CHAPTER 6: MY FATHER'S WARNING

*Whatever you do, do not trust the man you married.*

My hands shook so hard the phone almost slipped from my grip. I set it flat on the table, both palms pressed against the screen to hold it steady, and forced myself to keep reading.

*I know how this sounds, coming from a dead man you trusted to warn you too late. But I need you to understand one thing before you decide I've lost my mind. This isn't jealousy, and it isn't paranoia. Weeks ago, I found money moving through the company that shouldn't exist. Accounts I never opened. Transfers I never approved. Someone inside Delaney Holdings has been building a plan in the dark, and I don't yet know how deep it runs.*

I read that line twice, my pulse a drumbeat in my ears.

*I trusted very few people with what I found. Gideon was one of them.*

My stomach dropped.

*I know what you're thinking. If I suspected him, why would I let him near you, near the company, near anything that mattered? Here is the truth, Elise, and I need you to hear all of it before you judge me for it. Gideon didn't start as my enemy. He started as the one person I trusted to help me find the truth.*

I sat back, the coffee cup forgotten beside me, and read on with my heart climbing into my throat.

*He came to me eight months before I ever introduced you at that gala. He'd heard rumors about irregularities in one of our subsidiary accounts and offered to help me trace them without alerting the board. I was grateful. I was careful, but I was grateful. For months, he helped me build a picture of what was happening. He found names. He found dates. He found enough that I believed we were close to the truth.*

*Then it changed.*

*The information stopped flowing. Gideon grew evasive when I asked for updates. Documents he'd promised to show me never appeared. And around the same time, he started asking me questions about you, Elise. About the company's ownership structure. About what would happen to your shares if I died.*

I stopped breathing.

*I can't say when Gideon stopped working with me and started working against me. I only know that by the time I understood what he'd become, it was already too late to undo what I'd let him close enough to learn.*

The letter ended there, the rest of the page blank, like my father had run out of time or run out of certainty about what to write next.

I set the phone down and stared past it, the coffee shop noise fading into a dull hum around me.

My father had known. He had trusted Gideon, used him, and been used right back, and somewhere in the space between those two things, he had run out of time to protect me from what he'd already begun to suspect. I thought of every dinner where Gideon toasted my father's memory, every anniversary of his death where Gideon stood beside me at the grave with a hand on my shoulder, playing the grieving son in law while carrying a secret my father had died trying to expose.

I called Milo before I finished the thought.

"Elise, what is it?"

"Why didn't you tell me about this letter?"

Silence stretched on the other end.

"Milo."

"Your father gave me strict instructions," he said. "He told me to keep it sealed unless you uncovered the truth about Gideon on your own. He said if I handed it to you outright, you might dismiss it as grief talking, or worse, confront Gideon before you understood what you were dealing with."

"So you let me marry him. You let me spend five years with a man my father suspected of fraud, and you never said a word."

"I followed his wishes. I know how that sounds now, but at the time, I believed I was protecting you."

"Protecting me." My voice cracked. "Milo, he's been planning this since before we met. My father knew Gideon was dangerous, and you let me walk straight into it."

"I didn't know the full extent of what your father suspected. I only knew he wanted the letter held back."

"What else did he tell you? Anything. Anything at all that you're still sitting on."

"Nothing tied to Gideon beyond what's in that letter. But he told me once, near the end, that he wished he'd never let Gideon that close to the company. He said it like a man who already regretted a decision he couldn't undo."

I closed my eyes, my anger and grief tangled together until I couldn't separate one from the other.

"Did my father know," I asked, forcing the question out, "that Gideon was planning to marry me?"

Milo didn't answer right away.

"Milo."

"I don't know," he said. "Your father never told me that in plain terms. But given what's in that letter, given the timeline, I think he suspected it before he died."

I pressed a hand against my mouth, the coffee shop blurring around me.

"There's one more thing," Milo said. "Your father left a second document. Sealed, separate from everything else. I've never seen what's inside it."

"Where is it?"

"Locked behind a security key tied to your inheritance records. I don't have access to that key. Only you have it, through the estate portal, and you'll need to verify your identity with information your father set up for you and no one else."

"Milo, I need that document. If my father knew more about Gideon, I need to see it."

"I'll start looking into the access process tomorrow. It's not something we can rush, and not with him this close."

I thanked him and ended the call, my hands still trembling. The letter had left me too raw to sit surrounded by strangers, so I gathered my things and drove home, straight to the study, the one room in the house where I could still think. I called Milo back the moment I sat down at the desk, needing to finish what the first call had cut short.

"There's one more thing I keep circling back to," I said, the study door open behind me, the house silent around us. "If my father suspected Gideon that soon, why didn't he go to the board? Why write a letter instead of ending it himself?"

"I've wondered the same thing," Milo said. "My guess is he had suspicion, not proof, and your father never moved on suspicion alone. He built cases. He waited for certainty."

"And it killed him before he got there."

Milo didn't argue.

My phone buzzed against my ear.

A text message, sliding across the top of the screen mid-call.

*Gideon:* We need to talk about what you've been looking through.

The words hit me like a physical blow. I pulled the phone away from my ear, my heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat, and stared at the message like it might explain itself.

He knew. I had no idea how, but he knew.

"Milo, I have to go," I said, my voice unsteady. "He knows. A message from him is on my screen right now."

"Elise, wait, where are you right now, are you safe."

I didn't hear the rest.

Because I had already looked up from the phone, already turned toward the study door I hadn't remembered walking back toward, and found Gideon standing in the doorway, watching me with an expression I had never seen on him before.

Calm. Cold. Certain.

"Gideon." My voice came out thinner than I wanted it to. "I didn't hear you come in."

"I know you didn't." He stepped into the room, his eyes moving from my face to the phone still clutched in my hand. "That was rather the point."

I glanced down at the screen, at his message still glowing there, sent from somewhere close enough that he could watch my reaction land in real time.

He hadn't texted me from another room.

He had been standing behind me the entire time, close enough to read every word on my screen, close enough to hear every word I'd said to Milo.

"How long have you been standing there?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

Gideon's mouth curved into a smile that didn't reach his eyes, and he didn't answer.

He didn't need to.

The look on his face told me everything.

He had heard enough.