THE DON'S DISCARDED BRIDE のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 91 - チャプター 100

Dominic walked into the briefing room at nine forty-seven. He did not say anything when he came in. He looked at the people around the table, then he looked at the photograph, and then he sat down. He did not touch it. He just looked at it. The room was quiet. Everyone watched him. Sophia had been in enough rooms with Dominic to know what his silence meant. This was not the silence of a man who was shocked. It was the silence of a man who was thinking very carefully before he did anything else. After a long moment, he spoke. "That's my jacket." Sophia looked at the photograph again. Dark blue jacket. Clean lines. She had seen that jacket many times. "You recognise it?" Dana asked. "I had it made in Milan four years ago," Dominic said. "There are three of them in the world. I have two. My tailor keeps one sample." He looked up from the photograph. "Somebody knew which jacket to use." The room was very still. "How would they know that?" Marcus asked. "They watched

She did not sleep. There was no point trying. Sophia knew the feeling well enough by now. When her mind locked onto something, it did not let go until it had the answer. Sleep was not available until the answer was found. So she did not look for it. She sat at her desk with the Foundation's access logs open on her laptop, a cold cup of coffee on her left, and a notepad on her right. The house was quiet. Outside, the city had gone dark. She worked. The access logs told her who had been in which system and when. Most of it was ordinary. Dana in the financial files every morning. Nico in the security systems throughout the day. Marcus in the community records. Priya in the legal archive. But she was not looking for ordinary. She was looking for the places where the pattern bent. Where someone had been somewhere they should not have been, at a time that did not fit, for a reason that was not recorded. She found three things that did not match. She wrote them down. Then

Sophia Cross did not fall apart. She had fallen apart before. She knew the shape of it. She knew how the floor disappeared and how long it took to come back. She knew exactly what it cost and how long it lasted. But not today. Today she could not afford the floor. The first thing she did was take Elena to the guest house. Her mother was already awake when they arrived. Elena Vasquez opened the door before Sophia could knock, which meant she had been watching from the window, which meant she already knew. Sophia did not have to explain anything. Her mother simply opened her arms and took Elena, and Elena went without complaint because she loved her grandmother and her grandmother's house smelled like good food and there were goats next door that Elena had strong opinions about. Isabelle was at the kitchen table with a pot of tea. "Go," Isabelle said to Sophia. "We have her." "She saw them take him," Sophia said quietly. "I know," her mother said. "We will handle it

Nico did not answer her question. Not right away. He sat behind the wheel of the car and looked straight ahead through the windscreen and was quiet for so long that Sophia started counting the seconds without meaning to. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. She had never heard Nico be silent for this long about anything in three years. Then he said, "I need to make a call." He picked up his phone. He did not look at her. He dialled a number she did not recognise and held the phone to his ear. Three rings. Then a man's voice answered. Older. Careful. The voice of someone who had been waiting for a specific call for a very long time and had decided exactly what he would say when it came. "She knows," Nico said into the phone. "Or she is close enough." A pause. Then the voice said, "Then it is time." Nico hung up. He put the phone down on the seat between them. He still did not look at her. "Nico," she said. "I know," he said. "Who was that?" He was quiet for one

Agent Diana Chen. Sophia wrote the name on a piece of paper and set the pen down and looked at it. She had been sitting at her desk for ten minutes doing nothing else. Just looking at the name. Because the moment she moved on it, she was investigating a sitting federal agent of the United States Department of Justice. And if she was wrong, or if she moved too fast, the consequences would be different from anything she had ever navigated before. She was not wrong. She knew she was not wrong. But there is a difference between knowing something and being able to prove it. And she needed the second before she could use the first. She left the paper on her desk and went to make coffee. James called at noon. "The ring," he said, before she could speak. "Tell me," she said. "I found where it was made," he said. "It took me most of the morning. I went through jewellery databases, auction records, specialist craftsman directories, three different online forums for custom metal