You nod.
He continues, “We also found evidence someone inside the Miami office tipped off a third party after Elena’s death. Enough to explain how your hunters knew a child existed and why they kept pressing after you went underground.”
Your stomach twists. “Can they still get her?”
His eyes come back to yours, and the answer in them is flint. “No.”
Such a simple word.
No.
You have spent so long in maybes and ifs and keep moving and don’t trust that hearing certainty feels almost alien. Tears rise again, and you hate that you’re crying so much in front of him. Hate that your body has chosen the one man in America whose cufflinks probably cost more than your entire last lease to witness your nervous system unraveling one seam at a time.
As if reading some part of that, Adrienne says, “Stop apologizing in your face. I can see you doing it.”
You blink. “I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were.”
Part 4
The next days move fast and strangely.
Lawyers come. Security protocols tighten. One of Adrienne’s private investigators interviews you for three hours and somehow makes it feel less like interrogation and more like building a map out of every awful road you took to stay ahead of danger. Names are matched. Phone numbers traced. The men from the gate are identified as associates of your late stepfather’s former debt network, but now working under a shell caregiving company that specialized, ironically enough, in “family asset transitions.” In other words, they stole vulnerable people for a living and called it administration.
Judith’s team files emergency injunctions in both Illinois and Florida. Adrienne’s Miami counsel begins a quiet war against the probate office leak. And through all of it, Alina remains strangely, stubbornly calm whenever Adrienne is in the room.
That becomes the part the house cannot stop murmuring about.
The baby who recoiled from everyone now twists in your arms whenever she hears his footsteps and reaches for him before he has even rounded the doorway. If he’s on a call in the library and you pass too close, she leans so hard toward the sound of his voice you have to readjust your grip. One morning, while he is reviewing something grim with two attorneys in the breakfast room, Alina spots him from halfway down the hall and lets out such a delighted squeal that the younger attorney jumps.
Adrienne closes the folder, holds out his arms, and your daughter launches herself at his suit without hesitation.
The younger attorney says, “I’m sorry, is this normal?”
Mr. Vale, passing by with tea, replies dryly, “It is now.”
For you, the sweetness is complicated.
