I Married My Sister's Killer

Chapter 12 — Someone Is Watching

The car has been parked outside the estate gates for three days.

I notice it on the second day. Dark blue sedan, different plates each time, but the same dent in the rear bumper. The same angle of parking — always where the driver has a clear sightline to the front entrance.

I don't tell Damian right away. I spend a day watching the watcher first, timing the shifts, noting when the car changes. Twice a day. Eight hours on, eight hours off. Whoever this is, they're professional.

On the third day, I tell Damian.

He goes very still in the way he does — not frozen, but contained. Processing.

"How long?"

"Three days that I've confirmed. Possibly longer before I noticed."

He moves to the window. Studies the street without making it obvious he's looking. Then he steps back.

"Calloway."

"That's what I think."

"He's accelerating." Damian turns. There's something different in his face now — not the careful control I've gotten used to, but something sharper underneath it. Urgency. "He knows we're close."

"How would he know?"

"Because someone in my father's circle is talking." His jaw tightens. "I've suspected a leak for months. This confirms it."

I think about Marcus's dinner, his cool eyes, his precise warnings. I think about the way he looked at me like a problem he was assessing.

"Your father?" I ask.

Damian is quiet for a moment. "My father is many things. I don't believe he would have Iris killed. But I believe he would protect the man who did, if it meant protecting the company."

The words land heavily.

"We need to move faster," I say.

"Yes."

"Elena has contacts at the financial crimes division. If we can get her what we have —"

"It needs to go to the right person. Not just any contact. Calloway has people embedded everywhere." He pauses. "There's a prosecutor. Margaux Hendricks. She's been building her own case against Calloway for two years independently. She's clean. I've checked."

"You've been preparing to go to her."

"I've been waiting until the evidence was enough that it couldn't be buried." He looks at me. "Is it enough?"

I think about what we have. The financial transfers from Iris's box. Reeves's documents on Elena's drive. The Meridian files from the safe. A timeline going back eight years.

"Together," I say, "I think it might be."

He nods. There's a beat where neither of us moves, and in that beat I'm aware of how strange this is — the two of us standing here as a team, united by grief and evidence and a shared enemy, inside a marriage neither of us chose for the right reasons.

I'm also aware that I'm no longer certain I want out.

I file that thought away. This isn't the moment.

"I'll contact Hendricks," Damian says. "Tonight."

"And the car outside?"

His expression shifts. Hard. Certain.

"Let them watch. By the time they realize what we've sent, it'll already be done."

I look at him for a moment.

"You've been waiting a long time for this."

He looks back at me with something in his eyes that might be the closest thing to vulnerability I've ever seen on him.

"So have you," he says.