CHAPTER 15: CONFRONTATION

Nobody spoke for a long moment after Farrah read the address out loud a second time, slower, as though repeating it might somehow change what it meant. Outside the penthouse windows, morning had fully broken over the city now, sunlight cutting sharp lines across the living room floor, utterly indifferent to the fact that the people standing in it were quietly coming apart under the weight of what they'd just learned.

"That doesn't prove Camille did this herself," Temi said finally, her voice tighter than she wanted it to sound. "An IP address traces to a house. It doesn't trace to a person sitting at a keyboard inside it. Her aunt lives there too. Guests could have used that network. It could be spoofed, for all we know." She heard the defensiveness in her own voice and hated it slightly, aware that she sounded like someone building a case rather than someone weighing evidence fairly.

"It could be," Farrah agreed carefully. "IP addresses aren't perfect evidence. But it's the strongest lead we have right now, and given the timing lining up with the Whitmore bid, I'd be doing you a disservice if I told you it wasn't worth pursuing."

Adrian had gone very quiet, watching Temi with an expression she couldn't quite read, something careful and searching in it that made her stomach tighten further.

"What," she said.

"Nothing. I just know how much she matters to you." His voice was gentle, but there was something underneath it, a caution he was clearly trying not to let sharpen into accusation. "I'm not saying she did this. I'm saying if she did, I need you prepared for that possibility before we go any further, because the next logical step is confronting her directly, and that's not going to be easy regardless of what we find."

Temi closed her eyes briefly, the exhaustion of the last twenty four hours pressing down harder than it had all night. "I need to talk to her myself. Not lawyers. Not investigators showing up at her aunt's door with accusations. Me, first."

"That's dangerous," Naomi said. "If she is involved, giving her advance warning gives her time to cover tracks, delete records, coordinate a story." She said it evenly, without malice, the same careful pragmatism she'd shown since the moment she first arrived at the penthouse hours ago, weighing every decision purely by risk rather than sentiment.

"And if she isn't involved," Temi shot back, sharper than she intended, "then showing up with a team of investigators destroys a friendship over a coincidence, and I'm not willing to risk that on an IP address alone." She looked to Adrian. "I know this isn't just my decision to make anymore. But I'm asking you to let me have this one thing my way."

Adrian held her gaze for a long moment, something complicated passing behind his eyes, weighing the security concerns Naomi had raised against whatever he saw in Temi's face that made him want to give her exactly what she was asking for despite every instinct telling him otherwise. He'd learned, over the last strange week, that arguing Temi out of a decision once she'd set her mind to it rarely worked, and that trusting her instincts had, so far, served them both better than his own caution alone would have.

"You don't go alone," he said finally. "I'll come with you. Quietly. No lawyers, no investigators, just the two of us. If it turns into something more than a conversation, I want to be there."

Temi nodded, grateful for the compromise even as new anxiety coiled tighter in her chest at the thought of what they might actually find.

They drove up to Connecticut the following afternoon, the silence in the car thick with everything neither of them said out loud. Temi had texted Camille the night before, simple and vague, asking if she could visit, and Camille's response had come back almost immediately, warm and unsuspecting, of course, come whenever, I'd love to see you, a response that only made the coming conversation feel worse rather than better. Temi spent most of the drive staring out the window at the passing trees, already beginning to turn with the first real color of autumn, rehearsing a dozen different versions of the conversation ahead and discarding every single one before they'd even crossed the state line.

The house, when they finally arrived, was smaller and more modest than Temi expected for a family with Camille's kind of money, a cozy colonial tucked at the end of a quiet residential street, nothing about it suggesting the kind of calculated sabotage campaign Temi had spent the entire drive dreading to find evidence of. A child's bicycle lay tipped over in the yard next door, someone's wind chimes stirring faintly in the breeze, the whole street looking like the last place on earth capable of housing the kind of quiet betrayal Temi had come here half expecting to uncover.

Camille opened the door before they'd even reached it, her smile faltering slightly the moment she registered Adrian standing behind Temi.

"This isn't a social visit, is it," Camille said quietly, stepping back to let them in anyway, her earlier warmth cooling into something more guarded, her eyes flicking briefly between Temi's face and Adrian's before settling back on Temi's, searching for some clue about what exactly had brought them to her door.

"We need to ask you something," Temi said, following her inside, the house smelling faintly of coffee and old books, achingly ordinary. "And I need you to be honest with me, whatever the answer is."

Camille led them into a small sitting room, gesturing for them to sit, though she remained standing herself, arms crossed, some instinct clearly warning her that whatever was coming wasn't going to be comfortable.

"Ask me," she said, her chin lifting slightly, some old stubborn pride Temi recognized from a decade of friendship rising to meet whatever accusation was coming.

"Someone hacked my studio's financial records three weeks ago," Temi said, watching Camille's face carefully for any flicker of recognition, any crack in the composed surface. "Around the same time your family's firm was bidding against mine for the Whitmore contract. The breach traces back to an IP address in this town. This house, specifically."

Camille's expression shifted through several things in quick succession, confusion first, then something closer to alarm, and finally, unmistakably, anger, though not the kind Temi expected. Her arms tightened further across her chest, and for a moment the warm, guarded woman from the doorway disappeared entirely, replaced by something harder and more wounded.

"You think I did this," Camille said, her voice rising slightly. "You drove all the way out here to accuse me of hacking your bank records."

"I didn't say I thought you did it," Temi said carefully. "I said the evidence points here, and I needed to hear it from you directly before I believed anything the evidence seemed to suggest."

Camille's jaw tightened, and for a moment Temi thought she might simply ask them both to leave. Instead, she crossed to the window, staring out at the quiet street beyond it, her shoulders rigid.

"My cousin Derek has been staying here," she said finally, her voice flat. "Since before I even left New York. He's my aunt's son. He works in something technical, cybersecurity adjacent, though I've never fully understood what exactly he does for a living. He's been strange since I got here. Overly interested in the wedding, in you specifically, asking questions that felt odd at the time but that I brushed off because I was too wrapped up in my own mess to think much of it." Camille's voice wavered slightly, the memory clearly rearranging itself in her mind even as she spoke it aloud, small details she'd dismissed at the time suddenly taking on a weight she hadn't given them before.

"What kind of questions," Adrian asked, speaking for the first time since they'd walked in, his voice careful and even, clearly trying not to spook Camille further than she already was.

"About your finances, mostly," Camille said, looking at Temi. "How the studio was doing. Whether you'd mentioned any trouble with clients or contracts. I thought he was just making conversation. He's always been a little odd, socially awkward in a way that made small talk feel invasive without meaning to. I never once considered he might have been asking for a reason."

Temi felt something cold settle low in her stomach. "Where is he now?"

Camille turned back to face them, and something in her expression had gone from anger into real fear.

"I don't know," she said. "I haven't seen him since this morning. His car's gone. His room's completely empty."

The three of them stood in silence for a moment, the ordinary, sunlit sitting room suddenly feeling far less safe than it had when they'd first walked in. Temi's phone buzzed once in her pocket, and she pulled it out with hands that had gone unsteady, dreading whatever might be waiting on the screen this time.

It was a text. From the same unknown number that had haunted her since her wedding night.

Looks like you found my cousin's little hideaway. Clever girl. Too bad it's already too late to matter.