Chapter 7.

Mia glanced down the hallway, lowering her voice even though there was no one close enough to hear. “There were other people involved in the fraud ten years ago. People who helped my father cover the money’s trail — people he’s been paying off ever since, one way or another. He thinks tonight was a message. That someone believes the debt still isn’t settled.”

Something shifted behind Damian’s eyes — not surprise, she realized. Recognition.

“You already knew,” she said slowly. “Didn’t you?”

“I suspected.” His jaw tightened. “The file in my study — the photographs, the names — I’ve spent ten years trying to piece together exactly who helped Richard walk away clean while my father lost everything. I always assumed there were others involved. I never had proof.”

“And now?”

“Now I have two men on security footage and a father-in-law with a story that finally lines up with a decade of guesswork.” He said it flatly, almost clinically, and Mia felt something cold settle in her chest.

“He said the same thing.”

“Then he’s right.” Damian stepped closer, and for the first time since she’d met him, she saw something that looked almost like real concern cross his face — quickly masked, but not quickly enough. “Which means starting tonight, you have security with you at all times. No exceptions.”

“I don’t need a babysitter, Damian.”

“You need to be alive long enough for this to matter.” His voice sharpened. “I didn’t marry you just to watch you become collateral damage in a mess I’ve spent a decade trying to solve.”

Something about the way he said it — I didn’t marry you just to watch you become — snagged in Mia’s mind, but before she could untangle it, a nurse rounded the corner, expression tight with the particular urgency Mia had come to dread over the last hour.

“Mr. Cross, Ms. Bennett — there’s something you should see. Security just flagged something on the footage from the parking structure.”

They followed her to a small security office where a guard sat in front of a bank of monitors, footage paused on a grainy, black-and-white frame. He rewound it, then played it forward slowly.

Two men, dressed in dark clothing, approaching Richard Bennett as he unlocked his car. A struggle. One man’s face turned toward the camera for less than a second before he ducked away.

Mia’s stomach dropped.

He didn’t answer right away. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost all its usual composure.

“That’s Victor Reyes.” He said the name like it cost him something. “He used to work security for my father. Before the company collapsed, before everything fell apart — he was one of the last people to see my father alive the night he died.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“You’re telling me the same man connected to your father’s death just attacked mine?”

“I’m telling you,” Damian said slowly, “that whatever happened ten years ago didn’t end when the fraud investigation closed. It’s been running underneath everything, all this time — and I think we just found proof that someone very powerful has been keeping it buried.”

He turned to the guard. “Pull every file you have on Victor Reyes. Current address, phone records, everything.” Then, to Mia, quieter: “This isn’t just about your father’s debt anymore. This is about who really destroyed my family — and I think we’re about to find out they’re still out there, still protecting themselves, and now they know you exist.”