The devil's private bride

RECOGNITION

The answer, two days later, came with a discovery she hadn't prepared for.

"I found the original claim file," Marcus said, finding her at her desk, a gravity in his face that put her instantly on alert. "Patricia buried it — flagged 'pending further documentation' and never revisited, four years running. My team's begun processing it properly." He paused. "I also found the original claimant's family details. I thought you'd want to know, given how invested you've been."

Her pulse spiked. "What details?"

"The estate belonged to Daniel Kane. Victor's older brother." He watched her carefully. "One surviving child. A daughter, Camille — currently, according to the file, working as a forensic auditor."

The silence stretched, absolute, her cover collapsing under the weight of a single cross-reference she hadn't thought to account for.

"You're Camille Kane," he said quietly. "Not Reyes. Your mother's maiden name, I'd guess, so no one would connect you to Victor."

"Marcus—"

"Don't." His voice had gone tight, hurt under the control. "I showed you that letter. I told you things I've told no one outside this family, because I thought I was talking to an independent auditor with unusual integrity. Instead I was talking to Victor Kane's niece, investigating me under a false identity for reasons that clearly have nothing to do with the court's actual assignment."

"The court assignment is real," she said, unsteady. "I'm a licensed auditor. Every finding I've given you is genuine."

"But the reason you took this case. The false name." His jaw was tight. "That wasn't about serving the court's oversight, was it. That was about proving my family was still lying, using whatever access you could manufacture to do it."

"Yes," she admitted, unable to soften it. "My uncle asked me to verify the fund independently, using access he thought I wouldn't get as a Kane. I agreed because I believed you were exactly the man your file described."

"And now?"

The question hung there, heavier than either of them seemed ready for.

"Now I don't know," she said honestly. "I've found nothing in your books that confirms what I expected. Instead a man who seems genuinely troubled by exactly the failure I just helped uncover. I don't know how to reconcile that with everything I was told to believe before I walked in."

He studied her, hurt and something more complicated behind his tired eyes.

"I need time," he said finally. "I don't know yet what I think about being deceived for three weeks by a woman I'd started to—" He stopped, something raw crossing his face before he could finish.

"Started to what?"

"Doesn't matter now." The careful distance in his voice, so different from the warmth of the past weeks, landed like its own kind of loss. "Finish your audit, Ms. Kane. I won't obstruct it. But our conversations stay strictly professional from here."