Page 205 of My Husband’s New Fiancée

“Can we prove the holding company actually belongs to him?” I ask.

“My teams are working on it.”

I stand abruptly. The chair scrapes loudly against the floor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Mara and Stephen watching me carefully.

“So Peltier funds this, organizes it, and orchestrates everything on Wald’s behalf.”

“We have a very strong body of evidence,” Andrea confirms.

Stephen finally speaks up.

“So if Peltier goes down too… we get Wald?”

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Andrea replies. “In this kind of world, people start talking the moment they feel the ground slipping beneath their feet.”

Beside me, Valeria closes her eyes for a few seconds.

I don’t need to ask what she’s seeing again.

I see it too.

The hands of her attacker.

Bianca standing there without intervening.

I clench my jaw so hard it starts to ache.

This time, Mara is the one who lightens the atmosphere slightly.

“So… who’s volunteering to tell Matthieu what we just discovered? And more importantly, explain how we discovered it?”

Needless to say, the speakerphone conversation with Inspector Sanders is tense.

“Damn it!” he barks. “If you were detected before the extraction was complete, everything could disappear within the hour.”

Then he abruptly hangs up.

He calls us back two hours later.

“It’s fine. We recovered everything we needed. But don’t ever pull this kind of stunt again.”

Despite his gruff tone, I’m grateful he kept us informed.

But he isn’t finished.

“There’s something else you need to know. And there’s no good way to say this. We found Cain. He’s been dead for over three weeks. Officially, an overdose.”

No one around the table buys that for a second.

“Right after Valeria came back,” I say immediately. “Definitely not a coincidence.”

“No,” the inspector admits. “Wald cleans up his tracks. Stay alert.”

Then he hangs up.

Mara, Stephen, and Andrea leave shortly afterward.