Page 54 of Ruin
But my hands shake slightly as I knot the tie, and I have to start over twice.
A knock interrupts my spiraling thoughts.
Lionel enters without waiting for permission, his massive frame filling the doorway.
He takes one look at my face and his expression hardens.
"Report," I order.
“Your overnight security detail kept eyes on her after she left the penthouse,” he says. “She went straight to her apartment. Spent a few hours going through files on her laptop. Could see her through the window.”
His dead eyes flick back to me.
“She looked upset, boss. Agitated.”
A pause.
“But she came here at seven-thirty like usual. Been in her office since. Door closed.”
"Different how?"
"Cold. Distant. Kept touching that collar like it was bothering her." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "She looked at it in the hallway mirror before coming up here."
My blood turns to ice. "She’s been in her office all day?"
"Yes.Sent her assistant to the morning meeting instead of coming herself." Lionel's expression darkens. "She's avoiding you."
The words hit like slaps to the face.
Selene doesn't avoid me.
She seeks me out, gravitates toward my presence like a moth to flame.
If she's hiding, it's because she's learned something that's changed everything.
She knows.
Somehow, Michelle's research gave her the pieces she needed to put it together.
The timeline, the connections, the truth that's been hiding in plain sight for nine years now.
"Keep watching her," I tell Lionel. "I want to know everyone she talks to, everywhere she goes. If she so much as looks at her phone wrong, I want to know about it."
He nods and leaves. I'm alone with the crushing weight of inevitability.
Vincent arrives twenty minutes later,his usually immaculate appearance marred by tension around his eyes.
He's been my father's consigliere, then mine, for over three decades.
I've never seen him look this worried.
"We have a problem," he says before I can get a word out, settling into the chair across from my desk like a man preparing to deliver a terminal diagnosis. "The Russians have been digging into your past operations. Specifically, the Judge Deveraux situation."
I pour myself whiskey, my hands steadier now that I'm dealing with external threats instead of internal demons. "How deep?"
"Deep enough to know about the connection. Zhukhov has been asking very specific questions about that night." Vincent pulls out a tablet, shows me surveillance photos of Russians meeting with low-level criminals who worked the cleanup. Men I thought were long dead or disappeared. "They're planning to use it against you."
"Use it how?"
