His Obsession

Chapter 13: Her Mother's Name

Amelia's hand went cold inside Adrian's.

"My mother," she repeated slowly, like saying it twice might make it make sense. "What did the letter say about my mother?"

Adrian's expression was careful, the way someone handles something fragile. "Not much. That's the frustrating part. It was one line, written almost like a footnote, like my father meant to come back and explain it and never got the chance." He closed his eyes briefly, reciting from memory. "Margaret Carter knows more than she's told her husband. Protect the daughter regardless of what Margaret decides to do."

The name landed in Amelia's chest like a stone dropped into still water.

"That's my mum," she whispered. "Margaret Carter. Adrian, my mother's never worked a day outside our house. She raised me and Sophie. She wasn't part of any consulting contract, any investigation, anything…"

"I know how it sounds."

"It doesn't sound like anything. It sounds impossible." Amelia pulled her hand free, standing, pacing the small space in front of his desk like movement might outrun the panic building in her chest. "My mother is the most ordinary person I know. She gardens. She does the church flower rota. She's never so much as gotten a parking ticket."

"My father wasn't a man who wrote things carelessly," Adrian said quietly. "If he wrote her name in a letter about danger to his own family, it wasn't an idle detail."

Amelia stopped pacing, pressing both hands against her face, trying to breathe through the vertigo spinning through her.

"Sophie said Dad came back different after his 2019 trip," she said slowly, thinking aloud. "Quieter. And Mum and Dad argued about something, and neither of them would explain what." Her hands dropped from her face, eyes wide with dawning horror. "What if it wasn't just Dad who was involved? What if Mum knew something the whole time and never told either of us?"

"That's what I'm afraid of," Adrian admitted. "And it's why I never told you before now. I didn't want to hand you a reason to distrust your own mother based on one line in a letter I couldn't even fully explain."

"You should have told me anyway." Amelia's voice shook, more hurt than angry now. "Adrian, this is my family. I get to decide what I do with information about them, not you."

"You're right." He stood, coming around the desk toward her, something contrite in the set of his shoulders. "I've spent so long controlling information to protect people that I forgot it doesn't actually work that way. Not with someone I…" He stopped himself, jaw tightening.

"Someone you what?"

He didn't answer, not directly, but the look in his eyes said enough to make her breath catch all over again despite everything crashing down around them.

Amelia called her mother the next morning, hands trembling around her phone as she waited through three rings before Margaret Carter's warm, familiar voice answered.

"Amelia, love. Is everything all right? You sound strange."

"Mum, I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me." Amelia closed her eyes, steadying herself against her kitchen counter. "Do you know anything about Blackwood Enterprises? About what Dad was really doing in 2019?"

The silence on the other end lasted long enough that Amelia's stomach dropped entirely.

"Where did you hear that name?" her mother asked finally, voice tight in a way Amelia had never heard from her.

"I work there now, Mum. I've worked there for three weeks. And I found out Dad's name is in their old files, and now I've found out yours is too." Amelia's voice cracked. "Please. I need you to tell me the truth."

"Oh, God." Her mother's breath hitched audibly through the phone. "Amelia, listen to me very carefully. You need to leave that company. Today. I don't care what excuse you give them."

"That's what Dad said too. Neither of you will explain why."

"Because it isn't safe to explain over the phone, and it never was." Her mother's voice trembled, fear bleeding through every word. "Your father and I made a decision a long time ago to keep you and Sophie as far from this as possible. We thought we'd succeeded. We thought it was over."

"What was over? Mum, please…"

"I have to go." The words came out fast, panicked. "I love you, Amelia. Please, just come home. We'll explain everything in person, I promise, just not like this, not over a phone that anyone could…"

The line went dead.

Amelia stared at the phone, chest heaving, the silence of her kitchen suddenly deafening.

She tried calling back three times. Each attempt went straight to voicemail.

She arrived at Blackwood Tower an hour later, still shaking, and found Adrian waiting for her at the entrance, having clearly seen something in her face through the lobby's glass walls that told him exactly how the call had gone.

"She hung up on me," Amelia said before he could ask. "Mid-sentence. Like someone made her."

Adrian's expression darkened. "Or like she realized she was saying too much."

"Either way, I need to see her. In person. Today." Amelia's voice was steady now, resolve replacing panic. "I'm driving down to Surrey."

"I'm coming with you."

"Adrian, you have a company to run, and Victoria to…"

"Victoria is safe, under guard, and would tell you herself that I'm more useful finding answers than sitting in board meetings pretending everything's fine." His eyes held hers, steady and certain. "I am not letting you drive into whatever this is alone. Not after what happened to my sister."

Amelia wanted to argue, some old instinct toward independence bristling at the offer. But looking at him now…jaw set, eyes fierce with a protectiveness that had nothing to do with rules or control anymore…she found she didn't actually want to say no.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Together, then."

They were halfway to the car park when Amelia's phone buzzed one final time. The unknown number, the one that had been silent since the hospital.

She opened it with shaking hands, Adrian reading over her shoulder.

‘Your mother knows the truth. She's known for twenty years. Ask her about the fire.’

Amelia's blood ran cold.

"What fire?" she whispered.

Beside her, Adrian had gone very still, staring at the message like it had personally struck him.

"Adrian," Amelia said slowly, watching his face drain of color. "Do you know what that means?"

"There was a fire," he said quietly, voice hollow. "Twenty years ago. At my family's old estate, before we moved into the penthouse. I was four. I barely remember it. My mother died in it."

The car park seemed to tilt beneath Amelia's feet.

"Your mother," she repeated. "I thought your parents just…I never knew how your mother died."

"Nobody does. It's not something we talk about." Adrian's eyes were distant now, lost somewhere in a memory clearly too old and too painful to fully hold. "The official report called it an electrical fault. My father never once spoke of it as anything else."

"And now someone's telling me to ask my mother about it."

Adrian turned to look at her, and for the first time since she'd met him, Amelia saw something that looked almost like fear in his eyes…not for himself, but for what they were both about to uncover.

"Then I think," he said slowly, "we're about to find out our families have been connected far longer than either of us ever imagined.”