CHAPTER 13: TERMS

Neither of them slept much that first night.

Temi sat curled into the corner of the enormous living room sofa still in her wedding dress, laptop balanced on her knees, scrolling through every social media account connected to the wedding while Adrian paced the length of the windows with his phone pressed to his ear, speaking in low, clipped tones to Vivian on the other end. The city stretched out below them, indifferent and glittering, utterly unaware that somewhere inside one of its highest apartments, two people who had been married for less than a day were already fighting for their lives against an enemy neither of them could name yet. Somewhere around two in the morning, Naomi arrived in person, unglamorous in sweatpants and an oversized sweater, having clearly been pulled from her own bed the moment Adrian called.

"Show me the photo again," Naomi said, settling onto the arm of the opposite sofa, sharp and alert despite the hour, her earlier exhaustion visibly burning off the moment actual business was at hand.

Adrian pulled it up and passed her the phone. Naomi studied it for a long moment, zooming in on the edges, on the hedges behind them, on anything that might give away a location or an angle that narrowed down who could have taken it. Her expression, usually so composed even under pressure, tightened slightly as she worked through the details.

"This wasn't shot from the guest area," she said finally. "The angle's too low, too close. Whoever took this was hiding somewhere near where you two were standing, which means they had access to the grounds beyond just the public chapel entrance."

"Which means either someone on staff, or someone who slipped past security during the chaos of the day," Temi said, looking up from her laptop. "Priscilla's team was stretched thin with the timeline moved up. It wouldn't have been impossible for someone to blend in."

"Or someone already had a way in that didn't require blending in at all." Adrian's voice was flat, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the hour. "My father knows that estate. He grew up there. If he wanted eyes on those grounds without being seen himself, he wouldn't have needed to sneak past anyone."

"You think this is definitely him," Naomi said, though it wasn't really a question, her tone carrying the particular skepticism of someone who had spent years learning not to accept the obvious answer without testing it first.

"I think it fits everything else he's done this past week. The leak. The injunction. Camille's bribe attempt months before any of this started." Adrian sank into the chair across from Temi, rubbing both hands over his face, the composed, controlled man from the boardroom entirely absent now, replaced by someone simply, deeply tired. "But I also think my father is careful enough not to leave his own fingerprints on something this blunt. Blackmail is beneath the kind of pressure he usually applies. He prefers plausible deniability. Legal filings. Leaked stories he can claim ignorance of. This feels different. Cruder."

Temi turned that over, an uncomfortable thought settling in alongside it, one she hadn't fully allowed herself to consider until she said it out loud. "What if it isn't him?"

Both Naomi and Adrian looked at her.

"I'm not saying he isn't involved in everything else," Temi continued. "I believe that completely, especially after what Camille told me. But this specific message, the terms, the photo, feels more personal than strategic. Your father wants the company. This message reads like someone who wants something from us directly. Money, maybe. Or leverage over something more specific than just embarrassing headlines."

Naomi's expression sharpened. "She might be right. Marcus thinks in terms of board votes and shareholder confidence. This reads more like extortion for its own sake."

"Which means we might be dealing with two separate problems instead of one," Adrian said slowly, the weight of that settling visibly across his shoulders. "My father working the legal and public angles, and someone else entirely working this one."

"Or someone close to your father who's decided to run their own side operation," Naomi offered. "Someone who saw an opportunity in all this chaos and decided to profit from it independently."

"Staff, maybe," Temi said. "Someone who had access to both families over the years. A driver, a household employee, someone who's watched this family's dysfunction up close long enough to know exactly which threats would land hardest." She thought of the sheer number of people who had moved through both the estate and the penthouse over the last few days alone, caterers and florists and security details, any one of whom could have quietly gathered more than anyone realized. "Whoever this is knows the geography of that chapel well enough to hide and shoot a clear photo undetected. That's not a random stranger with a camera."

"It narrows the list," Naomi agreed, "but it doesn't narrow it nearly enough yet."

