Chapter 7 - The Questions He Wouldn’t Answer

The room felt different after Vanessa left.

Not quieter, exactly. The house had settled into its usual afternoon sounds: the low hum of the air conditioner, the faint clink of dishes somewhere downstairs, the distant murmur of traffic beyond the gates. But Arabella could no longer pretend the afternoon was ordinary.

The folded paper lay on her bed where she had placed it. She had looked at it twice already, and each time the same details caught her attention: the names of Montgomery Holdings and Knight Enterprises, figures beside transaction references, and the heading that connected everything to the old waterfront development.

It looked official enough to matter. It was also incomplete enough to be useless.

There were no explanations, no signatures she recognised, and no clear indication of who had moved what money—or why. The repeated reference number bothered her most. Vanessa had said she found the paper in Sebastian’s car three days ago. If it was merely an old business record, why had he kept it with him? And why had he described it as confidential?

Arabella picked up her phone and opened the photograph she had taken of the page. She enlarged the figures until they blurred, then lowered the phone with a frustrated breath.

She hated being the last person in a room to understand what was happening.

For years, she had trusted Sebastian to tell her when something mattered. He had been the person she called after a difficult meeting, the person who knew how to make her laugh when family expectations became unbearable. Yet lately, every answer he gave seemed carefully measured, as if he were choosing what she was allowed to know.

Vanessa’s visit had unsettled her in a different way. Her friend had brought the document, but she had also avoided questions. When Arabella asked if there was anything else she should know, Vanessa’s expression had changed before she denied it.

Maybe Vanessa was frightened. Maybe she was protecting someone. Arabella didn’t know which possibility hurt more.

A notification appeared on her screen.

Sebastian: Dinner tonight? Just us. We haven’t had a proper evening together in ages.

For a moment, she stared at the message. It sounded like him—warm, familiar, almost effortless. A few weeks ago, she would have smiled and asked where he wanted to go.

Tonight, the invitation felt like another question she wasn’t ready to answer.

She typed, “I’m tired. Another time,” then paused before sending it. It was a small lie, but she couldn’t explain the truth without revealing how much she suspected. She pressed send and placed the phone face down.

His reply came less than a minute later.

Sebastian: Of course. Get some rest. Call me when you can.

There was nothing threatening in it. Nothing she could point to and call proof. That made the doubt harder to bear. She didn’t want to turn every kind gesture into evidence against him, but she could no longer accept every reassurance without question.

Her thoughts shifted to Adrian Knight.

He had never pretended to be gentle with her. He asked blunt questions, watched people too closely, and seemed to believe that everyone had a price. Arabella disliked the way he spoke as though he knew more about her family than she did.

Still, he had told her to ask her father what happened to the Knight family’s investment twenty years ago. At the time, she had heard it as an accusation. Now, with the document in front of her, it sounded more like a warning—or perhaps a challenge.

She wasn’t going to Adrian with a page she couldn’t explain. He would turn every uncertainty into leverage, and she had no intention of handing him that advantage.

Her father, however, could not be avoided forever.

Arabella carried the paper to her desk and slipped it into a plain folder. She considered waiting until morning, but the longer she sat with it, the more questions gathered in her mind. She needed to know whether Richard recognised the reference number, whether he knew Sebastian had the document, and why the old project was appearing in the company’s current records.

She called him.

He answered after the third ring. “Arabella?”

“Are you busy?”

“A little. Is everything all right?”

The question sounded routine, but she heard the caution beneath it. “I need to ask you something about the waterfront development. The project you worked on with the Knights.”

Silence settled over the line. Not long, but long enough for her to notice.

“Why are you asking about that now?” he said.

“Because you’ve told me pieces of the story, never the whole thing. And because I’m beginning to think the past has more to do with what’s happening to the company than you’ve admitted.”

Her father exhaled slowly. “This isn’t a conversation for the phone.”

“Then I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”

Another pause. “Come in the morning.”

Arabella looked at the folder on her desk. “And will you answer my questions this time?”

“I’ll tell you what I can.”

It wasn’t the promise she wanted. Before she could change her mind, she added, “There’s something else. I have a document connected to the project.”

Her father went completely quiet.

Then, in a voice stripped of its usual patience, he asked, “Where did you get that document?”