The name came back to me slowly.
Not all at once
not like a sudden strike.
It surfaced the way buried memories often did, quietly, slipping through the cracks when I wasn't looking for it.
I was halfway through breakfast when it happened.
The news was playing softly in the background, the anchor's voice steady as she talked about market movements, corporate restructuring, the usual things people pretended not to care about while secretly listening for disaster.
I wasn't paying attention.
Until I heard it.
"…a subsidiary acquisition linked to Sterling Holdings."
My hand stilled around the cup.
Sterling.
The word echoed in my head, sharp and unwelcome.
"Turn that up," I said.
Adrian looked up immediately. "What?"
"Please."
He reached for the remote without question.
The report continued nothing dramatic. No scandal. No accusations. Just numbers, mergers, strategic expansions. Clean. Professional.
Too clean.
Sterling Holdings had always been like that.
A ghost company.
Always present.
Never visible.
"Do you know them?" Adrian asked, watching me closely.
"I know of them," I replied carefully.
"That wasn't what I asked."
I set the cup down, my appetite gone. "My mother mentioned the name once."
His posture shifted instantly.
"When?"
"A long time ago," I said. "Before she died."
The air in the room changed.
Adrian muted the television.
"Tell me."
I hadn't thought about that conversation in years.
I was seventeen at the time young, impatient, convinced adults exaggerated danger to keep children obedient.
My mother had been sorting through documents late into the night, papers spread across the dining table, her expression tense in a way I hadn't seen before.
"Who are they?" I'd asked, pointing at a logo I didn't recognize.
She'd looked up sharply.
"Where did you see that name?"
"On your papers."
She'd gone quiet then. Too quiet.
"Promise me something," she'd said.
I remembered the way her hands trembled as she gathered the documents.
"Promise you won't ask questions about certain people."
That should have scared me.
It hadn't.
I'd promised anyway.
And less than a year later, she was dead.
"I thought it was nothing," I said quietly. "Just a business entity. One of many."
"And now?" Adrian prompted.
"And now I don't believe in coincidences."
He nodded slowly. "Sterling Holdings doesn't move unless there's something valuable involved."
My pulse quickened. "Or something worth hiding."
"Yes."
I leaned back in my chair, one hand instinctively moving to my stomach as Lily shifted.
"If they're involved now," I said, "then my mother's death wasn't just about money."
Adrian's jaw tightened. "You already suspected that."
"I suspected a lot of things," I corrected. "This is different."
"How?"
"Because this isn't Ethan's level."
Ethan had been greedy.
Ambitious.
Cruel.
But he was small.
Sterling Holdings wasn't.
Lucas arrived an hour later.
He didn't smile this time.
"That was fast," I said.
"You asked me to dig," he replied. "I dug."
Adrian gestured for him to sit. "Tell us."
Lucas placed his tablet on the table, sliding it toward us. "Sterling Holdings has fingers in everything tech, real estate, manufacturing. They don't usually get involved directly."
"Unless?" I asked.
"Unless there's intellectual property," Lucas said. "Or leverage."
I swallowed. "My mother's company."
Lucas nodded grimly. "She filed a patent shortly before her death. It never went public."
My breath caught.
"That patent disappeared," he continued. "Or rather it was buried."
Adrian's expression darkened. "And now it's resurfacing."
"Yes."
I closed my eyes briefly.
Everything clicked into place with terrifying clarity.
The pressure.
The manipulation.
The timing.
Ethan hadn't been the mastermind.
He'd been the tool.
"I need to see the file," I said.
Adrian's voice was immediate. "No."
I opened my eyes. "Adrian.."
"You're not digging into this," he said firmly. "Not now."
"Why?"
"Because this isn't just corporate warfare," he replied. "This is dangerous."
"So was marrying you," I said calmly.
Lucas cleared his throat. "He's not wrong."
I looked at him sharply. "Et tu?"
"I'm saying this as someone who's seen what Sterling does to people who get in the way," he said. "They erase you."
I smiled faintly. "They tried that already."
No one laughed.
That night, sleep didn't come easily.
Adrian lay beside me, awake, his breathing too controlled to be natural. His arm was around me, protective as ever, but this time I didn't find comfort in it.
I found questions.
"Did you know?" I asked softly.
He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "About Sterling?"
"Yes."
"I suspected," he admitted. "Not this soon."
"You didn't tell me."
"I wanted proof."
"And now you have it."
"Yes."
