Chapter 9
Audrey knew Sebastian was furious because he became polite.
That was apparently how the most dangerous version of him looked.
He thanked Nurse Ramirez for staying late.
He told Nico to arrange additional medical generators.
He asked Mrs. Bell whether she needed tea.
Then he walked into the hospice office, closed the door, placed the photograph on Audrey’s desk, and said, very calmly, “You are coming with me.”
Audrey folded her arms.
“No.”
Sebastian stared at her.
“You have apparently spent several months being photographed by men employed by Malcolm Voss.”
“I noticed.”
“Someone wrote instructions to remove you.”
“I can read.”
“You are not staying here tonight.”
“Yes, I am.”
Sebastian took a breath.
“Do you actively enjoy making reasonable conversations impossible?”
“When did this become reasonable?”
“When someone began planning your death.”
Audrey’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
Sebastian saw it.
His anger softened around the edges.
“Come to my house.”
“No.”
“It is secure.”
“So is a prison.”
“You are comparing my home to prison?”
“You married me for revenge and told me I would remain your wife until you decided my debt was paid.”
Sebastian went silent.
The words sounded different now.
He remembered saying them.
He remembered the satisfaction he had expected to feel.
Now they sickened him.
Audrey continued.
“You do not get to turn protection into ownership again because you’re scared.”
That word reached him.
Scared.
Sebastian had not allowed anyone to use it about him in years.
Yet he did not correct her.
Because she was right.
He was terrified.
Not for himself.
For her.
That distinction had become increasingly impossible to ignore.
“What do you suggest?” he asked.
Audrey blinked.
“You’re asking?”
“Yes.”
She studied him as if searching for a trap.
“Security outside. Plain clothes. No weapons visible inside. Staff continues normally.”
“Two men on each entrance.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“One during the day. Two at night.”
Sebastian considered.
“Fine.”
“And nobody follows employees home.”
“That depends.”
“Sebastian.”
“Fine.”
Audrey stared.
“You’re terrible at compromise.”
“I just compromised twice.”
“You negotiated yourself into getting almost everything.”
“That is generally how I compromise.”
Against her better judgment, Audrey laughed.
Sebastian felt the sound somewhere beneath his ribs.
Then Audrey became serious again.
“There is something else you need to know.”
He waited.
She sat behind the desk.
For the first time that night, she looked afraid.
Not of Malcolm.
Of him.
Sebastian slowly sat opposite her.
“What?”
“The night Catherine took my car wasn’t only about Oliver.”
His body went still.
Audrey folded her hands.
“She met someone.”
“Who?”
“Elise Grant.”
Sebastian recognized the name immediately.
Former financial controller for Ror Maritime.
She had disappeared nine years earlier after allegedly embezzling company funds.
Sebastian had personally authorized the investigation.
They never found her.
“Elise stole three million dollars.”
“No.”
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.
Audrey continued.
“She found the same transactions Thomas found.”
“That does not explain the missing money.”
“It was not missing.”
Audrey opened the blue ledger.
She turned to a page near the center.
There, beside three account numbers, Thomas had written:
Reclassified as theft to discredit E.G.
Sebastian read it twice.
“My father.”
“Yes.”
He sat back.
His father’s ghost seemed to fill the office.
Vincent Ror had taught Sebastian everything he understood about power.
Never apologize publicly.
Never admit uncertainty.
Never let fear become visible.
Never allow another man to define the battlefield.
Sebastian had spent half his life becoming the son Vincent respected.
Now each new piece of Catherine’s evidence suggested his father had built parts of the family empire through fraud, intimidation, and destroyed reputations.
“Elise is alive?” he asked.
“She was when Catherine met her.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did they meet?”
Audrey hesitated.
Then chose trust.
“Pier Nineteen.”
Sebastian looked up.
“You’re telling me.”
“Yes.”
“Why now?”
“Because Oliver has been exposed whether we like it or not. And because Catherine’s instructions were not meant to keep the truth buried forever.”
Audrey slid the ledger toward him.
“They were meant to make sure you heard it when you were ready to hear it.”
Sebastian looked at Catherine’s handwriting.
“How do you know I’m ready?”
“I don’t.”
That answer almost made him smile.
“But tonight you sent two armed men to the police instead of making them disappear.”
His mouth flattened.
“Please stop sounding impressed by my basic restraint.”
“I’m working with the material available.”
Sebastian looked at her.
Then something happened neither had planned.
He laughed.
Not the controlled, humorless sound Audrey had heard before.
A real laugh.
Short.
Rough.
Unexpected.
Audrey smiled.
Sebastian realized he liked making her smile.
The realization arrived with enough force to become dangerous.
He looked away first.
“Tell me about Catherine’s final night.”
The smile vanished.
Audrey was quiet.
Then she began.
“Catherine came back from Pier Nineteen around midnight. She had been gone almost three hours.”
“Was she hurt?”
“No.”
Sebastian exhaled.
“She was exhausted. Her cancer had progressed quickly. She knew she shouldn’t have gone.”
“But she did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Elise had something Catherine needed.”
“What?”
“A copy of Thomas’s original audit.”
Sebastian looked at the ledger.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never saw it?”
“No.”
“Catherine?”
“She hid it.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened automatically.
Audrey noticed.
“There’s the old expression.”
“What expression?”
“The one where you start mentally opening walls.”
