all. "I don't know how to say this. So I'm just going to say it."

My stomach dropped. "Say what? You're scaring me."

He pulled out the chair across from him and waited until I sat before he sat back down, close, like he didn't want anyone at the next table to hear.

"I was going through old board files last night," he said. "For Victor. Routine stuff. I wasn't even supposed to be reading it closely. Then I saw your grandfather's name."

My hand tightened around the folder in my lap. "I already found the shares," I said. "An hour ago. Victor arranged the whole marriage so he could get his hands on Carter Holdings."

I expected Henry's face to relax. It didn't. It went tighter.

He reached across the table and put his hand over mine. He had never done that before, not once in three years.

"Emma. That's not what I need to tell you."

My chest went cold. "Then what is it?"

"The shares are real. The marriage deal is real. But that's not the whole thing." He glanced toward the window again, like he expected someone to be watching us even here. "Your grandfather didn't just sign over the company because Victor asked nicely. There was pressure. A lot of it. I found emails going back almost a year before your wedding. Threats dressed up as business talk."

"Threats?" My voice came out too loud. I lowered it fast. "What kind of threats?"

"The kind that make an old man scared enough to sign anything," Henry said. "Emma, your grandfather fought this for months. He said no, over and over. Then something changed, right before the wedding, and he just... stopped fighting."

My throat tightened. "What changed?"

He didn't answer right away. The silence between us stretched too long, and I knew, whatever he was about to say, it was going to knock the ground out from under me.

"There's someone else's name on those files," he said finally. "Someone who signed off on the same deal. Someone still in that house right now."

My breath caught. "Who?"

He opened his mouth to answer.

My phone rang.

Loud, sharp, cutting straight through the moment. I almost didn't answer it. My hand was already shaking too hard.

I looked at the screen. Not Lucas. Not the house.

Lily's school.

My whole body went still. They never called this early. Never, unless

"Emma, I have to take this," I said, already standing, already pressing the phone to my ear before Henry could stop me. "Hello?"

"Mrs. Ashford?" A woman's voice, careful, the kind of careful that meant bad news. "This is the front office at Lily's school. I'm sorry to call so early, but we need you to come in. Right away."

My knees went weak. "Is she okay? What happened?"

"She's safe," the woman said quickly. "But there was an incident this morning, before drop-off even started. Someone tried to"

The line cut out. Just static, then nothing.

"Hello? Hello, are you there?" I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen. Call ended. No signal bars at all, like something had killed it mid-sentence.

I looked up. Henry was already on his feet, his own face pale.

"What did they say?" he asked.

"Someone tried to" I repeated her words, my voice shaking. "That's all I heard. The call just died."

Henry's jaw tightened. He grabbed his coat off the chair. "I'm driving you."

"Henry, you were about to tell me a name. Whose name is on those files?"

He hesitated at the door, keys already in his hand, and for one second I thought he wasn't going to answer at all.

"Not now," he said. "Lily first. I promise, Emma, I'll tell you everything. But right now we need to move."

We reached his car and he threw it into gear before I even had my seatbelt on, tires screeching as we pulled out onto the street.

"Try calling the school back," Henry said, eyes on the road, knuckles white on the wheel.

I did. It rang once, twice, then went straight to a busy tone. I tried again. Same thing.

"It won't connect," I said, panic climbing up my throat. "Henry, why won't it connect?"

"Phone lines get overloaded sometimes. It's probably nothing." His voice didn't match his words. He was driving too fast for it to be nothing, running a yellow light that had already turned red by the time we crossed under it.

I stared out the window at the city rushing past, gray and cold and moving too fast, and all I could think about was my daughter, alone at that school, and a sentence that never got to finish.

Someone tried to………. Someone tried to what?

My phone buzzed again in my hand. A text this time. I looked down, expecting the school, expecting anything.

It was Lucas.

Where are you? Come home now. It's about Lily.

I looked up at Henry. "It's Lucas. He wants me home. He says it's about Lily too."

Henry's jaw tightened, his eyes flicking to the mirror, to the road behind us, like he was checking whether anyone had followed. "Then we're not going to the school first," he said. "We're going to the house."

He spun the wheel hard, cutting across two lanes, and the car lurched in a direction I hadn't expected.

"Henry, the school is the other way"

"I know," he said, and for the first time since I'd known him, his voice shook. "But if

Lucas is already home, and he already knows something happened, then whatever this is, it didn't start at that school. It started somewhere much closer to us.”