Chapter 221

~Franklin~

The office felt different now. Everything looked the same,but something fundamental had shifted. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the weight of knowing that someone out there wanted to destroy what I’d spent months rebuilding.

I hadn’t told Octavia about the email yet. I kept telling myself I would, but every time I looked at her glowing face after her promotion, after the pregnancy reveal, I couldn’t do it. She deserved to be happy without the shadow of Bella Washington hanging over her head.

Besides, I was handling it. I had to be.

The first order of business was finding a new secretary. Anthony’s absence had left a void, and while the administrative team had been covering, I needed someone I could trust completely. Someone vetted, investigated, thoroughly checked.

I’d conducted the interviews myself. Eight candidates. Each one carefully selected, each one questioned extensively. It was exhausting, partly because I was assessing not just their qualifications but their character, their loyalty, their potential to be compromised.

The last candidate was Julian Silver. Mid-thirties, MBA from Columbia, five years of experience as an executive assistant at Goldman Sachs before a restructuring had let him go. His references were impeccable. His background check was clean. His handshake was firm.

"Why are you interested in working at Flemington Group?" I’d asked during the final interview.

"Because you’re rebuilding something that matters," he said simply. "After everything that happened with Harrington and the conspiracy, the fact that you’re still standing, still leading, that’s the kind of organization I want to be part of."

I liked him. More importantly, I trusted him. Or at least, I trusted that he didn’t have a personal vendetta against me or my family.

"The job is yours," I told him. "Start Monday."

-----

That evening, after Octavia had fallen asleep reading her pregnancy app she was obsessed with tracking every symptom and milestone. I sat in my home office with the door locked and pulled up the email again.

It had arrived three days ago, while we were still in Greece.

The body of the email was short:

"Bella Washington faked her suicide. She’s alive. And she’s planning something."

Bella was alive.

That had been my first thought, not relief that someone was warning me, but terror at the realization that the woman who’d tried to destroy my family, the woman who’d obsessed over me, the woman who’d been willing to help Dorian commit murder, had somehow survived and disappeared.

After the court hearing, after Octavia and I had finally, finally been together without secrets or lies or manipulation. We’d celebrated like we’d won the war. And apparently, we’d made a baby in the process.

Which meant Bella could be carrying mine.

My hand shook as I reached for the phone. There was only one person I could talk to about this. Only one person who would understand the full scope of what this meant.

Clinton picked up on the third ring. "Hey, what’s up? Octavia’s not having pregnancy emergencies, right? Because Annie’s got some weird books about what to expect and—"

"We need to talk," I interrupted quietly. "Not on this line. Can you meet me somewhere?"

There was a pause. Then: "How bad?"

"Very."

-----

The parking garage of the Flemington Building at midnight was not my ideal meeting spot, but it was private and empty. Clinton arrived in his car first, parking three spots away from mine like we were conducting some kind of covert operation. Which, I supposed, we were.

He got into my car, bringing the cold with him. His expression was immediately serious.

"What happened?" he asked.

I handed him my phone with the email pulled up.

I watched his face as he read it. Watched the color drain from his skin. Watched his jaw clench.

"No," he said, handing the phone back. "No. She’s dead. We confirmed it. The body—"

"Wasn’t her," I finished. "She faked it. Paid someone to stage a suicide while she disappeared."

Clinton leaned back in his seat, his hands running through his hair. "Jesus Christ. That’s... how is that even possible? How did she manage that?"

"I don’t know," I admitted. "But she did. And now she’s alive

We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of it settling between us. Someone knew about Bella. Someone knew she was alive. And that someone was either trying to help us or blackmail us, I couldn’t figure out which.

"We need to connect the dots," Clinton said finally. "Bella couldn’t have faked her death alone. She would have had help."

"And now she needs someone to keep her hidden," I added. "Someone close enough to Octavia to feed her information."

Clinton’s expression shifted. "The woman at the prison."

"What woman?" I asked, even though he’d mentioned it briefly when we’d last talked.

"When I visited Dorian," he said slowly, "I saw someone in the parking lot. A woman. She was on the phone, and when she realized I’d seen her, she left. Fast. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but..." He trailed off, his jaw tightening. "I felt like I recognized her."

"You didn’t tell me this," I said, hearing the accusation in my own voice.

"Because I wasn’t sure it was connected," Clinton shot back. "And I thought it was over. I thought Bella was dead and everything was finished."

I pulled up the security camera footage from the prison on my laptop, getting help from Tate.

There. A figure in a baseball cap and sunglasses. The angle was bad, the image blurry. But Clinton was right. There was something familiar about her.

I froze the frame and stared at it.

"Do you recognize her?" Clinton asked, leaning closer.

"No," I said. "But I think... I think we need to figure out who was at that prison. If we can identify her, we can identify who’s helping Bella."

Clinton pulled out his phone and called someone. "Hey, I need you to pull the visitor logs for the state correctional facility upstate. Specifically for the day I visited. I need to know who else visited an inmate named Dorian Harrington."

He hung up and looked at me. "My contact at the NYPD owes me a favor. He can get us that information."

"We can’t go to the police yet," I said.

"Then what do we do?" Clinton asked.

"We think like she does," I said quietly. "We figure out who in our orbit would be close enough to help her, motivated enough to help her, and connected enough to Octavia to be useful."

Clinton and I spent the next two hours building a list. People who’d been around during the Dorian situation. People who might have a grudge. People who might have been blackmailed or threatened or manipulated into helping.

The list grew shorter as we eliminated people. Clarence, too loyal. Olga, couldn’t possibly.

Then suddenly, it got revealed.

"Miranda," Clinton said, voicing what I’d been thinking but hadn’t wanted to say out loud. "She was there from the beginning. She knows Octavia’s schedule, her projects, her vulnerabilities. She’s in a position to observe everything."

"But why would she help Bella?" I asked. "What would Bella have on her?"

We didn’t have the answer to that. Not yet.

But as we sat there in the garage, the cold seeping.

As I drove Clinton back to his car, my mind kept returning to one question: What was Miranda’s connection to Bella? What would make a woman in Miranda’s position risk everything to help a vengeful ex who’d faked her own death?