CHAPTER NINETEEN

SELENE’s POV

One page…That was all it contained.

I stood at the dining counter with the folder open in my hands, the city lights glowing distantly behind me through the balcony glass. My wine sat forgotten on the counter beside me, untouched.

The document looked official at first glance. A scanned copy, slightly faded at the edges like it had been handled many times before reaching me. At the top, a private investigative firm’s letterhead, no address, no contact number. Just a case reference stamped in red ink.

CASE REF: BRX-2209 — WESTBRIDGE COASTAL INCIDENT.

My fingers tightened slightly against the paper. That was the official name the authorities gave the accident. Westbridge Coastal Incident. As though a grown woman disappearing into a violent ocean deserved that objective.

I forced myself to keep reading. The document was a suppressed preliminary investigation report, the kind filed before official findings were released publicly. Dated three days after the accident. Three days after Serena Vale was declared dead.

The first paragraph confirmed what I already knew. Two-vehicle collision. Secondary impact confirmed. Weather conditions severe.

I skimmed past it impatiently.Then the second paragraph caught my attention.

Physical evidence recovered from the secondary vehicle suggests premeditated positioning. The black SUV identified in the collision was traced to a shell company registered under a holding firm with no direct public ownership. However, internal transaction records show a single payment processed forty-eight hours before the incident. Payment origin: A private account linked to the Laurent family trust.

I read that line twice, then a third time.

Not Adrian Laurent specifically but the trust itself, which meant multiple people carried access to it. Possibly others inside the family structure I never fully understood during the years I was married into it.

My breathing was steady but my mind was already moving fast.

Leonard had warned me just few hours ago that suspicion was not the same as proof. He had also told me very deliberately, that Adrian Laurent and calculated murder did not fit together. But what I’m reading right now is on the contrast.

Fine, the Laurent family trust was different and Adrian was not the only Laurent but he is still the one at the highest position.

I lowered the document slowly and looked toward the city outside the window. The same city where I once sat inside a car drowning while everyone continued their lives without pausing.

I looked back at the document again, this time at the bottom half of the page. There were three lines left beneath the payment record. Smaller font, almost like an afterthought, or something added carefully to avoid being missed.

Driver confirmed deceased. Original coordination of incident traced through a secondary contact. Identity of secondary contact: unconfirmed at the time of filing.

Note appended by investigating officer: Physical evidence suggests a third party with intimate knowledge of the subject’s movements that evening coordinated the timing of the collision. The subject’s route was not publicly known.

My feet went colder, nobody except Ava knew I had gone to Ava’s apartment that night. Nobody knew I had left at that particular hour, in that weather, or on that specific road.

I doubted Adrian even knew where I was. He had been calling my switched-off phone repeatedly. Which is left with the option that whoever coordinated the timing of the crash had been watching me before I even left Ava’s building.

My mind drifted back to that night with uncomfortable clarity. I had driven in the rain, distracted and heartbroken. I hadn’t been thinking about whether anyone was following me. I had been thinking about Adrian’s voice, his betrayal, the divorce.

I set the document on the counter carefully and grabbed the wine I had left untouched.

This means someone else had been trailing me, someone with intimate knowledge of my movements, someone who knew I would be on that road.

That narrowed everything considerably. The accident was not a random hit arranged hastily. It was planned, monitored, and executed with enough precision to disable traffic cameras eleven minutes before I arrived.

That was the detail from the investigator’s report Adrian’s security team had recovered four years ago, the same file that was stolen from the Laurent Group archive breach earlier today.

Someone had disabled those cameras in a calculated window. That kind of preparation required time, and resources.

I took a sip of the wine. Then a thought flashed through my mind suddenly. Ava.

I had only told Ava I was coming that evening but Ava would never. The thought didn’t even finish forming before I dismissed it entirely.

I got to know that Ava had spent the last four years living in denial, she refused to believe the accident was natural and she had quietly investigated from the outside while the world moved on.

Definitely, not Ava. Which meant someone else had access to information I didn’t realize I was giving away.

I thought about the weeks before the accident. The late-night meetings I never questioned hard enough. Dinners I attended alone while he stayed behind at the office. Severe humiliation I endured from his mother, Victoria.

