A laugh broke out of Serena before she could stop it. It was small and cracked, but it was there.
Nora blinked as if she had not heard that sound in a long time.
“Send the records,” Serena said.
Within five minutes, her phone filled with documents. State filings. Property transfers. A scanned audit page with her name circled not under liability, but under internal concern raised by staff. There was also a photograph of Adrian Cross beside the mayor at a business forum, and another link confirming the Cross Group’s acquisition work.
Serena read until the words blurred.
Twenty-two minutes after the call, someone knocked.
Not hard. Not like Roman. Two careful taps.
Serena looked through the peephole.
A man stood in the hallway beneath the flickering light. He was in his late forties, tall, silver at the temples, wearing a dark coat with rain on the shoulders. Beside him stood a woman in her sixties with short gray hair, a garment bag over one arm and the expression of someone who had no patience for nonsense.
Serena opened the door with the chain still latched.
Adrian Cross did not step forward.
“Good,” he said. “You still know not to trust easily.”
The woman lifted the garment bag slightly. “I’m Maribel. I have raised three children, buried one terrible husband, and altered dresses for women who forgot they were allowed to take up space. May we come in?”
Serena unlatched the chain.
Adrian entered only after Maribel did. He placed a leather folder on the small kitchen table and kept his hands visible. That carefulness almost undid Serena more than any grand gesture could have.
Roman had always entered rooms as if everything inside already belonged to him.
Adrian asked where he could sit.
Maribel, meanwhile, took one look at the apartment and said, “Children, I smell soup and worry. Which one of you knows where the bowls are?”
Jamie pointed solemnly to a cabinet.
“Excellent,” Maribel said. “You are now chief of bowls.”
By the time Serena sat at the table, Nora and Jamie were eating, and the apartment no longer felt like it was holding its breath.
Adrian opened the folder.
“This is what Roman expects,” he said. “He expects you to arrive alone. He expects you to look tired. He expects you to react emotionally when he provokes you. He expects to call that proof that you are unstable.”
Serena swallowed. “He knows me.”
“He knows who you became while surviving him,” Adrian said. “That is not the same thing.”
He slid the first page across the table.
It was the original audit summary from the Vale Family Foundation.
Serena’s eyes moved over the lines slowly. There were donor accounts, internal flags, dates, and notes. One sentence stopped her cold. Concern raised by S. Hale regarding irregular transfers.
Not suspect.
Whistleblower.
She touched the paper with two fingers.
“I asked about these accounts,” she said. “Roman told me I misunderstood. Then he told everyone I caused it.”
“The final version of this audit was buried,” Adrian said. “But not destroyed. Roman’s former controller kept a copy. She now works for me.”
Serena looked up.
“She knew?”
“She suspected. She was afraid. Roman made sure everyone around him was afraid of something.”
That sounded exactly like him.
