Chapter 3

I stared at the message for a long time.

*She's on her way. Don't trust her.*

Vivienne was staring at it too, from across the table, with the expression of someone who had just discovered a crack in a wall they'd been carefully maintaining for three years. "When did that arrive," she said.

"Forty minutes ago." I looked up from the screen. "While I was sitting here alone after Caiden left. Before you texted me."

"Which means someone knew I was coming before I arrived." She said it quietly, working through it rather than stating it. "Someone who knew about the introduction. About the plan." Her jaw tightened. "Someone who knew enough to warn you against me before we'd said a single word to each other."

"Or someone who wanted me to distrust you specifically," I said. "Those aren't the same thing."

She looked at me. The crack in her careful expression widened slightly. "You're thinking clearly for someone who just accidentally got married."

"I'm thinking clearly because I don't have the luxury of not thinking clearly." I put my phone away. "Who knows about your plan. The full plan — the matchmaking service, the introduction, the timeline."

"No one." She said it firmly. Then, less firmly: "No one who would—" She stopped.

"Who," I said.

She looked at the table. At the folder. At her hands. "I used a research firm," she said carefully. "Three years ago, when I first started building the case. They helped me track the shell accounts, identify the document trail." A pause. "I stopped using them eighteen months ago when I started getting close to something significant. I was worried about exposure."

"But they had everything up to that point."

"Yes." Her voice had gone somewhere flat. "Everything up to that point."

"Name."

She looked up. "I'm not going to—"

"Vivienne." I held her gaze. "Someone sent me a message warning me about you before you walked through that door. Either they're trying to protect me or they're trying to isolate us from each other. Either way I need to know who has access to your research." I paused. "Name."

A long pause. "Hartwell Research Associates," she said. "Private firm. Operates through a holding company in Singapore."

I filed the name. "Alright." I picked up my bag. "I need to go. The car comes at six and I need to be back at the apartment before it does."

"Lena." She reached across the table, stopped short of touching my arm. "Be careful with Ji-yeon."

I looked at her. "Caiden's assistant."

"She came to the Black company four years ago. Her previous employer — a consulting firm in Singapore — dissolved three months after she left." Vivienne held my gaze. "The dissolution was handled by the same legal team that built the case against our father."

I stood very still. "The same firm."

"The same partner." She held my gaze. "Ji-yeon may be exactly what she appears to be. Efficient, loyal, professional. Or she may be the reason Victor Black has stayed three steps ahead of everything I've tried for three years." A pause. "I don't know which. But the connection exists and you need to know it exists before you walk into that apartment."

I thought about Ji-yeon in the lobby. *I expected so.* The way she'd known how I took my coffee before anyone had told her. The way everything in the apartment had been exactly positioned. The way she'd appeared already briefed, already arranged, already waiting.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" Vivienne looked at me like she'd expected more resistance.

"I heard you. I'll be careful." I moved toward the door. "And Vivienne — the third message. The one that isn't from you and isn't from me. Someone is already watching this situation." I looked at her steadily. "Which means we need to move faster than you planned."

I left before she could answer.

---

The car came at six exactly.

I sat in the back and watched the city go past and ran through everything I knew, which was both more and less than I'd known six hours ago. More because I had a half-sister and a manufactured debt and a conspiracy that had been running for eleven years. Less because someone had known about the introduction before it happened and I had no idea who that was or which side they were on.

Silverline Tower appeared at the end of a street that had no business containing a building that expensive. The driver held the door. The doorman held the lobby door. Ji-yeon was waiting at the elevator with a tablet and a professional expression and the specific quality of someone who managed impossible things and found the impossibility unremarkable.

"Ms. Cole," she said.

"Lena," I said automatically.

"The apartment is ready." She walked toward the elevator with the certainty of someone who expected to be followed. "I'll go through the household arrangements. Mr. Black will be home at nine."

I watched her from behind as we rode up. The back of her head. The precise way she held the tablet. The specific efficiency of every movement. I thought about the legal firm in Singapore. I thought about *don't trust Ji-yeon.* I thought about the third message that hadn't come from either of us.

The apartment was on the twenty-second floor and was the most extraordinary space I'd ever stood in. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, the city spread below like something that had been arranged specifically for this view. Furniture that looked like it had been chosen by someone who understood the difference between expensive and considered. A kitchen that was larger than my sister's entire apartment.

Ji-yeon gave me the tour in twelve efficient minutes. Showed me the room that was mine, the desk phone with its labeled lines, the chef's schedule, the household rules in a folder on the counter. Everything explained precisely, nothing offered that hadn't been prepared.

At the end she handed me a card. "My number," she said. "For anything you need."

I took the card. "Ji-yeon," I said. "The matchmaking service. The introduction that was arranged for today." I watched her face carefully. "How long has it been in the works."

Something moved through her expression. Very small. Very fast. The movement of a person who had a specific answer and was deciding how to give it. "Six weeks," she said. "Mrs. Black senior arranged it through the service."

"And the woman who was matched with Mr. Black," I said. "What do you know about her."

A pause. Longer than it needed to be. "Only what the service provided," she said. "A name and professional background. The usual information."

"What was the name."

She looked at me steadily. "I'm not sure that's relevant now."

"Humor me."

Another pause. "Cole," she said. "The match was listed as a V. Cole. I assumed it was a coincidence given your surname."

I kept my face neutral. "And you didn't mention it to Mr. Black."

"I didn't think it was significant." She said it smoothly. Too smoothly. The smoothness of a sentence that had been prepared rather than arrived at. "Is there anything else you need before I go."

"No," I said. "Thank you."

She left. I heard the front door close.

I stood in the center of the living room of my new apartment and thought about what she'd just told me. She'd known the match was a V. Cole. She'd known my surname was Cole. She hadn't mentioned it to Caiden. She'd called it a coincidence.

Ji-yeon Park did not strike me as a woman who believed in coincidences.

I went to the window. Looked at the city below, all those lit windows, all those ordinary lives being lived at a normal altitude. I thought about Vivienne's folder and my father's letter and the message that hadn't come from either of us.

*She's on her way. Don't trust her.*

I took out my phone. Opened the message thread. Typed: *I know you're not Vivienne. Tell me who you are.*

I waited.

Seven minutes passed.

Then: *Someone who needs Victor Black to go down as much as you do. Maybe more.*

I stared at the screen.

Then: *There's a file. In the Black company's Singapore office. It has your father's name on it and Victor's signature. It's the original. Everything Vivienne has is a copy.*

Then, after a pause that felt like a breath being held:

*Caiden knows it exists. He just doesn't know what's in it.*

I sat down on the window seat with the city below me and the phone warm in my hand and the specific feeling of a person who had walked through the wrong door this morning and discovered that wrong doors sometimes opened into exactly the room you were supposed to end up in.

Caiden knew the file existed.

I had no idea what that meant yet.

But I was going to find out.