Sienna's POV
-
I hadn't confirmed the meeting with Damien.
I had sent "Where" and he had sent The Glass Jungle and then I had sat in the dark for two hours doing nothing useful and by morning I still hadn't replied to the address.
Which meant I was going.
People who weren't going didn't spend two hours thinking about it. They just didn't go. The agonizing meant the decision was already made and I was just waiting for the part of my brain that was smarter than my instincts to accept it.
My smarter brain was losing badly.
I filed that problem under tonight and got up to face the morning.
-
My lawyer's office was sharp and quiet and smelled like fresh coffee she didn't offer me, which told me she was already in efficient mode and pleasantries were not on the agenda.
She sat across from me and laid it out without softening anything, which was exactly why I had hired her.
"The will contestation is strong," she said. "Undue influence, compromised judgment in the final months, procedural irregularities in the amendment — we have good ground on all three. But strong doesn't mean fast. Realistically we are looking at eight to twelve weeks before a hearing date."
"The merger could finalize in six," I said.
"Yes."
"So the company could legally cease to exist as an independent entity before I ever get into a courtroom to prove it shouldn't."
"That's the situation." She folded her hands. "However — the counter-filing from Gerald Paine actually helps us in one way. It draws attention to the estate proceedings from a judicial standpoint. I've filed a motion to have the merger timeline reviewed alongside the contestation, arguing that finalizing the merger while inheritance rights are actively disputed creates an irreversible harm to the potential beneficiary." She paused. "It's not guaranteed. But it could buy us a freeze on the merger timeline. Four weeks, maybe six."
"How soon will we know?"
"End of the week."
I did the math. End of the week for the freeze motion. Six weeks for the court date. Twelve red marks in Vale's financial records that I hadn't finished counting yet. One meeting tonight at a location that made my hands cold every time I thought about it.
"There's something else," my lawyer said.
I looked up.
"The Paine counter-filing had a supporting document attached. An affidavit." She slid a paper toward me. "Claiming that your father, in the last month of his life, verbally expressed his wish to remove you from the inheritance due to abandonment. Signed by two witnesses." She tapped the paper. "I've already started pulling the witnesses' backgrounds. One of them worked directly under Cole Hayes for two years." She paused. "The affidavit is fabricated. I'm almost certain. But almost certain doesn't win in court."
I looked at the paper.
My father. In his last month. Sick, tired, fading. And someone had sat beside him — or pretended they had — and built a lie around his final days and signed their name to it.
Something cold and quiet moved through me.
"Find the proof," I said. "Whatever it takes."
She nodded. "I'll be in touch by Thursday."
-
I went to Vale Enterprises directly after.
I had every legal right to use the facilities as the acting representative in the merger negotiations — that was documented and filed. So I walked in, nodded at the receptionist who had learned by now to nod back without staring, took the elevator to the fourteenth floor where a small conference room had been assigned to me, and set up.
Laptop. Documents. Red pen. Coffee I had brought myself because I didn't trust anything from the Vale kitchen right now.
I worked.
The financial irregularities from last night needed a proper timeline. I started building one — date by date, account by account, mapping when money moved and where it went. My forensic accountant had sent a longer report overnight. I cross-referenced it against Vale's public filings. The gap between what was reported publicly and what actually moved privately was getting wider the more I looked.
This wasn't small.
This was years of careful, patient theft.
I was so deep in the numbers that I didn't hear the footsteps until the shadow fell across my laptop screen.
I looked up.
Cole was leaning in the doorway.
He looked exactly like he always had — easy smile, relaxed posture, the particular brand of handsome that worked best when you didn't know him well enough to see what was underneath it. He was dressed well. He looked comfortable in this building. He looked like someone who had decided a long time ago that comfort was the same thing as belonging.
He looked at me the way you look at something you once had and still think of as yours.
"You look good, Si," he said.
I looked at him for exactly one second.
Then I opened a new document on my laptop and started typing.
"Goodbye, Cole."
He didn't move. "Three years and that's what I get?"
"You got more than you deserved three years ago when I left quietly instead of burning everything down," I said, still typing. "You're operating on credit you spent a long time ago. Goodbye."
A pause. Then he stepped inside the room anyway.
My fingers stopped on the keyboard.
"I'm not here to fight," he said. His voice had changed slightly. Softer. More careful. "I know how this looks. I know what Mira and I did was —"
"Cole." I looked up. "I have a recording app on my phone that has been running since you appeared in my doorway. Whatever you say in this room is documented. Choose carefully."
His mouth closed.
Opened again.
Closed.
The easy smile flickered.
"Smart," he said finally. Quietly.
"I learned from watching people who weren't," I said.
He straightened. Something shifted in his face — the charm dropping away just enough to show what lived under it. Not cruelty exactly. Something smaller and sadder than cruelty. A person who had made choices and knew they were bad choices and had decided to live with them anyway because the alternative was harder.
He turned and walked out without another word.
I watched the empty doorway for a moment.
Then I stopped the recording. Saved it. Sent a copy to my lawyer and a copy to my personal encrypted drive.
Went back to the numbers.
Twenty-three red marks now.
My phone buzzed at exactly noon.
Petra. A voice note instead of a text, which Petra only did when she was too agitated to type.
I put in one earphone and pressed play.
Her voice came through fast and low like she was trying not to be heard by whoever was nearby.
"Sienna. Leo just said something. We were watching TV and a news segment came on and Damien Mercer's face was on screen — some business story — and Leo pointed at it." A pause. Her voice got quieter. "He pointed at the screen and said — and I need you to hear me clearly — he said 'that's the angry man from the airport, Mommy told me his name is Mercer.' Sienna. He remembered the name. He's three. He remembered."
I sat very still.
"But that's not the part I'm calling about." Another pause. Longer. "The part I'm calling about is what he said after that. He looked at the screen for a while and then he turned to me with that serious face he makes, you know the one, and he said —"
Petra's voice dropped to almost nothing.
"He said, 'Petra, does that man know he's my daddy?'"
The conference room went completely silent.
My coffee went cold.
Somewhere in this building Cole Hayes was walking around with my father's stolen legacy in his hands.
Somewhere tonight Damien Mercer was waiting for me at The Glass Jungle.
And my three-year-old son had just answered the question I had been too terrified to ask out loud.