The room went quiet for a moment, each of them turning the possibilities over in their own way. Temi set her laptop aside, exhaustion finally catching up with the adrenaline that had carried her through the last several hours, and found herself watching Adrian across the space between them, the man she'd married less than twelve hours ago now facing threats from what might be multiple directions at once. It struck her, in that strange, quiet moment, how quickly her life had rearranged itself around problems that used to belong entirely to someone else's world, not hers.

"We should respond," Temi said finally. "Not agree to whatever terms they want. But respond enough to draw them out, learn something about who we're actually dealing with."

"That's dangerous," Naomi said. "If this is genuinely someone willing to expose private information for money, engaging with them at all risks confirming you're taking the threat seriously enough to negotiate, which only invites more pressure."

"Not negotiate. Just enough contact to see what they actually ask for. If the demand is money, that tells us one thing. If the demand is something else entirely, access, information, influence over the company, that tells us something very different." Temi looked to Adrian. "You know this world better than I do. What's your instinct?"

Adrian was quiet for a long moment, weighing it. "My instinct says whoever sent this wants us scared and isolated, reacting individually instead of together. The safest move might be exactly the opposite of what they expect. Don't hide it. Don't panic separately behind closed doors." He looked at Temi directly, something steady passing between them despite everything happening around it. "We respond together, and we make it clear neither of us intends to be handled quietly."

Vivian's voice crackled faintly through the speakerphone still resting on the coffee table, having been listening in silently for the last several minutes, the calm, measured tone she'd carried through every crisis so far still intact despite the hour. "I'd advise caution before drafting anything. Let me trace what I can first. Give me until morning."

"We don't have until morning," Adrian said. "Whoever this is already knows exactly where we stand and how fast they can rattle us. Every hour we wait is an hour they control the pace."

Temi reached for her phone, the reply already forming in her mind, something measured enough not to hand over any real information but firm enough to signal they weren't the easy targets whoever sent that photo had clearly assumed they'd be. Adrian watched her from across the room, saying nothing, letting her take the lead on this one small decision even as every instinct in him clearly wanted to seize control of it himself.

She typed slowly, reading each word twice before sending.

*Whoever this is, be specific about what you actually want, or stop wasting both our time.*

The reply came back almost instantly, faster than either of the previous messages, like whoever was on the other end had been waiting, watching, expecting exactly this response, sitting somewhere with their phone already in hand, anticipating the exact shape of what Temi would eventually send.

*Fifty thousand dollars, wired within 48 hours, or every photo and every recording I have goes straight to the same outlet that broke the will story. And Mrs. Voss, you should know something before you decide how seriously to take this. I'm not working for Marcus. I never have been.*

Temi's stomach dropped as she read it a second time, the room around her suddenly feeling much smaller than it had a moment ago. Beside her, Naomi had gone very still, and Adrian's hand, resting near the edge of the coffee table, curled slowly into a fist, the last of the night's exhaustion burning away into something sharper and far more alert.

"Adrian," she said quietly, turning the phone toward him. "I don't think this is your father at all."

No one spoke for a long moment. The city hummed on below them, oblivious.

Naomi was the first to move, snatching up her own phone, thumbs already flying. "If it's not Marcus, then someone inside this circle has been feeding information out for longer than tonight. That photo required access. Timing required inside knowledge. This isn't a stranger who got lucky with a camera."

"Or it's exactly what they want us to believe," Adrian said, standing abruptly, pacing again, faster this time. "A message like that, denying my father's involvement, could just as easily be a distraction. Point us at ghosts while the real threat sits somewhere we're not looking."

"Or it's the truth," Temi said, "and we've been so focused on Marcus that we've missed someone else entirely, watching this whole thing unfold from somewhere closer than any of us realized."

Vivian's voice cut through the speakerphone again, sharper now, all traces of measured calm gone. "I need that number. Now. Whoever sent that last message just made a mistake revealing that much information voluntarily. People who are careful don't explain themselves unprompted. Fear does that. Or arrogance."

"Which one do you think this is," Naomi asked.

"I think," Vivian said slowly, "we're about to find out the hard way."

Temi looked down at her phone again, at the message still glowing on the screen, and felt something cold settle low in her stomach, a certainty she couldn't yet explain but couldn't shake either. Whoever this was, they weren't finished. And the next move wasn't going to come from anyone in this room.