MasukCatherine remained seated behind her desk for a long moment after giving her instruction, the lamp’s warm light doing little to soften the sharpness in her expression.“You understand what I’m asking,” she said, more a statement than a question.“A full background investigation,” the man said. “Birth records, foster placements, school history, employment history. Anything that establishes a verified timeline.”“And anything that doesn’t fit cleanly into that timeline,” Catherine added. “Gaps interest me more than facts, Marcus. People don’t leave gaps in their history by accident. They leave them because something happened they’d rather no one examine too closely.”“And if there’s nothing there?” Marcus asked. “Some people really are just what they appear to be.”Catherine’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Then we’ll simply have wasted some money confirming she’s exactly as unremarkable as she claims. But I don’t believe that, and neither do you, or you wouldn’
Aurora sat frozen, staring at the message until the words blurred slightly from how long she’d been holding her breath.“Damien,” she said, her voice tight. “Wake up. You need to see this.”He stirred beside her, immediately alert at the tension in her voice. “What is it?”She handed him the phone silently, watching his face as he read the message. His jaw tightened, the same controlled fury she’d seen at the banquet settling over his features.“The same number as before?” he asked.“Yes. Whoever this is, they knew about the surveillance before I even told anyone outside of you and the security team.”Damien read the message again, frowning. “That means they have real access. This isn’t a guess or a rumor. Someone close to whatever’s happening is feeding you information deliberately.”“Someone who wants me to know,” Aurora said slowly. “But won’t say who they are, or why they’re helping.”“That’s what worries me,” Damien said. “Anonymous help isn’t the same as trustworthy help.”Auror
Aurora’s heart pounded as she stared back at the driver, refusing to be the one to look away first.The car didn’t move immediately. For a few tense seconds, she and the driver simply stared at each other across the width of the street, some silent standoff neither of them seemed willing to break.Then, abruptly, the engine started, and the sedan pulled away from the curb.Aurora’s pulse spiked. Without thinking it through fully, she started walking quickly toward it, phone gripped tightly in her hand, some instinct pushing her to get close enough to see something …. a face, a plate number, anything.The car sped up before she could get within twenty feet, turning sharply at the corner and disappearing down a side street before she could catch more than a blur of motion.She stood on the sidewalk, breathing hard, adrenaline coursing through her. But in that brief moment before it turned the corner, she’d caught something useful …. a small paper permit taped to the inside of the windsh
Chapter 97: Exactly the Kind of Thing“What do you mean?” Aurora asked. “You think Catherine did this?”“I think it has her fingerprints all over it,” Damien said, his voice tight with barely contained frustration. “This is exactly how she operates. She doesn’t attack directly. She never has. She finds quiet ways to apply pressure …. a favor called in here, an old associate leaned on there …. and by the time anyone notices the damage, there’s no clean line back to her.”Aurora pulled her knees up onto the couch, phone pressed to her ear. “Has she done this before? To someone else?”Damien exhaled slowly. “More than once. There was a woman my father was seeing years ago, before he settled things with Catherine for good. Smart, independent, had her own career outside the family entirely. Within six months, she’d lost her job, her apartment lease mysteriously fell through, and half her professional references stopped returning calls. Nothing ever traced back to Catherine. It never does.”
“Oliver, you’re scaring me a little,” Aurora said, sitting up straighter on the couch. “What do you mean, this isn’t a coincidence?”There was a pause on the line, and she could hear him shifting, like he was choosing his words carefully. “Someone reached out to the board a few days ago. Applied pressure, suggesting the company should distance itself from you professionally. It came in vague enough terms that no one flagged it as unusual at first. But your reassignment today lines up exactly with the timeline.”“Distance itself from me?” Aurora repeated, her stomach tightening. “Why would anyone want that?”“I don’t know the full picture yet,” Oliver admitted. “I’m still trying to piece it together myself. But it wasn’t a client complaint, and it wasn’t anything internal. It came from outside the company.”“From who?”Oliver hesitated again, longer this time. “I don’t have a name. Not yet. What I do know is that it came through an old family associate …. someone connected to the Kings
Aurora stared at her computer screen, reading the same line over and over, as if it might change if she looked at it long enough.Ferrante Account — Lead Designer: Reassigned.“That can’t be right,” she muttered, clicking through the project management system again, searching for some kind of mistake, a glitch, anything that made more sense than what she was seeing.It didn’t change. Her name was gone from the account she’d spent months building, replaced by another designer’s …. someone two levels below her, someone who’d barely touched the Ferrante files before now.She grabbed her tablet and walked straight to her supervisor’s office, knocking briskly before letting herself in.“Sandra, there’s something wrong with the Ferrante account listing,” Aurora said. “My name’s been removed.”Sandra glanced up from her monitor, something careful and evasive already settling into her expression. “It’s not an error, Aurora. There’s been some internal restructuring. You’ve been reassigned.”“R







