CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SELENE’s POV

Leonard was already awake when I arrived at his private residence at seven in the morning. That didn’t surprise me. In four years I had never once caught Leonard Arden unprepared for anything. He existed in a permanent state of readiness always.

His housekeeper led me through the main corridor without a word. The residence was quieter than mine, and filled with the particular stillness of a space that had absorbed decades of careful thinking. Dark wood paneling, shelves lined with documents rather than decorative objects, everything functional and deliberate.

Leonard sat at the long dining table with coffee and a newspaper, folded precisely in half. He looked up when I entered.

“You could have called,” he said.

“I preferred not to,” I replied as I walked toward the dining area.

He studied my face briefly before gesturing toward the chair across from him, I sat down carefully.

His housekeeper reappeared silently with a second cup of coffee and set it in front of me.

Leonard folded the newspaper once more and set it aside.

“Victor Hale,” I said.

I had spent the entire drive over deciding that the quickest way to measure Leonard was to give him no time to arrange his expression.

He picked up his coffee cup. “What about him?”

“He was found unconscious at the Hargrove Summit last night. Drugged.”

Leonard took a slow sip before setting the cup down. “I heard about that.”

“When was that?” I asked curiously.

“This morning, before you arrived.”

I watched him carefully. So he knew and he had let me open with it as though it were new information to both of us. As little as it is, it confirmed what I had been quietly assembling for weeks.

“You know Victor Hale,” I asked.

“He attended your investor meeting,” he replied.

“He also financed two of Laurent Group’s overseas structures.” I leaned forward slightly. “He was a thread connecting both sides of this. And now someone has pulled him out of the picture.”

Leonard’s expression remained composed. “You think it’s connected to your investigation.”

“I think everything lately is connected to my investigation.” I kept my eyes on his face. “What I don’t know is how much of that you already knew before I did.”

There was a brief silence, Leonard turned his coffee cup once slowly against its saucer, a small movement I had learned to recognize. It meant he was deciding how much of the answer to give.

“Victor Hale has been a person of interest to me for longer than you’ve been Selene Arden,” he said finally.

I stayed still. “Explain that.”

Leonard set the cup down. “When I began rebuilding you four years ago, I spent considerable time mapping the network connected to your accident. Hale’s name appeared early and consistently,” he paused. “He was a quiet financier, the kind who processed money between parties without appearing in any public record connecting him to either side.”

“He moved money for whoever arranged the accident,” he said finally.

The words landed with so much weight I had been bracing for.

I leaned back slowly. “You’ve known this for four years.”

“I’ve suspected it for four years,” Leonard corrected. “Suspicion requires time to become evidence.”

“And in four years you didn’t think to tell me.” I asked.

“In four years you were rebuilding yourself.” His voice stayed even. “Giving you an unconfirmed name connected to your accident before you were stable enough to handle it would have derailed everything we built.”

I looked at him for a long moment. The reasoning was logical and seemed structured.

“What else have you been holding back in the interest of my stability?” I asked quietly.

An expression moved across his face, like that of a man who understood a line had been crossed and was deciding how to stand on the correct side of it going forward.

“The suppressed report you received,” he said.

I went still, I have not even told him about it yet. I had wanted to tell him after Victor Hale’s but I just decided to stall a bit.

“You know about it?” I asked.

“I know who sent it,” he replied evenly, his voice unnervingly calm.

“Who did?” I asked.

Leonard folded his hands against the table. “The investigative officer who originally filed that report and resigned three weeks later. His name is Martin Reeves. He left the force under pressure but kept a copy of everything he filed.” Leonard paused. “He has been trying to resurface that report for three years through channels that kept getting closed before they reached anyone useful.” He paused for a second, his gaze fixed on me. “Until he reached you.”

I processed that slowly. Martin Reeves. A name I could now attach to the unknown caller. A former officer who had spent three years trying to expose a suppressed report and had finally found his way to the one person with both the resources and the motive to use it.

