A VOW FOR VENGEANCE

Chapter Thirteen: Not Everyone Approves

Hanna's POV

"Careful with that one, Miss Lawson. He bites."

Aiden Walter said it low, just enough for only me to hear, while Isla walked ahead of us into the conference room. He smiled when he said it, easy and pleasant, giving me no clue whether it was a joke or a warning.

I kept my face still. "I am sorry?"

"Nothing." He waved me through the door first. "After you."

I sat through the entire meeting and could not repeat a single word of it afterward if my life depended on it.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Aiden asked me directly what percentage of Lawson Arts I personally controlled. I gave him the number without hesitation, and he wrote it down without reacting, which told me he had already known it before he asked.

Stefan sat three seats down, checking his watch twice, doodling on the corner of a notepad, playing a man dragged somewhere against his will. He never once looked at me. Not when Isla laughed at something Aiden said or when my own voice cracked answering a question about the arts budget.

He was good at this. I had not expected that.

When the meeting ended, Isla walked Aiden toward the elevators, already talking numbers in the voice she saved for people worth impressing. I stayed behind to gather my folder, and Stefan appeared at my shoulder before I finished.

"You looked like you were about to faint in there," he said quietly.

"You almost got both of us caught."

"I got us a meeting." He picked up my pen and spun it between two fingers. "Productive morning, if you ask me."

"Nobody asked you."

"Rude." He set the pen down. "For someone who married me for my money, you are stingy with gratitude."

"Stefan." Aiden's voice cut in from the doorway, calm and even. "A word before we leave."

"Later, wife," Stefan muttered, and walked off toward his brother without hurrying.

Victoria's hand landed on my arm a second later. "We need to talk. Now!"

We ducked into an empty office two doors down. Victoria shut the door, and the second it clicked, she started talking fast, faster than I had ever heard her talk.

"That text last night was not random."

"I figured that much."

"No, listen." She dropped her voice. "I traced the number this morning, before the sender pulled it offline. It routed through three separate accounts, but the last one belonged to a private security firm."

"Whose?"

"The Walters."

I sat down on the edge of the desk. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be without walking into their building and asking." She crossed her arms. "Someone inside that family already knew

I was digging into Stefan before this meeting was ever booked. Which means whoever picked Lawson Arts for this deal might have already known exactly who they were walking in to see."

"That is impossible. Isla set up this meeting. She had no idea Stefan was involved."

"Isla did not choose the client, Hanna. The client chose Isla." Victoria held my eyes. "Someone on the Walter side requested this specific meeting, this week, with this company. I only found that out an hour ago."

"Aiden."

"Maybe. Or someone using him."

I sat there running through the last ten minutes, Aiden's quiet comment at the door, the way Stefan's face had gone flat the second his brother called him aside.

"He called it a joint venture," I said. "Isla thought it was business."

"Maybe it started that way," Victoria said. "But somebody in that family wanted eyes on you specifically, and they got them, without ever having to explain why."

"Hanna," she continued. "I think you might need to reconsider marrying Stefan…"

A knock stopped us both.

"Come in," I said.

Aiden stepped in alone and shut the door softly. Victoria stood, but he waved a hand, unhurried.

"Do not let me interrupt." He looked between us. "I only wanted a moment with Mrs. Walter before I go."

The name hit the room hard.

"I am sorry?" I said.

"Mrs. Walter." He repeated it slower, watching me the whole time. "That is what you are now, correct? Or did my brother forget to mention that to his own family?"

Neither of us spoke.

Aiden smiled at that, the kind a man wears when he already knows the answer to a question he is only asking to watch you react.

"I have known Stefan his whole life," he said. "He does not do quiet, and he does not do careful. Yet here he is, married within a week to a woman his own family has never met, and playing a stranger the second I walk into a room. Forgive me for finding that combination worth a second look."

"Our marriage is not your concern."

"Everything is my concern, Miss Lawson. That is the job." He walked to the window, back to me for a moment, then turned around again. "I do not know what you want from my brother yet. I intend to find out before you get it."

"You already knew my company controlled the shares before you walked into that room," I said. "That question was not for the meeting. It was for me."

He did not deny it. He just looked pleased that I had noticed.

"And if there is nothing to find?" I asked.

"Then I will apologize, and send an excellent wedding gift." His eyes stayed flat. "But I do not think that is what is going to happen. I think you want something very specific, and I think you have more patience for getting it than my brother has ever noticed."

He reached the door, hand on the handle, and looked back once more.

"For what it is worth," he said, "you are not the one I would be worried about right now."

He left before I could ask what he meant. I sat there in the quiet after the door clicked shut, the same five words sitting spinning over my head again and again.