“I am not opening walls.”
“You’re considering it.”
He did not deny it.
Audrey continued.
“Catherine returned to the hospice and asked me to sit with her. She knew she was getting worse.”
Sebastian’s expression changed.
“She could barely keep water down by then. The doctor told us days, maybe a week.”
He looked toward the window.
Audrey’s voice softened.
“She wasn’t afraid to die.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
“I was.”
“She knew.”
His eyes returned to hers.
“She worried about you more than herself.”
“That seems unlikely considering she wouldn’t call me.”
“It’s exactly why she wouldn’t.”
Audrey leaned forward.
“She said if you came, you would look at her like there was still something to fix.”
Sebastian did not move.
“She didn’t want her last conversation with you to become a negotiation with death.”
That hurt.
Audrey saw it.
“She wanted to remember you as her brother, not watch you become a man trying to buy one more month.”
Sebastian rubbed his thumb against his index finger.
The old nervous habit.
Audrey had seen Catherine recognize it.
Now she reached across the desk and placed her hand over his.
He froze.
“You would have tried,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“I would have found every specialist.”
“I know.”
“I would have taken her anywhere.”
“I know.”
His voice lowered.
“I would have done anything.”
Audrey’s fingers tightened around his.
“That was exactly what she was afraid of.”
Sebastian looked at their hands.
Then turned his palm upward beneath hers.
The gesture was so small that Audrey almost missed its meaning.
He was holding her hand back.
“She died at four thirteen in the morning,” Audrey said.
Sebastian’s eyes closed.
“I was beside her.”
He swallowed.
“She asked me to open the window because she wanted to hear the rain.”
A faint smile touched Audrey’s mouth.
“She said you hated rain.”
“I do.”
“She said that too.”
Sebastian looked at her.
“Her last clear sentence was, ‘Tell Sebastian I wasn’t running from him.’”
His grip tightened.
Audrey continued.
“She said, ‘I was trying to leave him something better than revenge.’”
Sebastian bowed his head.
For several seconds, the office held only silence.
Audrey moved around the desk.
She stopped beside him.
Sebastian did not look up.
She rested a hand on his shoulder.
That was all.
No speech.
No reassurance.
Just presence.
He covered her hand with his.
Minutes passed.
Eventually Sebastian stood.
Audrey remained close.
Too close for indifference.
He looked down at her.
“I owe you an apology.”
She blinked.
“For what?”
“For the wedding night.”
Her expression changed.
“I married you intending to punish you.”
“I know.”
“I believed knowing one fact made me entitled to every conclusion.”
Audrey said nothing.
Sebastian continued.
“I used the hospice because I knew it was the one thing you would sacrifice yourself to protect.”
“Yes.”
“I made your compassion a weapon against you.”
The words came slowly.
Sebastian was not a man accustomed to apologies.
That made each sentence heavier.
“I was wrong.”
Audrey looked at him for a long time.
“You were.”
The directness almost made him smile.
She did not rescue him from the discomfort.
Catherine would have liked that.
“I cannot undo it,” he said.
“No.”
“But I can stop asking you to pay a debt that never existed.”
Audrey’s eyes lowered toward the wedding ring she had not worn since the first night.
It was still in Sebastian’s suite.
Between them, something shifted.
“The marriage,” she said.
“Yes.”
He forced the next words out.
“You can leave whenever you want.”
Audrey looked up.
Sebastian held her gaze even though every instinct in him wanted to qualify the offer.
After Malcolm.
After Oliver was safe.
After Catherine’s evidence was secure.
After he understood why imagining Audrey leaving suddenly felt intolerable.
But freedom with conditions was not freedom.
So he said nothing else.
Audrey’s eyes searched his.
“You mean that.”
“Yes.”
Her voice softened.
“And if I stay?”
Sebastian stopped breathing.
“Then I would prefer you stay because you choose to.”
The silence between them changed.
Audrey stepped closer.
Sebastian could feel her breath.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
Then returned to her eyes.
“Do not kiss me because you’re grieving,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You’re staring at my mouth.”
“That does not mean I planned well.”
A small laugh escaped her.
Sebastian lifted his hand.
He touched one strand of hair near her cheek.
“Audrey.”
She did not step away.
“Yes?”
He kissed her.
Slowly.
Nothing about it resembled the public kiss at their wedding.
That had been performance.
This was question.
Audrey answered by gripping his jacket and kissing him back.
For several seconds, Sebastian forgot Malcolm.
Forgot the hospice.
Forgot the blue ledger.
Forgot every calculation that had defined his life.
Then Audrey’s phone rang.
They separated.
Both breathing differently.
Audrey looked at the screen.
Unknown number.
Sebastian’s expression sharpened.
“Speaker.”
She answered.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice whispered.
“Audrey Whitaker?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Elise Grant.”
Sebastian went still.
Audrey gripped the phone.
Elise continued.
“Catherine told me you were the only person I could call if Malcolm moved against the boy.”
Audrey looked at Sebastian.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
A pause.
“But I can tell you where Thomas’s original audit is.”
Sebastian stepped closer.
Elise lowered her voice.
“Catherine hid it somewhere Malcolm would never voluntarily enter.”
Audrey frowned.
“Where?”
“The Ror family mausoleum.”
Sebastian’s face changed.
May you like
Specifically, when Elise added:
“Inside Vincent Ror’s coffin.”
