Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

They didn't tell anyone about the text.Not Pri, who hugged Temi so hard at the reception she nearly knocked the small bouquet from her hands, laughing and crying in equal measure and asking a dozen questions Temi answered with half her attention elsewhere. Not Naomi, who circulated through the small crowd of guests with the watchful efficiency of a woman still calculating risk even during a celebration. Not even Elias, who caught Temi's eye once across the room with an expression so knowing it made her wonder, briefly, whether he already suspected something had happened, before deciding she was reading too much into an old man's natural perceptiveness. The small reception, tucked into a private room adjoining the chapel, felt almost surreal in its ordinariness, string lights and a simple three tier cake and a handful of guests who had no idea what had nearly derailed the ceremony an hour earlier.Adrian found her near the edge of the small gathering an hour later, two glasses of cham

The next move came at six in the morning, before any of them had managed even an hour of real sleep.Temi's phone buzzed against the coffee table, the sound sharp enough to jolt her upright from where she'd finally drifted off sitting up, still in her wedding dress, Adrian dozing uneasily in the chair across from her, Naomi and Vivian long gone home for a few hours' rest before regrouping. Outside the windows, the first gray light of dawn was just beginning to touch the tops of the city's buildings, the kind of hour that usually belonged to joggers and delivery trucks, not crisis meetings about blackmail and stolen financial records. Temi grabbed the phone before the second buzz finished, expecting another cryptic threat.It wasn't a text this time.It was a news alert.Adrian's eyes snapped open the second she made a small, strangled sound in her throat, and within seconds he was beside her, reading over her shoulder, both of them staring at the same headline in silence.Exclusive: N

Temi read the text three times before the words fully registered, each pass through them making her stomach drop a little further. Camille's small sitting room, so ordinary and warm just minutes ago, now felt charged with a different kind of tension entirely, the three of them frozen in place around whatever was coming next.Looks like you found my cousin's little hideaway. Clever girl. Too bad it's already too late to matter."What does he mean, too late," Camille said, reading over Temi's shoulder, her earlier anger giving way entirely to something closer to panic now. "Too late for what?" Her voice had lost all its earlier composure, the guarded, wounded woman from a few minutes ago replaced by someone genuinely afraid of what her own family member might have set in motion.Adrian was already dialing, phone pressed to his ear before Temi had finished processing the question herself. "Naomi. Derek Whitfield. Camille's cousin, works in cybersecurity, staying at the Connecticut addres

The car ride back to the studio felt like the longest twenty minutes of Temi's life, Adrian driving this time instead of his usual driver, weaving through evening traffic with a focused intensity that matched the tight, silent dread sitting between them. Neither of them spoke, the city blurring past the windows in streaks of light, both of them bracing for whatever waited at the other end of the drive.Pri was waiting outside the brownstone when they arrived, pacing the sidewalk with her phone clutched in both hands, her face pale in the streetlight."Show me," Temi said, barely getting out of the car before reaching for the phone.Pri hesitated. "Temi, before you watch it, I need you to know it's edited. Cut together to look worse than whatever actually happened. I don't know the full context yet, but the framing is deliberate.""Show me anyway."Pri handed over the phone, and Temi pressed play with hands that weren't quite steady.The video opened on a shot of the studio's back offi

The Hudson Valley estate looked different at night, the warm stone facade lit only by scattered exterior lamps, the ivy climbing its walls cast in shadows that made the whole house feel older and more watchful than it had in daylight. Temi and Adrian arrived a little past ten, having driven up in near silence after the chaos of the evening, both of them too drained and too anxious about what Elias needed to tell them to fill the space with conversation. The gravel crunched beneath the car's tires as they pulled up the long drive, the house's windows glowing faintly against the darkness like something patient, waiting.Elias was waiting for them in his study this time, not the sunroom, a smaller, dimmer room lined floor to ceiling with old books and framed photographs spanning what looked like decades of family history. He sat in his wheelchair near a low fire, a blanket over his knees, and gestured for them to sit across from him without any of his usual sharp, teasing warmth. Temi no