Page 8 of His Vow

I watched her go. I tucked the phone again into my inner pocket. Then I walked out.

The air hit my face. Cold enough to sting. I got into the car, pulled the door shut, and sat in the dark with my hands on the steering wheel.

I pulled out my personal phone. Not the one with her number. Both phones were signed into the same account. When one buzzed, the other followed a second later. Then I called a number from memory. It rang four times.

"You've reached Adira. Leave a message."

Her voice was deliberate; it once bombarded me three times a day with stories of classes, friends, and that coffee shop boy whose smile made her forget her name. She was nineteen then — radiant, trusting, and brimming with a hope I’d never known, not even as a kid.

I didn't leave a message. I pressed end and set the phone on the passenger seat.

The notification was still on the screen. Transfer returned — Adira Reeves. $8,000. Sent on the first of the month. Returned on the third. Two years of this rhythm. I sent the money. She sent it back. Neither of us called. Neither of us stopped.

I dialed her number again. Four rings. Voicemail. I pressed end.

I sat there. The streetlight threw a bar of orange across my dashboard. A taxi passed, then another. The city moved around the car like water moving around a stone.

My personal phone buzzed on the passenger seat. I picked it up.

"Tell me something good." It was Declan.

"Define good."

"Graham. Anything new?" he asked.

"Nothing concrete. Still pulling threads."

"Pull faster. Julian's getting twitchy."

"Julian's always twitchy."

"Fair point. Get some rest, Nolan. You sound like hell."

The line went dead.

I opened the other phone. Her contact glowed on the screen — Soleil . She'd added the emoji herself. I sent a message.

Nolan

Tomorrow. 7pm. I'll send the details.

Three dots. Then I received her reply.

Soleil

I thought I said don't wait three days. This is technically the same day. Overachiever.

I set the phone on the passenger seat beside the other one. Two phones. Two lives. The sun emoji pulsing on one screen, the returned transfer sitting on the other.

I reached beneath the seat and pulled out a leather folio. Slim, unmarked, locked with a code. Twelve digits, entered without looking. The tablet inside powered on.

Lattimore Holdings.

Corporate structure, mapped and annotated in a system so precise it looked like architecture. Subsidiaries. Board members. Property portfolios. Political donations. Regulatory vulnerabilities. Shell companies layered inside shell companies, each one traced, documented, and filed. Fifteen years of research. Fifteen years of patience. Fifteen years of building myself into a man who could dismantle an empire with phone calls and filings and pressure applied to the exact right joints.

At the center, one name: Hugh Lattimore.

I scrolled. Below the corporate map was a secondary file of personal information about his family, profiles, photographs, and connection points.