Marcus's POV
-
She's still looking at me.
That question sitting between us in the back of this car like a living thing.
Is there anything else about my life that you know, that I don't know you know?
I have built my entire career on knowing when to speak and when to hold. On understanding that information released too early is a weapon handed to the wrong person at the wrong time. I have ended negotiations, closed deals, and dismantled opponents simply by controlling what I said and when I said it.
I look at Nadia Holloway — Nadia Steele, on paper, as of forty minutes ago — and I make a calculated decision.
Not yet.
"There are things that will become clear as the legal process moves forward," I say. "Nothing that changes what I've told you tonight."
She watches me the way people watch exits. Measuring. "That's not a no," she says.
"No," I agree. "It isn't."
She holds my gaze for five more seconds. Then she looks away, out the window, and I watch her file it — put it somewhere internal where she'll return to it later. She's disciplined. More disciplined than most people I've worked with, and I've worked with the best.
"I want everything in writing," she says. "Every claim you made tonight. The heirship. The consortium. The timeline. All of it documented and sent to an attorney of my choosing before I set foot in Steele Tower."
"Done," I say.
"And I want my mother moved to Hargrove Medical by the end of the week. It's better for cardiac recovery and closer to where I'll be living."
"I'll make the call tonight."
She turns back to look at me. Something in her expression shifts — not softening, not warmth, just a recalibration. She was expecting resistance. She didn't get it. She's updating her picture of me and I find that I want to know what the updated picture looks like.
I don't ask.
The car stops outside the hospital entrance. She's staying the night here — she didn't say that but I know it. She won't leave her mother tonight.
She opens the door. Pauses.
"Marcus."
"Yes."
"Whatever else you know," she says quietly. "Don't let me find it the way I found the shell company. Don't let me find it by accident." She looks at me one final time. "I signed your contract. That means I'm trusting you with things I cannot afford to lose. Don't make me regret the math."
She gets out of the car.
I watch her walk back into the hospital. Back straight. Head up. The same way she stood up from that floor the first moment I approached her.
The privacy screen stays up. My driver doesn't move until I tell him to.
I sit in the silence for a long time.
-
I need to tell you the part I haven't told her.
The part that changes everything.
I found the heirship documentation three years ago, buried in a cross-acquisition file. What I told her in this car is true — the inheritance is hers, the legal path exists, the shell company protects it.
What I didn't tell her is what else was in that file.
Her father didn't just sign away her inheritance by accident fifteen years ago. He was advised to do it. Guided. By a lawyer who was being paid by someone else entirely. Someone who knew, even then, that Nadia Holloway's grandfather had written her name into the original Holloway Industries founding documents as the sole direct legacy heir. Not her father. Not a future son. Nadia. By name. Before she was born, he wrote a provision that the controlling share would pass to his first granddaughter.
Her grandfather knew something about his son that made him bypass the traditional line entirely. I don't know what he knew. But he protected Nadia before she existed.
And someone found out. And spent fifteen years making sure she never found out.
That someone is connected to Ethan's family. But it goes back further than Ethan. Further than his mother. It goes back to a business relationship between the Steele family — my stepson's father's family, before I married into them — and a silent partner who has been quietly profiting from the buried Holloway heirship for over a decade.
I married into the Steele name. I walked through their door.
Which means, technically, I walked through a door built partially on what was stolen from her.
I didn't know that when I married into the name. I found out two years later. And when I found out, I had two choices: distance myself entirely, or stay close enough to fix it.
I chose to fix it.
But there is no version of that truth that sounds clean. There is no way to explain to Nadia Holloway that the name she is now legally carrying was once one of the instruments used against her family without it landing like a second betrayal.
So I'm building the case first. Getting the documentation airtight. Making sure that when I tell her the full truth, she already has the power to do something about it.
That's the logic.
The logic is sound.
I am aware that she will not experience it as logic when she finds out.
-
My phone rings. Callum.
"She found the shell company," I say before he speaks.
A pause. "I know. I called you twenty minutes ago about that."
"I told her," I say.
Longer pause. "You told her."
"Yes."
"Marcus." Callum's voice carries the specific weight of a man who has known me for twelve years and is currently reconsidering everything he thought he understood about me. "You told a woman you've known for three hours that you own the debt on her family's company."
"She would have found the rest by morning," I say. "Better it came from me."
"And the contract?"
"Still valid. She didn't tear it up."
"She didn't—" He stops. I can hear him recalibrating. "She found out you essentially orchestrated the collapse of her family's company and she still held the contract?"
"She's not reacting," I say. "She's thinking. There's a difference."
Silence on the line.
"Marcus," Callum says slowly. "Who is this woman?"
I look out the window at the hospital entrance where she disappeared.
"The rightful heir to Holloway Industries," I say. "And currently the most dangerous variable in every plan I've made for the last three years."
Callum is quiet for a moment. Then: "Is that all she is?"
I don't answer that.
"Get some sleep," I tell him. "We have work to do tomorrow."
I hang up.
The car still hasn't moved. I realize I never told my driver to go.
I look at the hospital entrance one more time.
She said: Don't let me find it by accident.
Tomorrow I'll begin preparing the documentation for the full disclosure. Everything. The grandfather's provision. The Steele connection. All of it, organized and presented in a way that gives her power instead of pain.
That's the plan.
My phone lights up on the seat beside me. A message from my attorney.
I open it.
I read it once.
I read it again.
Because what it says is this: someone else has already accessed the founding documents from Holloway Industries. Not tonight. Not recently.
Three days ago.
And the IP address traces back to Ethan's personal laptop.
Ethan already knows about the grandfather's provision.
Ethan already knows Nadia is the heir.
Which means he didn't just betray her personally. He's been quietly making sure she never finds out what she's actually owed.
And now she's in a hospital two hundred feet away, sleeping in a chair beside her mother, completely unaware that the man she's been grieving all day has known her true inheritance for months — and has been actively working to make sure she never claims it.
I call my driver's name once.
"Go," I say.
We need to move faster than I planned.