I turned to face him. "This is bigger than both of us."
"I know."
"And you still plan to handle it alone."
His silence was answer enough.
I placed my hand over his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady beneath my palm. "You can't protect me from the truth."
"I can try to protect you from the consequences."
I shook my head. "That's not how this works."
He sighed quietly. "Then tell me what you want."
I met his gaze. "I want to know my enemy."
The silence after our conversation lingered longer than I expected.
Adrian didn't try to convince me anymore. He didn't insist, didn't lecture, didn't promise safety in absolutes the way he usually did. Instead, he stayed quiet, his gaze fixed on the darkened window as if the city itself might offer answers it hadn't yet revealed.
That silence worried me more than any argument.
"When did you first hear about Sterling?" I asked softly.
He hesitated. "Years ago. Long before you came into my life."
"How long?"
"Before my parents died."
The words landed heavily between us.
I sat up slightly. "You never told me that."
"It wasn't relevant," he said. Then, after a pause, "Or so I thought."
"Was it connected?"
Adrian didn't answer immediately. His jaw tightened, the faintest muscle ticking near his temple.
"My father refused to sell a controlling stake in one of our early projects," he said finally. "The offer came through intermediaries. No names. No signatures."
"And when he refused?"
"The pressure started. Audits. Legal disputes. Delays that made no sense."
I swallowed. "And then the accident."
"Yes."
The room felt colder.
"So Sterling didn't just orbit my mother," I said quietly. "They brushed past your family too."
Adrian turned to me, eyes sharp. "Which means this isn't coincidence. It's convergence."
The word settled uneasily in my chest.
The next day passed with forced normalcy.
Breakfast was quiet. Lunch lighter than usual. Adrian took calls behind closed doors, his voice low and controlled. I pretended not to listen while absorbing every shift in his tone.
Control.
Containment.
Preparation.
He was building walls again.
I spent the afternoon reviewing old digital archives Elena had helped me retrieve months ago personal emails, scanned documents, notes my mother had kept in folders labeled too vaguely to be useful back then.
Miscellaneous.
Drafts.
To Review.
Now, they felt deliberate.
One file caught my attention.
A memo draft unfinished, unsent.
My mother's handwriting, neat but rushed.
If anything happens, look beyond the obvious. The company was never the real target.
My fingers trembled slightly as I scrolled.
There was no name.
But there was a symbol.
A minimalist insignia three interlocking lines.
I stared at it, my pulse steadying into something colder.
I'd seen it before.
On a contract summary Lucas had briefly flashed across the table the day before.
Sterling.
I didn't tell Adrian right away.
Not because I didn't trust him but because I needed to understand what this meant before he shut everything down in the name of protection.
Instead, I called Elena.
"Tell me something," I said without preamble. "Did my mother ever talk about pressure? Threats? Anything she brushed off as 'business politics'?"
Elena was quiet for a moment. "She said once that powerful people didn't like being told no."
My grip tightened on the phone. "Did she mention a name?"
"No. But she was scared, Soph."
That was enough.
By evening, the penthouse buzzed with subdued activity. Guards rotated. Calls came and went. Adrian barely looked at his phone now he was past reacting. He was anticipating.
I found him in the study, standing over the desk where old Blackwood records were spread open.
"You're connecting the timelines," I said.
He didn't deny it. "They overlap more than I like."
"Then stop treating this like two separate threats."
He turned to me slowly. "I'm not."
"Then stop acting like I'm just collateral damage."
His eyes darkened. "You're not collateral."
"Then stop hiding the battlefield."
Silence.
Again.
Finally, he spoke. "If we move too fast, we expose ourselves."
"And if we move too slow, we let them set the terms," I replied. "That's what they want."
Adrian studied me for a long moment. "You've already decided."
"Yes."
He exhaled. "Then we do this carefully."
I nodded. "Together."
He didn't correct me this time.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
Lily shifted restlessly, as if sensing the tension curling beneath my calm exterior. I pressed a hand to my stomach, breathing slowly, grounding myself.
This wasn't fear.
This was recognition.
I had been here before on the edge of understanding, just before everything unraveled in my last life.
But this time, I wasn't blind.
I wasn't alone.
And I wasn't unprepared.
The next morning, I woke to a message on my phone.
Unknown number.
Just one word.
Sterling.
No greeting.
No threat.
Just a name.
I deleted it.
Not because I was afraid.
But because now I was certain.
The past hadn't stayed buried.
It had been waiting.