32

Louis’s POV

The confirmation arrived at dawn, as the first grey light crept across the bedroom ceiling. A single word on the encrypted channel, followed by a data packet of fabricated but flawless police reports, witness statements from nonexistent bystanders, and meteorological data supporting the “icy conditions” narrative.

***Terminated.***

I read the word on my phone’s screen, the glow etching the letters into the dark room. A life, ended. A threat, neutralized. A transaction, complete. There was no feeling attached to it. It was a line item on a balance sheet. The part of me that should have felt horror was buried too deep, armored by a decade of colder calculations and the absolute priority that was Sierra and Katie, sleeping beside me.

I slipped from bed carefully. Sierra was curled on her side, her breathing deep but not entirely peaceful. Her eyelids fluttered. She knew. The realization had settled between us last night, unspoken but palpable, coloring every touch, every sigh. She had looked it in the face and hadn’t flinched. She had come to me instead, our passion a war fought on a different battlefield. Her silence this morning was her answer. She had chosen to stay in the fortress, even now that she could see the blood on the foundations.

In my study, I reviewed the data packet. Crowe’s work was, as expected, immaculate. Lena Moreau was a tragic headline, not a scandal. The tenuous link to Celeste would be noted, the further link to me would be a speculative footnote in only the most desperate tabloids. It was contained.

But as I scanned the morning’s aggregated news feeds on a separate screen, I saw the first ripple. A gossip columnist with a reputation for venomous intuition had written a short piece:

***Tragedy Follows Trevane Entourage? First the explosive exile of Victor Hale, now the sudden death of Celeste Moreau’s sister in Europe. Our favorite new billionaire family seems to be a vortex of drama. One wonders what skeletons are dancing in those palatial closets…***

It was innuendo. Nothing more. But it was a seed. And seeds could grow in the fertile soil of public obsession.

I deleted the feed just as the door to my study opened. Sierra stood there, already dressed in soft yoga pants and a sweater, her hair in a messy bun. She held two mugs of coffee. Her face was carefully neutral, but her eyes were watchful, deep.

“You’re up early,” she said, her voice quiet. She handed me a mug.

“So are you.” I took it, our fingers brushing. A current passed between us, charged with everything we weren’t saying.

She walked to the window, looking out at the dewy gardens. “I saw the news. About Lena Moreau.”

I didn’t insult her intelligence by pretending. “I saw it too.”

“It’s very sad.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Icy roads.”

“Yes.”

She turned then, leaning against the window frame. The morning light caught the gold in her hair. “That man who came to see you. Shaw. He mentioned her, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And now she’s dead.”

I met her gaze evenly. “A coincidence.”

A faint, almost sad smile touched her lips. It held no judgment, only a weary understanding that cut me deeper than any accusation could. “Of course.”

She pushed off from the window and came to stand before my desk. She placed her coffee down and leaned her hands on the polished wood, her posture not of a supplicant, but of a partner reviewing the ledger. “What happens now, Louis? With the… speculation?”

Her pragmatism in the face of my sin was more humbling than any tears. She was already thinking about the next move, protecting our ground.

“We do nothing. We express polite, distant sadness if asked. We focus on the gala next week. We are a picture of serene, forward-moving family life. The noise will fade. It has nothing to feed on.”

She nodded slowly. “And the source? Shaw. Is he… a resolved issue?”

The question was delivered in the same tone she might ask if the gardener had dealt with the aphids. The transformation in her was complete, and it was my creation.

“He will be,” I said. “Permanently. But not in the same way. He’s a cockroach. He’ll scuttle back into the shadows if he knows the queen is dead and the king is watching. A financial incentive, combined with a very specific threat, will suffice.”

“Good.” She picked up her coffee again. “We have a final fitting for my gala gown today. Your mother is coming at eleven. She’ll have seen the news.”

“And she will say nothing, because she understands the game better than anyone.”

Sierra finally let her mask slip, just a fraction. A flicker of anguish crossed her face. “What game are we playing, Louis? Really? What’s the end?”

I stood and came around the desk. I took her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me. “The game is survival. The end is a long, happy life with you and Katie. Where you are safe, and loved, and free to build your patisserie empire and teach our daughter how to be a better person than her father. That’s the only end that matters.”

A tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek. I wiped it away with my thumb.

“I love you,” she whispered. “Even now.”

“Especially now,” I corrected, my voice thick. I kissed her, a soft, sealing kiss. A promise and an apology.

The day unfolded with a surreal normalcy. My mother arrived, her gaze sharp as a hawk’s. She kissed Sierra’s cheek, complimented her complexion, and during the fitting, while Claudette fussed with pins, Nia said casually, “Such a pity about that Moreau woman. A reminder that the past has long claws. One must be diligent in clipping them.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror, a silent message of understanding and complicity. The Trevane women were a formidable breed.

In the afternoon, I handled Shaw. A meeting was arranged in a public park. Marcus accompanied me, a silent, intimidating presence. I didn’t sit. I looked down at Shaw, who seemed to have shrunk further into his cheap coat.

“Lena’s unfortunate accident changes nothing between us, Shaw,” I said, my voice carrying just enough to reach his ears. “You will take this.” I handed him a envelope containing fifty thousand dollars in cash. “You will consider it severance. You will leave the country for six months. You will never speak my name, or the name Monaco, again. If you do, you will not find lawyers. You will not find police. You will find the kind of silence Lena found. But yours will be… messier. Do you understand?”

He took the envelope with trembling hands, his face the color of curdled milk. He understood. He would run, and he would keep running.

One problem, contained.

But as I returned home, a different kind of problem was waiting. Sierra was in the living room with Katie, building an elaborate block tower. She looked up as I entered, and her smile was warm, but it didn’t reach the new depth in her eyes. A part of her had been walled off, a chamber where the knowledge of what I was capable of lived.

I joined them on the floor, helping Katie place the final block. Our daughter’s laughter was a bell, clear and pure in a house that now felt heavy with secrets.

Later that night, as I worked in my study, the encrypted channel lit up once more. Not from Crowe. It was an automated alert from a deep-web monitoring service Marcus employed.

A query had been initiated. From an IP address traced to an investigative journalist with a Pulitzer for exposing corporate corruption. The search parameters: **Louis Trevane. Monaco. Yacht. Incident. 2012.**

Shaw was gone. Lena was dead. But the digital ghost of my past was stirring. Someone was still digging.

The walls of my fortress were soundproof and impenetrable to physical threats. But the world of information was a sieve. And a single, determined bloodhound with a scent could eventually dig its way in.

I leaned back in my chair, staring at the alert. The game wasn’t over. It had just changed players.

And this new player didn’t want money. They wanted a story. They wanted the truth.

And the truth was the one thing I could never, ever let them have.