Lahat ng Kabanata ng THE BODYGUARD’S HIDDEN TRUTH : Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

Marcus didn’t move for a long moment after Ethan read the name aloud. He just stared at the screen like it might change if he looked at it long enough, like the letters would rearrange themselves into something less impossible.“That’s not—” He stopped, swallowed, tried again. “That’s a mistake. A clerical error. It has to be.” “Marcus.” Ethan’s voice was careful, the way it got when he was handling something breakable. “When’s the last time you spoke to your father?” “He died when I was nineteen.” Marcus’s hands had gone very still on the keyboard. “Heart attack. I was the one who found him.” “Did you ever go through his things afterward? Papers, accounts, anything like that?” “No.” The word came out rough. “I was nineteen, Ethan. I buried him and I took the security job Victor offered me because I needed something to do with my hands that wasn’t grieving, and I never once thought to ask why a man who worked as a groundskeeper his whole life would have anything to do with a holding c

We didn’t talk about the kiss again right away — not because either of us regretted it, but because something about naming it too quickly felt like it might make it smaller than it was. Instead, for the rest of that morning, we existed in a strange, comfortable orbit around each other, finding excuses to be in the same room without needing a reason.I found him in the library after lunch, and instead of leaving him to whatever he was reading, I sat across from him with a book of my own, and we stayed like that for over an hour, saying nothing, occasionally glancing up to find the other already looking. It was, I realized, the first entirely unremarkable afternoon I’d had since the ballroom, and I hadn’t known how much I needed one until it was already happening.“You’re staring,” he said eventually, not looking up from his page. “So are you.” “I’m allowed. You’re the one supposed to be reading.” “I am reading.” “You’ve been on the same page for twenty minutes.” I closed the book, caug

The diner was smaller than I expected, tucked at the edge of town where the buildings started thinning into gas stations and empty lots. I sat in a booth near the back, exactly as instructed, my hands wrapped around a coffee cup I had no intention of drinking, the tracker Ethan insisted on pressed flat and invisible beneath the collar of my jacket. “I’m in position,” Reyes murmured through the earpiece, her voice barely audible over the ambient clatter of the diner. She was two booths away, a newspaper open in front of her, playing the part of an uninterested stranger with practiced ease. “Marcus has the street.” “Copy,” Ethan’s voice followed, tight with the particular tension of a man forced to wait somewhere he couldn’t see me. “If anything feels wrong, say the word and we move.” “I’m fine,” I murmured back, barely moving my lips. “Just nervous.” “You’re allowed to be.” “That’s not very reassuring.” “I never said it would be.” At exactly noon, the bell over the door chimed, and a

Nobody moved for a moment after Marcus said it. “Together,” Ethan repeated slowly. “My father and Richard Hale. In the same hotel.” “Same floor, according to the front desk log Reyes pulled a few minutes ago,” Marcus said, glancing toward the doorway where Reyes now stood, phone still in hand. “Adjoining rooms.” “That’s not a coincidence,” Reyes said. “Two men who supposedly haven’t spoken in eighteen years don’t end up in adjoining hotel rooms by accident, especially not on the same day Lillian meets with a witness who names one of them standing over Eleanor Sterling’s body.”I felt something cold move through me. “You think they’re working together.” “I think it’s possible they always were,” Reyes said carefully. “Grief doesn’t rule out complicity. Richard could be genuinely mourning his sister and still be protecting himself, or protecting Daniel, for reasons we don’t understand yet.”Ethan was already pulling his jacket back on, jaw set. “I want to see them. Tonight.” “That’s not

The account trail took most of the day to untangle, Reyes and Marcus buried in financial records while Ethan paced between them and the window like a man who’d rather be doing something with his hands. I spent the morning trying to be useful and mostly failing, restless in a house that suddenly felt too quiet after everything the last two days had unearthed.By early afternoon, Reyes had a lead solid enough to chase in person — a small accounting firm two towns over that had processed payments for Aldridge Holdings until its dissolution, still technically operating under a different name. “If anyone kept physical records instead of purging everything,” she said, “it’ll be a place like this. Small enough to be sloppy. Big enough to have survived.”“I’ll go,” Ethan said. “You’ll need someone who can talk to an accountant without sounding like you’re about to arrest him,” Reyes said. “That’s not really your strength, Knight.” “I can be charming.” “You can be intimidating. There’s a diffe