Contracted by the billionaire

Chapter 4

VIVIENNE'S POV

I was in a cab heading home when Carter's words hit me, not because I heard them, I wasn't on that call. But I knew Victor Crane. I knew what his involvement in this meant and I knew that if he was already moving it meant the window I had was smaller than I thought. In my first life I hadn't even known Victor's name until everything was already over. This time I knew exactly who he was and what he was protecting and the fact that he had called Carter within an hour of the filing meant he had someone watching the court system. Someone on the inside.

I needed to move faster.

I called Iris from the cab.

"The freeze request," I said when she picked up. "How solid is it?"

"It's filed and timestamped. Nobody can touch those records without a court order now." She paused. "Your sister called the house about the reading room."

"I know. Did anyone get in there before your people."

"My retrieval team arrived forty minutes ago. The document was exactly where you said it would be." Another pause, longer this time. "Vivienne. The betrothal contract is in better condition than I expected. Original signatures, original witness marks, no signs of tampering. Whoever hid it knew what they were doing."

"My grandmother knew exactly what she was doing," I said.

"There's something else. The witness signature on the contract matches a signature on a separate document my team pulled from the estate archive this morning. A private legal agreement dated thirty years ago between Margaret Ashworth and a solicitor named Edmund Crane."

I went still in the back of the cab. Edmund Crane. Victor's father. I had known his name was connected but I hadn't known there was a separate agreement. That was new. That was something I hadn't found in my first life because I hadn't survived long enough.

"What kind of agreement," I said carefully.

"That's what I'm still working out. The language is dense and it's clearly designed to obscure the actual transaction. But the short version is that Margaret paid Edmund Crane a significant sum thirty years ago for services that are described only as document management." Iris's voice was flat and precise. "I'm going to need another day to trace where that money came from and where it went."

"You have until tomorrow morning," I said. "After that the other side starts moving in ways that will make your job harder."

"Understood. One more thing." She hesitated, which Iris almost never did. "The sum involved is not small, Vivienne. Whatever Margaret paid for, she considered it worth protecting at significant cost."

"Then find out what she bought," I said, and ended the call.

I looked out the cab window and thought about Victor Crane calling Carter Steele within an hour of the filing. Victor wasn't panicking. Victor never panicked. He was positioning, the same way he always positioned, using information as leverage before anyone else realized it was leverage. He had known about my true identity for years and he had sat on it because a secret was only useful while you controlled it. The filing had taken that control away and he was already looking for a new angle.

The cab pulled up to the Ashworth house and I paid and got out and stood on the path for a moment.

Clarissa's car was in the drive. Margaret's was too.

I walked inside.

They were both in the sitting room. Margaret was standing at the window with her back to the door and Clarissa was on the sofa with her phone in her hands. Neither of them looked at me when I walked in. That was deliberate. The not-looking was a performance, the same way everything in this family was a performance.

I sat down in the chair across from Clarissa and waited.

Margaret turned from the window first. She looked at me with the expression I had seen on her face a thousand times, composed, faintly disappointed, entirely in control. Except this time there was something underneath it. Something tight around her eyes that hadn't been there at breakfast.

"I'd like to know what you think you're doing," she said.

"Claiming what's mine," I said.

The room was very quiet. Clarissa looked up from her phone for the first time.

"You filed an inheritance dispute," Margaret said. "Based on what, exactly. Some papers you found in your grandmother's reading room."

"Based on forged birth records, a suppressed betrothal contract, and a private legal agreement between you and Edmund Crane dated thirty years ago." I watched her face. "Among other things."

Margaret didn't move. That was the tell, she was too still, the way people went still when they were calculating rather than reacting. Clarissa had gone very quiet beside her.

"You've been busy," Margaret said finally.

"I have."

"Where did you even find Edmund Crane's name?" It wasn't quite a question. It was the beginning of a calculation said out loud.

"It was in the archive," I said. "Along with everything else you assumed was buried."

"Vivienne." Her voice shifted, just slightly. Not softer exactly but more careful. The voice she used when she was switching strategies. "Whatever you think those documents say, there are explanations. Legal arrangements from that era were complex. Your grandmother was elderly and not always reliable in her later years. If you'd come to me first……"

"The way I came to Clarissa first," I said.

Silence.

Clarissa's expression didn't change but something moved behind her eyes. I held her gaze and let the silence sit there between us and I watched her understand, slowly, that I knew. Not just about the documents. About what happened after. About the phone call she made and the accident that wasn't an accident and the police report that was closed within a week.

She couldn't know how I knew. That was the one thing she couldn't work out. But she knew that I knew and I could see her recalculating in real time.

"This is going to get messy," Clarissa said quietly. First thing she'd said since I walked in.

"Yes," I agreed. "It is."

"Then perhaps," Margaret said, her voice very controlled now, "you should consider what you stand to lose before you go any further."

"I've considered it," I said. "I'm still here."

Margaret looked between us with an expression that was no longer composed. "Whatever grievances you have, Vivienne, this is not the way to….."

"Iris Lowe has the betrothal contract," I said. "Roman Steele has already instructed his legal team to submit supporting documentation to my filing. The estate records are frozen. The court will see everything." I stood up. "There's no version of this where the paperwork doesn't exist. You should probably call Griffin Hale."

I was at the door when Margaret spoke again.

"You have no idea what you're pulling on," she said. Her voice was different now. The composure was still there but underneath it was something harder and colder. "This goes further than you think, Vivienne. There are people involved in this who are not going to simply accept a court filing."

I turned around and looked at her.

"I know exactly who's involved," I said. "Tell Victor Crane I said hello."

Margaret's face went completely blank.

I walked out and up the stairs and into my room and closed the door and stood against it for a moment with my eyes shut. My heart was beating faster than I wanted it to. That last line had been a risk, showing my hand on Victor before I had everything in place. But I needed Margaret off balance and I needed her to know that I wasn't operating blind.

My phone rang. Roman.

"Victor Crane just requested an emergency meeting with me," he said without greeting. "Tonight."

"Don't go alone," I said immediately.

A pause. "Why."

"Because he's not going to offer you information. He's going to offer you a deal. And the deal will be structured so that taking it implicates you and refusing it leaves you exposed." I took a breath. "He's done it before. He's very good at it."

Another pause, longer this time. When Roman spoke again his voice was quieter and more careful than I had heard it yet.

"Vivienne. How do you know how Victor Crane operates."

I closed my eyes.

"Meet me tomorrow morning," I said. "Before you meet him. There are things I need to tell you that I couldn't say in the hotel."

He was quiet for a moment. Then, "Seven o'clock. My office."

"I'll be there."

I hung up and sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the floor. Tomorrow I was going to have to give Roman enough of the truth to keep him moving in the right direction without giving him the part he would never believe. The part about dying. The part about waking up.

There was a knock at my door.

I opened it. Clarissa was standing in the hall alone, without Margaret, which was unusual enough to make me pay attention. She looked at me for a moment without speaking. Then she said something I had not expected from her in either lifetime.

"She had someone follow you this morning," Clarissa said quietly. "After you left the house. I thought you should know."

I looked at my sister and tried to work out what she was doing.

"Why are you telling me that," I said.

She held my gaze. "Because there are things Mother has done that I didn't know about. And I'm starting to think I should have asked more questions a long time ago."

She walked away before I could respond and

I stood in the doorway watching her go and feeling, for the first time since I woke up in this life, genuinely uncertain about something.