THE HEIRESS THEY BURIED

RENEWED DETERMINATION

DINA POV

By the next morning, I had convinced myself that the woman from yesterday should have been forgotten.

The board meeting was over, the pressure had passed, and I had more than enough work waiting on my desk.

Yet the moment I sat down, my mind went straight back to her.

I could still remember the confidence in her step, the way she had entered Adrian’s office without hesitation, and the ease with which she had spoken to him.

She hadn’t looked like a stranger.

She had looked like someone who already knew exactly where she stood in his life.

And Adrian had looked at her differently; that was what bothered me the most.

I opened a file and forced myself to work. A few minutes later, I realized I had read the same paragraph three times. With a quiet sigh, I looked toward Sophia’s desk.

If anyone knew who the woman was, it would be her so I walked over.

“Can I ask you something?”

Sophia looked up. “Sure,” she said.

“That tall, elegant woman who came to Adrian’s office yesterday.”

Sophia’s expression changed immediately before I could ask my questions. “Oh. Vanessa,” she said.

“Vanessa?” I asked.

“Vanessa Langford,” Sophia replied; she lowered her voice. “She’s Adrian’s ex-fiancée.”

I froze. “His ex-fiancée?”

“Yes,” Sophia replied.

Something tightened in my chest.

“How long were they together?” I asked, desperately trying to hide my concern.

“For years and it was serious; we all expected them to get married,” she replied.

I looked toward Adrian’s office.

“So what happened?” I asked.

Sophia hesitated. “I don’t know everything. But Vanessa is very ambitious; she knows what she wants; she doesn’t take losing easily and she doesn’t always treat the past like the past," she replied.

I remembered the woman’s confidence; it suddenly made sense now. “So what does she want now?”

Sophia gave me a funny look. “That’s what everyone is wondering; maybe she only came to see Adrian,” she replied.

“Maybe,” I said casually.

There was something in her tone that made me doubt it. I tried to dismiss the feeling but her words stayed with me long after I returned to my desk.

I placed the folder in my hands beside my laptop and stared at the screen without seeing anything on it. Vanessa Langford was Adrian’s ex-fiancée. They had been together for years, and everybody had expected them to marry.

That was more than enough information; I had asked because I was curious. Now I knew the answer, and there was no reason for me to keep digging into a relationship that had nothing to do with me.

But curiosity wasn’t the only thing I was feeling. There was something about Vanessa that made me uneasy, and I couldn’t explain why.

Maybe it was the way she carried herself, or the certainty in her eyes whenever she looked at Adrian. Whatever it was, I didn’t like the feeling she left behind.

I took a slow breath and straightened in my chair.

“Focus, Dina,” I muttered.

I had work to do. Adrian trusted me with important responsibilities, and I refused to let some woman from his past distract me from them. Whatever Vanessa wanted, whatever history she shared with Adrian, it was none of my business.

I opened the next file, then another thought stopped me.

My father’s file, my fingers became still on the keyboard. That was something I had every right to think about.

I glanced toward Adrian’s office. The memory of seeing my father’s file there still bothered me. I had seen his name clearly, Daniel Grant.

Why was Adrian keeping a file about my father?

Why had he never mentioned it?

And why had that file been in his private office in the first place?

The more I thought about it, the less accidental it seemed. Adrian had no reason to keep an old personnel file in his private office unless it mattered to him somehow and if it mattered enough for him to keep it hidden, then what else had he kept from me?

Those questions had been sitting at the back of my mind for days, but Vanessa’s unexpected appearance had pushed them aside.

No more. I had spent enough time wondering about Adrian’s past; now I needed answers about my own.

I closed the document on my screen and pulled out a small notebook. I wrote one question at the top of the page.

Why does Adrian have my father’s file?

I stared at it; there had to be a reason.

Maybe it was connected to the company; maybe Adrian had been investigating something related to my father, or perhaps there was something about my father’s past that I had never been told.

The possibilities unsettled me. I closed the notebook and slipped it into my drawer.

If I wanted answers about my father, the first place I needed to look was the company’s old archive. AJ Global had been around for years, and if there was anything connected to my father, there was a good chance it was buried somewhere in those records.

But I couldn’t simply walk into the archive and start searching.

I had been working here for barely a month. Going through old files without a clear reason would raise questions, especially if anyone noticed what I was looking for.

And the last thing I needed was Adrian becoming suspicious.

Things between us had changed since I started working for him. He was beginning to trust my judgment, and I had learned to respect him. He expected me to do my job without questioning every decision he made.

But there was one problem. I had already asked him about my father’s file; he had shut me down. That alone told me there was something he wasn’t ready to share, I leaned back in my chair, thinking carefully.

If Adrian wouldn’t give me the answers, I would have to find them myself discreetly.

I knew I was taking a risk. If Adrian discovered what I was doing, the trust between us could change in an instant but uncertainty was becoming harder to live with than the fear of what I might find.

I had spent too many years accepting that my father’s past was simply something I could never understand, I wasn’t willing to do that anymore.

I glanced toward his office; I didn’t want to betray the trust he was slowly giving me. But this wasn’t about business anymore.

It was about my father, and I needed to know why his name was hidden inside Adrian’s office after all these years.

I opened my laptop again and forced my expression to remain calm; I would wait for the right opportunity. Then I would search the archives myself.