All Chapters of One Night with My Ex-Fiancé’s Ruthless Brother: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

(Draxler POV) The scarf pin on Marcus's screen was small enough to miss if you weren't looking for it, and sharp enough — if you were — to cut a family open. Marcus had queued the footage to the ten-forty-six exit frame, the one where the woman came out of the clinic's side entrance two minutes after the courier. He'd zoomed to the neckline, to the scarf knot, to the pin at the center of it. At this resolution, enhanced, the design was legible: a shield, two crossed keys. The Churchill family crest. Not the corporate version that appeared on Churchill Sentinel's letterhead and in the lobby — the older version, the one you'd find on gate fixtures at Blackthorn and on pieces that had been given within the family's private circle for decades. I'd seen it on cufflinks. On tie bars. On the small decorative items Adrian had occasionally given people as markers of relationship. "The pin," I said. "From a set," Marcus said. "Private, not public. I traced the design through the estate je

(Marcus POV) Vivienne Vale arrived at the internal review room at nine-fifty-eight, two minutes before her scheduled time, which Marcus noted because people who arrived early to meetings they were uncertain about were usually arriving early to control the room before the other person set it. She was dressed well, which she always was — dark jacket, a simple necklace, the handbag that cost more than most people's monthly rent placed at the edge of the table where it was visible but not conspicuous. Her expression was the expression of a woman who had been managing rooms for long enough to have a default setting for rooms she hadn't been in before. The default setting was warm. "I appreciate you seeing me on short notice," Marcus said, which was the polite version of *I appreciate you coming when I asked.* He gestured to the chair across the table. She sat. "The review is standard for the estate crisis engagement — we're completing the internal communications audit, and I wanted to

(Keyla POV) The boardroom was quiet before Draxler entered, which was unusual. Boards were usually already in motion — the side conversations, the folder arranging, the social calibration that preceded formal meetings. This one had gone still in the way rooms went still when people had read a document and were deciding what they thought about it before anyone else told them what they were supposed to think. The packet Marcus had sent to the board at seven this morning had contained one word in the summary header: *Sample Integrity Concern.* Fourteen words of context beneath it, no speculation, no conclusion, just the documented facts — the seal comparison, the upload timestamp, the courier route stop, the duration. I sat at the table in the consultant's chair, which was the chair on the right side of the room, between Marcus and the board rather than beside Draxler. I'd been in this room before, on the wrong side of the agenda. Today I'd asked to be listed as *Crisis Strategist (Op

(Keyla POV) Leo had put the Paper Monster drawing under his pillow. I found this because I was sitting on the edge of his bed while he was still awake, the lamp at low, and he'd reached under the pillow for it the way some children reached for a favorite toy — not to look at it, just to know it was there. His hand found it, felt the folded paper, and he left it there and looked at the ceiling. I watched him for a moment before saying his name. "Leo." He turned his head slightly toward me. "Mm?" I lowered my voice. "There's something about the test I need you to know." He looked at me. The ceiling-looking face and the me-looking face were different — the ceiling one was the processing face, the me one was the listening one. He'd shifted to the listening one. "The first test," I said, "might not have been handled correctly. The adults are checking whether something happened that shouldn't have." Leo was quiet, his fingers still resting beneath the pillow against the folded paper

(Marcus POV) Marcus read the addendum twice because the first time felt too ugly to be real. The forensic team had sent it at eleven-forty-seven — flagged as an addendum to the main report rather than a revision, which was the language laboratories used when findings emerged after the primary document was already drafted but before it was filed. Dr. Farrow's name was at the bottom with her certification number, which was the formality that told Marcus this wasn't a note but a finding. He'd been at his desk since nine. The addendum was four pages. The first two covered the methodology of the internal vial examination — the process by which, with the board's authorization and Castillo's court order, the actual vials from the sealed cases had been removed from the lab's secure cold storage for forensic analysis. Not the cases. The vials inside them. The third page was the finding. Then he read it again. The vials had been collected into numbered slots within the transport case — a