A VOW FOR VENGEANCE

Chapter Twelve: The Reason It Has To Be Him

Hanna's POV

I snatched the phone out of Victoria's hand and read the text message twice.

Stop asking questions about Stefan Walter. Some doors do not open twice.

"Who sent this?" I asked.

"Someone who found out fast." Victoria laid the phone face up on the blanket. She stared at it like it might bite her if she looked away. "Faster than I expected."

"Block them."

"I already did." She looked up at me, her face pale. "Hanna, whoever sent that knew exactly what I was looking for. It is not a coincidence. Someone is watching us."

"Watching you, or watching him?"

"Maybe both." She quickly stuffed the papers back into her thin folder. "Do you want me to stop digging?"

"No."

The answer came out of my mouth before I could think. Victoria raised an eyebrow.

"If someone wants to scare me off," I said, leaning forward, "it means there is something worth finding. I am not stopping because of a text message."

She did not argue. She never did once my mind was made up. She just gave me a long look to make sure I understood the danger, then stood up.

"Get some rest," she said, and let herself out.

The moment the front door clicked shut, I went over and locked it twice. The fact that I felt the need to double lock my own door told me exactly how disturbed I was.

My hands were shaking when I picked up the folder again.

I could not sleep. I spent the next two hours reading every single page for a second time, much slower now.

The old scandals in the file did not surprise me. Wealthy men always had them, a lost board seat, a quiet lawsuit paid off with secret money.

But the five year gap in his records was the part that stuck into my mind.

I turned the empty pages, searching the blacked-out lines for anything Victoria might have missed. There was nothing. It was just a giant hole in his life. Five years entirely wiped clean by someone with enough money to erase a man's history.

A normal man does not need five years hidden. A man with nothing to hide does not build a wall that thick around his past.

Suddenly, Stefan's wild behavior and his angry father did not look like recklessness anymore. It looked like a man fighting to protect the only secret he had left.

That was the answer. It had to be him. Not anyone else on my list.

A man who was missing five years of his own life would not ask questions about mine. He would not care about my secrets, because he already knew how terrible it felt to have people picking your past apart. Whatever those five years had done to him, they made him the exact husband I needed. He was a shield. The media would spend all their time guessing about his secrets instead of digging into mine.

I picked up my phone to call Victoria back, wanting to plan our next move.

But my fingers moved on their own, and I called Stefan instead.

He needed to know the truth. If someone was threatening Victoria because of my questions, he had a right to know his future wife brought that trouble to his door.

The phone rang once. Twice. My thumb hovered over the red button to hang up, but I forced myself to wait.

He did not answer. I tried again five minutes later, and then one more time after that. I told myself he was just asleep, but a bad feeling started to grow in my stomach.

***

Isla brought it up over breakfast the next morning, brisk and businesslike in the tone she reserved for anything touching the company's money. VIP clients, she called them, coming in to discuss a joint venture worth protecting. She wanted me at the office early, properly dressed, present for the introductions even if I did not have to say a word.

She never gave me a name, and it did not occur to me to ask for one. Half the meetings running through that building lately involved someone with a title important enough for Isla to simply call them VIP and move on.

Victoria was waiting near the elevators when Isla and I walked in, and the second she saw my face, hers changed completely.

Victoria was waiting by the elevators when Isla and I walked into the office. The moment Victoria saw me, her face changed completely.

"Hanna…" she started, but then her eyes snapped to my mother standing next to me. The words died in her throat.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," Victoria said, way too fast. "Just a little problem with the meeting. I will fix it before it starts."

I stared at her. Whatever she was hiding, it was not a little problem.

"Let me know if you need help," I said. I kept walking because I could not push her for answers with my mother watching our every move.

We were just three steps away from the big conference room when the doors swung open from the inside.

A stranger walked out first. He was tall, handsome, and walked like he owned the entire floor. But right behind him, looking completely uncomfortable in a stiff suit that did not fit him right, was Stefan.

I stopped walking.

"Isla." The man offered a hand, smooth and professional. "Aiden Walter. Thank you for having us."

"Mr. Walter." Isla shook it warmly. "This is my daughter, Hanna."

Stefan's eyes found mine over his brother's shoulder, lit with something close to delight, like he had spent the whole drive over waiting for this exact moment.

"Hanna," Stefan said. He stepped forward and held out his hand to me, acting like a complete stranger. His voice was perfectly calm. "A pleasure to meet you."

I took it, my pulse hammering somewhere near my throat, and understood, in that one second, that Stefan had known exactly whose company he was walking into, and had come anyway, just to see what I would do with Isla standing three feet from the truth.