Chapter 2 - “Yes.”
The answer struck him because it held no bitterness.
Only fact.
“Elena—”
“I didn’t come here to take you from her.”
“Then why did you come?”
“To warn you.”
“About what?”
She looked toward the empty hallway.
“The men following me aren’t after me because of my cousin’s organization.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“You said—”
“I said my cousin’s organization fractured.
That part is true.
But the threats began after I found financial records showing someone inside your company has been moving money through three construction firms.”
“Bellandi money?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe you brought that information here and then kissed me as part of a warning?”
“No.”
Her voice softened.
“The kiss had nothing to do with the records.”
“Then what did it have to do with?”
Elena looked at him for a long moment.
“With the fact that I was afraid.”
Adrian said nothing.
“When people are frightened, they reach for familiar things,” she continued.
“Sometimes they confuse familiarity with love.
I made a mistake.
You made one too.”
The honesty left him without a defense.
“I loved you once,” Elena said.
“That doesn’t mean I still want the life we might have had.
I came to you because you were the only person I believed would look at the records without selling them back to the highest bidder.”
“And Claire?”
“I wanted to speak to her.”
“About the kiss?”
“About you.”
His expression hardened.
Elena did not retreat.
“You told me Claire trusted you.
You said she understood what this life required.”
“She does.”
“No, Adrian.
She understands what you show her.”
The words followed him after Elena left.
At 8:42, Claire stood outside the Bellandi Foundation beneath a stone archway bearing the family name.
She had changed into the sweater Sofia gave her, but she still felt like an intruder in her own life.
The foundation supported literacy programs, neighborhood clinics, and scholarships for first-generation college students.
Claire had helped establish most of those programs.
Yet as she entered the marble lobby, she felt as though she were stepping into a building that belonged entirely to Adrian.
The receptionist looked up.
“Mrs.
Bellandi?”
Claire stopped.
The woman stood quickly.
“Mr.
Mercer asked me to expect you.”
“Where is he?”
“Conference room three.”
Claire followed her down a quiet corridor lined with photographs of children receiving books, families cutting ribbons, and Adrian standing beside city officials with an expression of polite attentiveness.
In every picture, he looked composed.
In none of them did he look like the man who had kissed Elena.
Daniel Mercer was waiting beside the windows.
He was in his early sixties, silver-haired, with the patient manner of someone accustomed to difficult conversations.
Claire knew him as the foundation’s legal director.
He had attended her wedding, though he and Adrian had never been close friends.
“Claire,” he said.
“Thank you for coming.”
“What belongs to me?”
Daniel gestured toward a chair.
“Please sit.”
“I’ve had enough people telling me where to sit.”
He accepted the rebuke with a small nod.
“Then I’ll stand.”
He placed a folder on the table.
Claire recognized the blue leather.
It had belonged to her mother.
She reached for it but did not open it.
“How did you get this?”
“Your mother gave it to me twelve years ago.”
Claire stared at him.
“My mother died eight years ago.”
“I know.”
“Why would she give you anything?”
“Because she was worried about Adrian.”
The room seemed to lose its air.
Daniel opened the folder.
Inside were copies of bank statements, property records, and handwritten notes in her mother’s familiar script.
Claire read the first line.
Adrian is not the one who should concern you.
It is the person he refuses to see clearly.
Her fingers tightened against the paper.
“What does this mean?”
“Your mother asked me to keep these until you were ready to ask questions.”
“Questions about what?”
“About the original Bellandi estate accounts.
About money diverted before Adrian took control of the organization.
About a private security contract that was canceled after one of the guards discovered surveillance equipment in the family residence.”
Claire looked up.
“Surveillance equipment?”
“Hidden microphones.
They were removed before Adrian knew they existed.”
“Who installed them?”
“We never proved it.”
“Then why give this to me now?”
Daniel’s expression changed.
“Because yesterday, someone accessed a dormant foundation account using authorization credentials that belonged to you.”
Claire went still.
“I haven’t accessed any foundation account.”
“I know.”
“Who did?”
“That is what we are trying to determine.”
He slid another page across the table.
At the bottom was a digital signature.
Claire Bellandi.
The date was three weeks earlier.
She stared at it until the letters blurred.
“I didn’t sign this.”
“No.”
“Then someone used my identity.”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
Daniel did not answer immediately.
Instead, he turned to the final page in the folder.
It was a printout from the estate’s security system.
A single line had been highlighted.
Eastern service entrance camera disabled by administrator access: C.
Bellandi.
Claire felt the blood drain from her face.
Her own security code had opened the gate.
Her own credentials had turned off the camera.
Someone had not merely helped her escape.
They had made it appear that she had done it herself.
“Who has access to my code?” she asked.
“Adrian, Tomas, you, and the system administrator.”
“Who is the system administrator?”
Daniel looked toward the closed conference room door.
“Until last month, a man named Peter Vale.”
Claire searched her memory.
The name meant nothing.
Daniel continued, “He resigned abruptly twenty-one days ago.
The same week your foundation credentials were used.”
“Where is he now?”
“We don’t know.”
A silence settled between them.
Claire looked again at her mother’s handwriting.
The person Adrian refused to see clearly.
Not Elena.
Not Claire.
Someone close enough to move through the estate, access the accounts, and use Claire’s identity without raising suspicion.
“Why would my mother know about this?”
Claire asked.
“Because she believed the person responsible had been near your family for years.”
“Did she name him?”
Daniel’s face was grave.
“No.
She wrote that naming him without proof would put you in greater danger.”
Claire closed the folder.
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Find the proof.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“You make it sound simple.”
“No,” Daniel said.
“I make it sound necessary.”
Her phone was gone.
Adrian would already be searching for her.
Every instinct told her to remain invisible, to protect herself from another betrayal before she understood the first one.
But the folder had changed the shape of the morning.
This was no longer only about a kiss.
Someone had been building a lie around her for years.
Someone had used her name, her marriage, and perhaps her husband’s trust as cover.
Claire rose.
“Does Adrian know about this?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because we received the security report at 7:10.
Before we could reach him, he ordered the estate sealed.”
Claire thought of Adrian holding her ring.
For the first time since she had left, she wondered whether he was searching for her because he was furious—or because he had finally realized she had been placed in danger.
Daniel gathered the papers.
“There is one more thing.”
Claire waited.
“The camera was not disabled from inside the estate.”
“Then how?”
“From a remote terminal.”
“Where?”
Daniel met her eyes.
“Your mother’s old apartment in Hyde Park.”
Claire could not move.
The apartment had been empty since her mother’s death.
Adrian had offered to sell it, but Claire had refused.
She kept the place locked, preserved exactly as it had been, because it was the last room in the city that belonged only to her.
No one should have been there.
May you like
No one except Claire.
And perhaps the person who had been waiting for her to come home.
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