THE BILLIONAIRE'S HIDDEN AGENDA

Arnold's POV Blood splatters across the wall, thin streams trickling downward. My eyes trace it to my dad, one hand pressed flat against his chest like he's trying to hold something in. "Dad?" No answer. My legs move before I decide to, carrying me across the room, my knee cracking against the floor as I drop beside him. "Dad, stay with me." His grip tightens around my wrist, like he's using the last of something to hold on. "Arnold," he says. "Nothing is happening. You're going to be fine." The lie comes out easily, in a voice I don't recognize as mine. His eyes fill, and something in my chest cracks in half, because in thirty years I have never once seen my father cry. "Victor," he says. "What happened?" My voice comes out thin, barely there. His hand goes slack in mine. His eyes stay open, but they're no longer looking at anything. My voice breaks trying to call for help, my hand shaking too hard to type. The five minutes before the ambulance arrives stretch out, my eyes fixed on his chest. Paramedics rush in before I even hear the siren die outside. I don't remember standing up, only that one second he's on the floor, and the next he's on a stretcher, his hand still faintly warm in mine. At the hospital, a man in scrubs walks toward me, slower than anyone should walk when they have bad news. "Mr. Sterling, I'm so sorry," he says. "We did everything we could. It was a heart attack." "That's not possible." My voice cracks straight down the middle. "The stress on the body at his age, combined with—" I watch his mouth keep moving, and none of it reaches me. There's a question sitting under my tongue, heavy, refusing to come loose. A heart attack doesn't explain that much blood. I don't ask. Not yet. I ask it anyway, three days later, when the shock wears thin enough to let anger in. The medical examiner's office gives me a report that reads clean: cardiac arrest, no forced trauma, case closed. When I request the toxicology and the scene photos, I'm told the file's already been sealed at the family's request. Mine. A request I never made. Someone closed this before I even knew there was anything to close. My father's last word sits in my chest like a stone I swallowed whole. Find out who Victor is. Five years later Five years, and it took a forensic accountant, two investigators, and money I never accounted for to turn one word into a surname. My father said "Victor" with his last breath, no last name, no context. There had to be thousands of men who shared it. By the time I had Victor Hail, I had more than a name: wire transfers showing he'd pulled his stake out of my father's company three days before his heart gave out, and a non-disclosure agreement my father's own lawyer swears he never saw before it was signed. The first two years weren't spent looking. They went to a boardroom fight over whether a twenty-seven-year-old could actually run what his father built. By the time I won that, whoever sealed the file had had two years to make sure nothing was left to find through normal channels. The next three went to undoing that. Every shell company Victor moved money through led to another one. More than one investigator told me it would be easier to stop. That's not a dying word anymore. That's motive, on paper, with a date on it. Knowing his name and reaching him quietly were two different problems. My room hasn't changed. Same desk, same corkboard, same photograph pinned dead center, its edges soft now from how many times I've taken it down and put it back. Victor Hail. I could draw that face with my eyes shut. That's the only promise I've kept since the funeral. Tonight the trail leads somewhere quieter. Not his office, his niece. I've had a standing alert on every name in Victor's file for three years, waiting for exactly this. Marisa never had a public account until three weeks ago, and my system flagged it within a day of it going live. Three years of silence, and this is the first c***k. I open i********: and type her name. The account loads, matching the photo. Marisa and Victor standing in front of a bakery, a hand-painted sign behind them reading Marisa Bakes. I search the bakery on maps. Ashwood Falls. Five years of dead ends, and it comes down to a nineteen-year-old's grand opening post. It takes two weeks to hand off enough of the company that I can disappear without questions, weeks of meetings I sit through without hearing a word. I finally arrive. The town is impossibly small, the kind of place people vanish into, not build empires in. If Victor chose this, he's running from something he needs everyone to forget. I spot an old woman struggling to cross the road and pull over, using the moment to ask a question. "I'm looking for a bakery. Marisa bakes," I say. "Would you happen to know it, ma'am?" "Marisa Hail's place," she says, taking my arm without hesitation. "Everybody knows it. Best cinnamon rolls in the country." "You know her well?" "Watched her grow up. Same as I watched her uncle build that family from nothing after the accident." She shakes her head, something unreadable crossing her face. I keep my voice light, a voice with nothing riding on it. "The accident?" She pats my hand and points across the street. "Bakery is right there. Tell her Ruth sent you, she'll give you an extra roll." The bakery looks exactly like it did in the photographs. I park, and for a moment I just sit there, both hands still on the wheel, watching the warm light in the windows. Five years of searching come down to this. One door. One small town bakery, one woman on the other side of it who has no idea of what I've come here to do. I straighten my jacket and push it open. The bell above the door rings as I step inside. Warmth hits first, sugar, butter, something baking that makes my stomach tighten with a hunger I didn't know I had. "Be right with you!" The voice comes from behind the counter, and then she's there, flour dusting on her forearm, one loose strand of her hair half covering her face. Marisa Hail, in person, is nothing like the photographs. Her feet are planted like the floor under her has never once given her a reason to doubt herself. "Sorry, mornings get away from me." She finally looks up, and for a second her smile catches, easy and unguarded. "You don't look familiar." "I'm not from here. A friend told me about this place." I don't give her a name. "Let me guess. Ruth sent you." She says it like it's a joke between old friends, one I'm not part of. "She sends everyone. Half this town's regulars started as her strays." I feel the lie forming before I've decided to tell it. "She did," I say. It isn't a lie, but it isn't the whole truth either, and something about how easily the first half comes out unsettles me. She studies me half a second longer than the moment needs, not unkind, just assessing, like she's deciding what kind of stranger I am before she decides anything else. Whatever she settles on, it tips in my favor. "Thought so." She wipes her hands on her apron, already sliding a tray of rolls forward, still warm enough that steam curls off the glaze. "These just came out. On the house, since you're new." "You don't have to do that." "I know. But some mornings need it more than the register does." She says it lightly, like she's already decided not to let the sentence mean anything. I take the roll, and something about the ease of the gesture, freely given, unsettles me more than anything else has today. She watches me a moment longer, that same open smile resting easy on her face, no idea yet what I've come here carrying. There is no turning back now.