Page 79 of The Billionaire’s Contract Bride

“Toxic exposure?” Aria repeated. “She’s in a restricted private ward.”

“It is one possibility we cannot rule out given the speed of the organ failure.”

Damien arrived six minutes later.

Aria hadn’t called him, but his network was absolute.

“Who informed you?” she asked as he strode down the hallway, flanked by two bodyguards.

“The hospital’s high-risk alert system,” Damien said. His dark gaze swept over her face, instantly assessing her pale complexion. “What else happened?”

Aria closed her arm tightly over her purse, feeling the hard shape of the plastic tests inside. “Nothing.”

His eyes dropped to her left wrist. He knew she was lying, but he refrained from pressing her in the open corridor.

At noon, while Damien met with the chief of staff, Aria slipped away to the hospital’s basement chapel.

Augustus Blackthorne was waiting in the second pew, his silver-topped cane resting between his knees.

“You met my mother four years ago,” Aria said, stopping in the center aisle away from the chapel’s security cameras.

Augustus did not turn around. “She contacted me.”

“Why?”

“She believed someone had discovered Elias made a second copy of the financial ledger.”

“Did she give it to you?”

“No. She asked whether Damien was safe.”

Aria let out a cold, bitter laugh. “Safe for whom?”

“For you.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That my grandson protects things through possession,” Augustus said, his voice measured. “Your mother found that preferable to Victor’s methods.”

Aria stepped closer, her jaw set. “Did you order my father’s death?”

Augustus looked toward the stained-glass altar. “I authorized an asset retrieval. Victor chose the driver.”

“You murdered him.”

“I allowed ambition to make another man’s life seem smaller than my family’s legacy.”

“That sounds carefully rehearsed.”

“Guilt usually is.”

Aria wanted to scream for the guards, but she needed answers to questions that had haunted the archives. “Who poisoned Damien’s mother?”

The question had come from notes she had unearthed in Damien’s private surveillance system—references to unexpected liver failure, sealed toxicology reports, and a death quietly classified as suicide.

Augustus’s composure cracked. He turned to look at her. “Is that what is happening to Evelyn?”

“Answer me!”