Evelyn's POV

"Listen to this," I said, sliding the black plastic device across the dining table.

Leo stared at it, his fork suspended over his untouched steak. "What is that?"

I pressed the center button.

Grant’s voice crackled through the tiny speaker. "Just keep crying for the nurses, Celeste. Play the victim. I just need to keep my wife calm until I get my voting shares back. Once the board reinstates me, we will throw her out and move into the master suite."

I stopped the playback. The silence in the dining room felt heavy.

"He does not care about this family," I told my son, keeping my tone perfectly level. "He is using you to get his company back."

Leo’s fingers curled into tight fists. He did not look betrayed. He looked furious.

"You bugged his bag?" Leo demanded, his voice cracking.

"An investigator recorded it. That is not the point, Leo. He is planning to steal—"

"You are spying on him!" Leo shouted, pushing his chair back. The wooden legs scraped loudly against the floor. "He just survived five years on a desert island, and you treat him like a criminal."

"He is acting like a criminal," I countered. "He brought a pregnant woman into our home. He is lying to the press. He is trying to manipulate the board."

"Because you gave him no choice!" Leo yelled, stepping away from the table. "You care more about your stock prices than your own husband. You always have."

"I care about protecting what is ours."

"You care about control," Leo shot back, his face flushing red. "For five years, all you did was work. You never talked about him. You never cried. You just sat in your office and acted like he never existed."

"I was saving this family from bankruptcy," I said, my voice hardening.

"You were erasing him!" Leo accused. "And now that he is back, you cannot stand that he is getting attention."

"I kept a roof over your head," I reminded him. "I paid off ten million dollars of his debt. I kept you in private school."

"I do not care about the money!"

Leo reached deep into his jeans pocket. He pulled out the heavy, tarnished brass compass Grant had given him a decade ago. He gripped it so hard his knuckles turned white.

"He promised he would come back," Leo said, his chest heaving. "He kept his word. He fought his way back to us. But you do not even want him here."

"Leo, be rational."

"I would rather live in a tent with him than stay in this icebox with you," Leo spat.

He slammed the compass down onto the mahogany table.

The glass face shattered instantly. Tiny shards sprayed across the polished wood, glinting under the chandelier. The brass casing dented, the needle spinning wildly off its axis.

My throat burned. A sharp ache bloomed behind my ribs.

I looked at the broken glass, then up at my son’s flushed, angry face. I did not shed a tear. I refused to let him see the pain.

Instead, I pulled my phone from my blazer pocket.

"Briggs," I said into the receiver.

The head of my security detail answered immediately. "Yes, Ms. Adler."

"Lock the perimeter gates," I ordered, my tone completely flat. "Leo is not to leave this property under any circumstances. If he tries to walk out, physically stop him."

"Understood."

I ended the call and set the phone down.

Leo stared at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. "You are locking me in?"

"I am keeping you safe from a manipulator," I corrected. "Go to your room."

"You cannot do this!"

"I just did," I said. "Upstairs. Now."

He turned and sprinted up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. His bedroom door slammed a moment later, shaking the walls.

I remained at the table, staring at the broken compass. I left the pieces exactly where they lay.

At two in the morning, the house was completely still.

I sat at the massive oak desk in my study, the glow of my laptop illuminating the dark room. Thick binders of five-year-old shipping logs covered the surface. I flipped through a stack of invoices, searching for the anomaly Noah Reed had mentioned.

My cell phone buzzed against the wood.

"Did you track the Cayman proxy?" I asked, answering on the first ring.

"Not yet," Noah said over the line, his voice rough with fatigue. "The proxy is buried behind three layers of shell corporations. But I found something else."

"Tell me."

"I pulled the original maintenance records for your husband's yacht," Noah explained. "The official report stated a catastrophic failure in the navigation array caused the crash."

"I remember," I said, turning a page in the ledger. "A power surge fried the comms gear."

"I tracked the supplier of that specific gear," Noah continued. "A company called Horizon Marine Tech. They won the contract to outfit the yacht just two weeks before Grant set sail."

"Who owns Horizon Marine Tech?"

"Nobody," Noah replied. "It is a ghost entity. The business address is a vacant lot in Miami. But the initial funding for Horizon came from a private account."

I stopped turning pages. "Grant's account."

"Exactly. He bought faulty equipment from his own fake company, installed it on his yacht, and used the failure as his alibi for the crash."

"He engineered the entire disaster."

"He left a paper trail, Evelyn. Find the Horizon Marine Tech invoices in your internal servers. If we can prove he authorized that payment, federal investigators can seek a warrant."

Noah hung up.

I set the phone down and opened the Adler Enterprises legacy database.

My fingers flew across the keyboard. I typed the supplier name into the search bar.

Horizon Marine Tech.

The screen flashed red. Access Denied. Encrypted File.

Grant had locked the financial routing numbers before he left. He wanted to make sure no one could trace the money back to his personal accounts.

I pulled a flash drive from my top drawer. It contained a decryption program my IT director used for corporate audits. I jammed the metal drive into the side port of my laptop.

A black terminal window popped up.

Initiating override.

A green progress bar appeared in the center of the screen.

14%...

I tapped my fingernail against the edge of the desk. The silence of the study felt suffocating.

45%...

"Come on," I whispered, watching the numbers climb.

72%...

If I secured these routing numbers, I could hand Grant over to the authorities by dawn. I could protect Leo. I could save my company.

89%...

The floorboards out in the hallway creaked.

I froze. My hand hovered over the keyboard.

95%...

Someone was standing directly outside my study.

99%...

A key slid into the brass lock of my study door.