“You knew about him too?” I asked.

“I became aware of him approximately eight months ago,” he replied.

“And you didn’t bother to tell me that too.”

“I was verifying his credibility,” he said calmly.

“You were verifying his credibility for eight months. Can I know better?” I was anxious but stable.

Leonard held my gaze steadily. “Unreliable sources have destroyed better plans than ours.”

I stood from the chair and walked toward the far end of the room, needing the distance. My reflection caught briefly in the dark glass of a framed document on the wall…Selene Arden’s face looked back at me, structured and composed, giving nothing away even when everything inside was recalibrating.

I turned back toward him. “The flowers,” I said. “The orchids sent through Laurent executive services, and the bracelet left in my office.” I crossed my arms. “ Do you know anything about that too?”

Leonard’s expression barely changed. “Yes.”

My eyes widened and narrowed back almost immediately. “Interesting, share it.”

He was quiet for a second longer, deepening my impatience. “Someone inside the Laurent family structure who became aware of your return before you made your presence public.” He paused carefully. “Someone who recognized that Selene Arden’s acquisition pattern was too precise to be coincidental.”

I studied him. “You’re being deliberately vague.”

“I’m being appropriately cautious, Selene. There’s a difference between caution and withholding.” He paused again. “And I’ve been guilty of both at different points. I won’t pretend otherwise.”

That honesty disarmed me a bit, Leonard had always understood that a carefully placed admission bought more trust than a perfect deflection, and he had hopped on that.

I walked back toward the table but didn’t sit.

“I need everything you have on Martin Reeves,” I said. “And everything you have on Victor Hale.” I placed my hands on the table, directly opposite him and leaned forward slightly. “Not summaries. Everything!”

Leonard nodded once. “I’ll have it sent to your secure server by this afternoon.”

“This morning, not this afternoon.” I said firmly.

A faint almost-smile crossed his face. “By noon.”

I picked up my bag from the chair. “One more thing.” I paused for a second to see if he will catch that too, but he was quiet. “Ava Bennett, my friend, is back in the city.” I said.

I noticed how he controlled the faint stillness that moved through his posture.

“I know that already,” he said.

“Of course you do.” I said cynically. “She was forced out three months after the accident because she got close to an evidence and someone had removed her quietly.”

I watched him carefully. “Did you know about that when it happened?”

The pause that followed was the longest of the entire conversation. Leonard picked up his coffee cup, found it empty, and set it back down.

“I became aware of it afterward,” he said finally.

We both knew wasn’t a full answer, but the way he said it told me it was closer to the truth than most things he had said this morning.

I held his gaze for one more second before turning toward the door. Then, a step to the door, I turned back.

“Leonard.” I called.

He looked up.

“The next time you decide an information is too much for my stability,” I said quietly, “remember that I survived an accident and four years of rebuilding myself from nothing.” I paused at the doorway. “I think I can handle information no matter how hard it may be .”

I left before he could respond.

The morning air outside brushed against my face as I walked toward the car. Marcus held the door open without a word, reading the silence around me the way he always did. I got in and sat still for a moment after the door closed.

Leonard had given me two names today. Martin Reeves and a confirmation about Victor Hale. Partial truths delivered with enough honesty to feel like trust while the edges remained carefully trimmed. He had also reacted to Ava’s name in a way that told me her return meant something to him beyond what he admitted.

I stared at the back of the seat ahead of me.

Four years ago, I had trusted Leonard Arden completely because he pulled me out of the water when no one else did. That gratitude had shaped everything: how I listened to him, how I deferred to him, how I accepted incomplete answers because the alternative was having no answers at all.

But gratitude was not the same as alignment. And for the first time since my rebirth, I was beginning to doubt if Leonard Arden’s plan and mine had been exactly the same from onset.

The question was how long they had been diverging. And how much of what that had been for him.