Chapter 15: The Hearing

Sienna's POV

I did not sleep the few hours I tried. The ceiling of the guest room blurred and sharpened depending on how long I stared at it, but my mind

kept circling the same loop. Andrea had ordered a man's death. My father wanted me back. And in three hours, a judge would decide whether the last six weeks of my life were a contract or a cage.

By six I gave up pretending and dressed in the navy suit his assistant had sent over the night before. When I stepped into the kitchen, Andrea was already there, two cups of black coffee on the counter, his jaw tight in a way I was starting to recognize as fear wearing a tie.

"You should eat something," he said without looking up.

"I can't." My stomach had been turning since I woke, and for the first time the nausea did not feel like nerves. I pushed the thought away before it could finish forming. There would be time to be afraid of that later.

He studied me a beat too long. 'He notices everything,' I thought. 'Just maybe not the right

things yet.'

"Sienna." His voice dropped, quieter. "Whatever happens in there today, I am not letting anyone take you. Not your father. Not Blackwood. Not a judge in a robe who has never had to choose between a company and a conscience."

"That is not exactly comforting, Andrea."

"It was not meant to be comforting. It was meant to be true."

The courthouse steps were already crowded with reporters by the time the car pulled up, more than I expected for a quiet motion hearing. Andrea's hand found the small of my back as we climbed toward the doors, steady even as cameras flashed and someone shouted my name like they had a right to it.

Inside, my father sat at the opposing table beside a lawyer I had never seen before. Tall, silver haired, a smile too practiced to be friendly.

'Where is Mr Donnelly?' My father's lawyer for fifteen years. This was someone else entirely.

The bailiff called the case. Before either side had said a word, the new lawyer rose like he already owned the room.

"Your Honor, the petitioner would like to submit additional evidence regarding the circumstances under which this agreement was formed."

Andrea went very still beside me.

"Objection," our attorney said. "This was not disclosed in discovery."

"Obtained yesterday evening," the lawyer said smoothly, "from a source with direct knowledge of

Mr Voss's acquisition strategy."

The judge allowed it. A laptop fed a screen at the front of the room, and the lights dimmed enough to project a security feed timestamped six weeks earlier. A hotel bar. A familiar tall figure at a corner table, watching the door. He had been there before I ever walked in. Before Simon. Before the tequila. Before any of it.

A second clip. Same man, same table, two nights before that, paging through a folder of photographs.

Photographs of me.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

"Mr Voss," the lawyer said, turning to face our table directly, "would you care to explain why you were watching Miss Vance for at least seventy two hours before the night you claim was a chance encounter?"

The room blurred. I turned to Andrea and watched the mask slip all the way off for the first time since I had met him. Not arrogance. Not anger. Something closer to grief.

He started to say my name, but I cut him off before he could finish.

"Don't." My voice came out flat, foreign even to my own ears. "Was any of it real?"

"It was never about the company," he said quietly, low enough that only I could hear under the lawyer's continuing argument. "I had been watching you for months before that night. Not the company. You."

The silver haired lawyer turned to the gallery and gestured toward the back of the room. "And the source of this footage would like to address the court directly."

A side door opened. A woman in black walked in, dark hair pulled back severely, eyes locking on Andrea with the kind of hatred that only comes from burying family because of someone.

Elena.

The whole courtroom seemed to hold its breath as she stepped forward without being called, ignoring the bailiff, ignoring the gavel.

"My brother is dead because of that man," she said, voice shaking but clear. "And I am not finished taking things from him. Starting with her."

She looked directly at me.

"Ask him what happened to the last woman he watched this closely, Miss Vance. Ask him where she is now."

The gavel cracked. The room exploded into noise, reporters scribbling, my father on his feet shouting something I could not hear over the ringing in my ears, Andrea's hand gripping my arm as the world tilted sideways.

Security moved to escort Elena out. She turned back once, and smiled.

"Check your phone, Sienna. I already sent you her name."

My hands shook as I pulled it from my bag. A new message glowed on the screen, the same unknown number that had haunted me for weeks. One photo attached. A dark haired woman smiling into the camera at a company gala, Andrea standing close behind her, his hand at her waist exactly the way he held mine.

'This was me, eighteen months ago. He watched me for four months before he made his move.

Three weeks after I tried to leave him, I disappeared. Get out while you still can.'

I looked up at Andrea, the question rising in my throat, but the bailiff's voice cut through the chaos first.

"Order, or I clear the room."

The judge banged her gavel a final time, eyes sweeping the courtroom with fury.

"We resume this hearing in fifteen minutes," she announced. "And Mr Voss, you and I are going to have a very different conversation when we do."

Fifteen minutes. That was all the time I had to decide whether the man holding my hand under the table was the only thing keeping me safe, or the most dangerous person in the building.