Chapter 4

Rowan

The photo hit my desk at 5:47. My head of security, Marcus, forwarded it without a subject line, which told me how he felt about it before I even opened the attachment.

Grainy, taken from across the street with a long lens, but clear enough. Camila, leaving the building, coat pulled tight, that particular set to her jaw I'd already started cataloguing without meaning to. Underneath it, already circulating on three sites: Reclusive CEO's Mystery Visitor. One-Hour Meeting. Why oh why?

Marcus called two minutes later.

"You need to hear this part before you decide how angry to get," he said. "That stringer didn't stumble onto her. He had two shots. One going in, one coming out, time-stamped almost exactly an hour apart. Nobody camps a building for months on the off chance they'll catch a woman entering and leaving at precisely the right window."

"You're saying someone gave him the time."

"I'm saying it's the only version of this that makes sense, and I don't like it any better than you do." A pause, the kind Marcus uses when he's about to say something he'd rather not. "Four people knew that the meeting was happening today. You. Me. Marissa. Whoever's on her end handling the file."

"Then find out which one of those four has a second job."

"Already pulling the building's visitor logs and every camera on that block. There's one thing already sitting wrong with me, though. A car idled across the street for the better part of that hour, engine running the whole time. Didn't pick anyone up, didn't drop anyone off. Just waited. I'll have plates by morning."

That sat wrong with me, too, though I didn't say so out loud.

"Find out which one of those four has a second job," I said again. "And find out who was in that car."

I hung up and sat with the photo longer than I should have. Not because of the leak. Because of her face in it. Chin up, shoulders squared, like she'd decided somewhere in that elevator ride down that she wasn't going to let a single person on that sidewalk see how much the last hour had cost her.

I know that look. I've worn it myself, most days, for about ten years running.

Julian let himself in ten minutes later, no knock that actually meant anything by it. Took one look at my face and dropped into the chair across from my desk like he'd been summoned specifically to make fun of me.

"You look like someone stole your car," he said. "Or worse. Someone stole your Wi-Fi password."

"There's a photo of Camila leaving the building. It's already on three sites, and someone handed the timing to whoever took it."

"Ah." He leaned back, hands behind his head, entirely too relaxed for a man who'd known me fifteen years and should have understood exactly how bad that sentence was. "So the whole 'nobody can know' plan lasted, what, four days? That might be a record, even for you."

"It's not funny, Julian."

"It's a little funny." He grinned, unbothered, the same grin that got us both suspended junior year of college for something neither of us has ever fully admitted to our families. Then it faded, fast, replaced by something steadier. "Okay. Not funny. What do you need?"

That's the thing about Julian, nobody outside my life understands. He'll rib me until the exact second it matters, and then he's the first person in the room actually solving the problem instead of just standing in it.

"Someone leaked her schedule to a stringer. I want to know who."

"That's not a paparazzi problem, that's a security problem." All the humor dropped out of his voice at once. "I'll shake down every name on the PR side myself if I have to. Nobody talks about you to the outside press without going through me first; that's the whole point of my job." He was already pulling out his phone, thumbs moving. "Statement goes out tonight. Confirms nothing, denies nothing, kills the appetite before it grows legs."

"Good."

He glanced up. "You want me at the ceremony?"

"Obviously."

"Obviously," he repeated, softer, almost fond of it, and for a second the teasing dropped entirely. "Rowan. This is really happening. You're actually doing this."

"It's a contract, Julian."

"Sure it is." He didn't push, which was its own kind of mercy from a man whose favorite hobby is pushing. He stood, clapped a hand on my shoulder on the way past, same gesture he's used a hundred times, and it landed the way it always does, like a tether to something steadier than the rest of my life. "Whatever you need. Legal, PR, someone to hide a body. Just say the word."

"Noted."

"Love you too," he called over his shoulder, already halfway out the door, and the door shut on my laugh before I even realized I'd let one out.

I called Marissa after that, strictly logistics. Security detail for the ceremony, a media strategist to prep whatever answers Camila might need if a reporter got close enough to ask something real. Marissa pushed back twice, hard, the way she does when she thinks I'm deciding out of anger instead of strategy, and I let her push because she's usually right when she does it. I didn't ask her to tell Camila anything. That wasn't her job tonight.

I texted Camila myself instead.

You'll have seen the photo by now. The date isn't changing. Thursday, same time as planned. Security around the ceremony will be heavier than we discussed. That's the only difference.

Three dots appeared almost immediately. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Comforting to know a stranger photographing me is just Tuesday for you.

It's not something I'm taking lightly. I'm handling it.

You never did tell me why my name made you look like you'd seen a ghost. Handle that too, while you're at it.

I read it twice. Didn't answer right away, mostly because I didn't have a version of the truth I was ready to send her, and because some part of me was relieved she'd noticed at all instead of letting it go.

Thursday. Nine a.m. We'll talk after.

She didn't respond to that. I couldn't blame her.

Camila Elena.

I'd seen the middle name before, once, ten years ago, buried in the last set of personnel files my father ever pulled before he died. Marco Reyes's file. I'd gone through it exactly once, right after everything fell apart, looking for whatever evidence would confirm what everyone had already told me was true. Employment history. Performance reviews that read like praise right up until the end. And an emergency contact line, standard company paperwork, listing a wife's name in case anything ever happened to him on the job.

Elena Reyes.

My father must have read that same file. Somewhere in the last weeks of his life, sick enough that he wasn't running the company anymore, just sitting with what was left of it, he wrote me a note I still keep locked in a drawer nobody else has ever seen.

Tell Marco Reyes's daughter I'm sorry if you ever get the chance. Her mother's name was Elena. It's in his old file. I don't know why that detail is the one that's stayed with me, but it has.

Hearing Camila say it out loud today, casual, unthinking, the way you write your own name when you've done it ten thousand times, hit different than reading it off a page ever did.

I opened that drawer again that night, after Marissa's call, after Julian went home, after the office emptied out the way it does most nights when I stay later than I should.

The note was exactly where it always is. My father's handwriting was shakier than it used to be by the end.

Tell Marco Reyes's daughter I'm sorry if you ever get the chance.

I never told her anything. I married her instead, for reasons that had nothing to do with an apology and everything to do with ten years of anger I never found anywhere better to put.

I put the note back. Closed the drawer. Told myself, the way I have most nights for a decade, that I'd deal with what it actually meant some other time, once I understood the whole picture better than I currently did.

My phone buzzed once more before I left the office. Marcus.

Got a partial plate off the car. Registered to a shell company. Digging into who owns it now. One more thing. Whoever was in that car left before the photographer even got his second shot. Which means he wasn't watching her.

He was watching the building. Like he already knew she'd come back out.

Thursday was two days away. I had a wedding to prepare for, a decade-old apology I still hadn't figured out how to keep, and now someone circling close enough to know Camila's schedule before I'd fully confirmed it myself.

I didn't have a name yet. I intended to have one before Thursday ended.