I used to think I was being paranoid during those months. Now, standing here with a suppressed report in my hands, I wondered how many of those moments had been observed.

My phone buzzed against the counter behind me. I turned around and looked at the screen, it’s an unknown number again. I stared at it for three full seconds before answering.

There was silence on the other end, I refused to speak too. Then a voice came up, low and deliberately distorted.

“You opened the folder.”

I straightened up instinctively. “Who is this?” I asked evenly.

“Someone who wants the same thing you do.”

I walked quietly toward the dining table, putting distance between myself and the window. Old instinct, Leonard had taught me never to stand near open glass during unknown calls.

“That tells me nothing,” I replied calmly.

“It tells you enough for tonight.” The voice paused briefly. “The document in that folder was buried four years ago. Filed once, suppressed within seventy-two hours. It may interest you that the officer who filed it resigned three weeks later.”

I kept my expression coordinated even though there was nobody watching me. “Why are you giving this to me?”

“Because the people who suppressed it are about to move again.”

I felt a sharp chill ran down my spine.

“Move how?” I asked.

“You’ve been disrupting Laurent Group publicly for days now. That makes certain people nervous, maybe Adrian.” Another brief pause. “Or the ones above or beneath him.”

I pondered on the last sentence. The ones above or beneath him. What does that mean—Is the caller pointing toward Victoria, Damien…or wait, is it Celeste? My mind was everywhere.

“How did you get into my penthouse?” I asked, redirecting.

There was a brief silence on the other end, then the caller spoke again, changing the subject. “It may interest you too, that the bracelet and the folder were not sent by the same person.”

I went still. “What?”

“The bracelet came from someone trying to frighten you. The folder came from me.” The voice stayed steady. “We are not working together. One wants you destabilized, the other wants you informed.”

I leaned toward the counter, my mind already sorting the pieces. “And the flowers?”

A brief pause followed, long enough to confirm he knew exactly what I was referring to.

“The orchids were different again,” he said carefully. “That was a test.”

“What test?”

“To see whether Adrian would notice your reaction.” The voice stayed even. “White orchids sent through Laurent executive services, then leaked to his security team within the hour. Whoever arranged it wanted Adrian watching you closely before he had time to think about why.”

My grip steadied around the phone. Someone had used Adrian as an instrument without him knowing. Pointed him in my direction deliberately, then stepped back to watch what happened next.

I forced my breathing to stay steady. “What do you want in return?”

“When the time comes,” the voice said quietly, then the line disconnected.

I lowered the phone and stood completely still in motion for a long moment.

My thought drifted to Leonard’s words again from our call earlier today. Who benefited more from all this?

I had spent four years building my answer around Adrian, his ambition, his silence, his willingness to replace me the moment I became inconvenient.

I picked up the folder and carried it toward the study room while still buried in my thoughts. I placed it inside the locked drawer beside the other documents I had quietly been collecting since returning to the city. I stood over the desk for a moment before straightening up.

The finger-tapping habit, the white orchids, the way Adrian looked at me across the ballroom in the Whitmore Gala night, like something in him already knew and couldn’t name it yet.

I had spent so much energy managing his suspicion that I had almost missed the most important question entirely.

If Adrian hadn’t arranged the accident, then someone inside his own family had. And that same someone had watched silently for four years while Serena Vale stayed buried and Adrian Laurent strengthened his empire above her grave.

I turned off the study light and walked back toward the bedroom.

Tomorrow I would call Leonard. I would tell him about the document, the phone call, and the careful distinction the unknown voice had made between the bracelet and the folder. I would watch his reaction and measure exactly how much he already knew.

Because I had known Leonard Arden to always being several steps ahead of everyone. The question I had never asked clearly enough was whether that included being several steps ahead of me.

I lay down on the bed without changing, staring at the ceiling, my head resting on one arm, eyes open in the dark.

Now I know two certain facts: The accident was never random. The timing was never coincidental.

And somewhere in the middle of everything I thought I understood, a truth I hadn’t reached yet was still waiting.

I closed my eyes slowly as the question rang in my head.

Who benefited more from all this?