Chapter 6

Eliana stared at the photograph.

Then she looked at Drevian and back at the photograph. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the paper, almost as though she could force the image to change if she held it tightly enough.

It didn't.

The man in the photograph remained exactly where he had been, standing behind Isabella at the charity event, his face clear enough to be recognized.

And in that moment, Eliana knew the face. She had seen it in the portraits downstairs. She had seen it in the family photographs. She had seen it in the newspaper articles she had read after arriving at Wolfe Manor.

"Your father?"

Drevian gave a single nod.

"Raymond Wolfe." He added.

"But your father died twenty years ago."

"Yes." Eliana looked down at the photograph again.

"This was taken almost nine years ago."

"I know."

There was something unsettling about how calmly he said it.

He didn't look shocked or confused. He looked like a man who had spent years trying to convince himself that something impossible could have an explanation. Eliana turned the photograph around.

"Who took this?"

"I don't know." He shrugged.

"Who put it in Isabella's file?"

"I don't know." She looked at him sharply.

"Then why do you look like you already know what it means?"

Drevian's gaze moved away from hers and that was enough of an answer.

He knew something. Perhaps not everything, but enough to understand that the photograph had just reopened something he had spent years trying to bury.

Eliana lowered the photograph.

"What happened to your parents?"

Drevian was silent for a moment.

"They died in a car accident."

"Both of them?" Eliana tried to confirm. At least, something had to be true from all the news had to say about his family.

"Yes."

"When?" She pressed further.

"Twenty years ago."

"And you were fourteen?" His eyes returned to hers.

"Yes."

Eliana studied him.

"What do you remember?" His expression became distant.

"Not much."

He walked toward the desk and rested one hand against its edge.

"I remember the telephone ringing late at night. I remember my aunt arriving at the house before anyone explained what had happened. I remember police officers speaking quietly in the hallway and people trying to keep me away from the adults."

His voice remained controlled, but there was something beneath it now. And, it was something Eliana couldn't quite name.

"I remember the funeral," he continued. "I remember the flowers. I remember everyone telling me how strong I was."

He paused.

"But I don't remember seeing my father's body."

Eliana's eyes narrowed.

"Did you ever question that?"

"Not then."

"Why not?"

"I was fourteen." The answer was simple, but it carried the weight of twenty years.

At fourteen, Drevian had accepted what adults told him because there had been no reason not to. His parents were dead. That was the story.

Until Isabella had questioned it.

"She knew," Eliana said and Drevian looked at her.

"Isabella suspected the accident wasn't an accident."

"And you didn't believe her?"

"Not at first." Drevian sighed.

"What changed?"

Drevian's gaze dropped to the photograph.

"She died."

Eliana didn't respond.

"After that," he continued, "I stopped dismissing things simply because they didn't make sense."

He opened one of the files on the desk.

"There was a police report that disappeared. A financial record that had been altered. A witness who changed his statement and disappeared before I could question him."

Eliana listened.

"You've been investigating your parents' deaths all this time?"

"Not continuously."

"But long enough."

"Long enough." He admitted.

She looked at the photograph again.

"And you never found anything like this."

"No." He answered.

"Until Isabella."

"Until Isabella." He repeated after her.

"And now me."

Drevian's eyes lifted and Eliana's stomach tightened.

"You knew Isabella was investigating this."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The question left her mouth before she could stop it. She immediately realized how strange it was that she expected him to tell her anything at all.

They barely knew each other, yet she had married him.

Drevian took a slow breath.

"Because I didn't want you involved." Eliana gave a disbelieving laugh.

"You hired me to become your wife."

"I know."

"You brought me into this house." She pointed out.

"I know."

"You showed me a contract that gives you control over where I go, what I say and how much of my own life I am allowed to disclose."

"I know."

"You know a lot."

He stepped closer, although he stopped several feet away from her.

"I wanted to keep you safe."

Eliana's expression hardened.

"You should have thought of that before offering me ten million dollars, Mr. Wolfe."

"I did." The answer made her pause, and her eyes narrowed.

"Then why did you choose me?"

Drevian said nothing. The question had been there from the beginning.

It had followed her through every page of the contract, every room of Wolfe Manor and every conversation they had shared.

Why her? Why not someone else? Why had a billionaire with access to almost every woman he could possibly want approached an ordinary woman struggling to pay her father's medical bills?

Drevian finally answered.

"Because someone was already looking for you."

The room seemed to tilt.

"What?"

"Three months before I approached you, someone accessed your father's medical records."

Eliana's mouth went dry.

"What does my father have to do with any of this?"

"I don't know." Drevian shrugged, shifting his weight from one leg to another.

It was the first time she had heard him say those words without immediately following them with an explanation. She didn't believe him.

"You keep saying that."

"Because it's true." He almost scoffed.

"You're lying again."

"I'm not."

"Then tell me everything."

Drevian's expression tightened, his head suddenly aching from the trouble the woman was.

"I can't."

"Why?" He looked at the photograph.

"Because I don't know who I can trust."

Eliana's anger faltered as Drevian looked at her.

"Neither do you."

The words remained between them long after he stopped speaking.