Chapter 16: The Man Behind the Curtain

Sienna's POV

A court officer ushered us into a small anteroom off the main hall, barely bigger than a closet, with two chairs and a water cooler that hummed too loudly in the silence. The door had not even fully closed before Andrea turned to face me.

"Sienna, listen to me."

"Tell me about Camille." My voice shook on her name even though I had only just learned it. "Tell me what happened to her."

He ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time he looked exhausted rather than dangerous.

"Camille was not a random woman I decided to obsess over. She worked for one of Blackwood's shell companies. I was building a case against him long before you ever walked into that bar, and she was part of it. I watched her because she had information that could bring him down."

"And then?"

"And then I got too close, and so did she. She agreed to testify against him. Three weeks later she vanished, and every trace of her digital life vanished with her." His jaw tightened. "I have spent eighteen months looking for her. I never found a body. I never found her alive either. Just nothing. That is the part that terrifies me, Sienna. Blackwood does not leave evidence behind. He erases it."

'So either she is dead, or she is hiding from a man powerful enough to make a person disappear.' My stomach turned again, sharper this time.

"And the photographs of me?" I asked. "The surveillance before we even met?"

His eyes did not waver. "Your father's company had a contract with one of Blackwood's subsidiaries five years ago, buried deep enough that it took my people months to find it. I started watching you because I thought you might be connected to him without knowing it. I kept watching because I wanted to." He stepped closer, voice dropping. "That part was never a lie. Wanting you was never strategy."

I wanted to believe him. The wanting to believe him scared me almost as much as the truth he was describing.

A knock cut between us. The court officer leaned in. "Mr Voss, someone is asking for you outside. Won't give a name. Says it's urgent."

Andrea's whole body went rigid. He looked at me, then at the officer stationed by the door. "Stay with her," he said, and stepped out before I could argue.

The room felt smaller the second he left it. I pressed a hand against the wall, breathing through the dizziness that had been building since that morning, and this time it did not pass quickly. The edges of my vision swam. I sank into one of the chairs and put my head down, counting my own pulse just to have something steady to hold onto.

The door opened again. I expected Andrea.

It was not him.

A man stepped inside, mid fifties, silver cufflinks, the kind of stillness that made the room colder just by standing in it. The court officer who was supposed to be guarding me had somehow already stepped aside, as if the man's presence alone had cleared the way.

"Miss Vance." His voice was pleasant in a way that made my skin crawl. "You look pale. Should I send for a doctor? I would hate for anything to happen to you. Especially now."

'Especially now.' The words landed wrong, too specific, too knowing.

"Who are you?" I asked, though some animal part of me already understood.

"Forgive me. Richard Blackwood." He said it the way other men said their own names with pride, watching for the flicker of recognition. "Andrea has spoken of me, I am sure. Probably not kindly."

I stood despite the swimming in my head, refusing to let him look down at me. "You should not be in here."

"I should not be in a great many places," he agreed pleasantly. "And yet here I am, and so is

Elena, and so was the footage that just rearranged your entire week. Funny how persistent I can be when I want something." His gaze drifted, slow and deliberate, down to my stomach for half a second before returning to my face. "You should take better care of yourself, Sienna. Stress is so bad for a woman in your condition."

The floor seemed to tilt under me.

"I do not know what you are talking about," I said, but my voice betrayed me with a tremor I could not control.

Blackwood smiled like a man who already knew the answer to a question he had only asked for sport. "Of course you don't."

The door swung open behind him. Andrea filled the frame, and the temperature in the room dropped to something I had never felt from him before, not even on the worst night in the kitchen, not even bent over his desk with the egg buzzing inside me. This was not possessive anger. This was something closer to murder held very carefully in check.

"Get away from her," Andrea said, each word flat and precise.

Blackwood did not move right away. He let the silence stretch just long enough to prove he was not afraid, then turned, straightening his cuffs with the same unhurried calm he had walked in with.

"We will speak soon, Andrea." He paused at the threshold and looked back at me one last time.

"Take care of yourself, Miss Vance. For both your sakes."

He walked out as easily as he had walked in, leaving the door swinging gently behind him.

Andrea crossed the room in two strides and gripped my shoulders, scanning my face. "What did he say to you? Sienna, what did he say?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but the room tilted hard, the floor rushing up to meet me, and the last thing I heard before everything went black was Andrea shouting my name like it was the only word he had left