THE BILLONAIRE'S REPLACEMENT BRIDE

Lies

Elena sat on the floor with the photograph in her lap.

The house was asleep or pretending to be. She held the image under the thin beam of a desk lamp, turning it by degrees, studying the boys on the dock until their faces burned into her memory.

Marcus laughing. Adrian severe even at ten, already shouldering something too heavy for his frame.

She had looked at it a hundred times since finding it on her bed. But tonight, her eyes drifted past the brothers to the background to the blur of adults standing on the grass beyond the dock to a man in a navy blazer with silver hair that hadn't yet turned fully gray.

Richard.

Her father stood among a cluster of men, holding a drink, his head turned toward the camera with the easy smile he wore at company events. He wasn't watching the boys. He was talking to someone beside him... a woman Elena didn't recognize but he was there. He was there, at whatever summer afternoon this had been, sharing space with the Blackwood family like they belonged to the same world.

The photograph slipped from her fingers.

She pulled a box from the back of her closet.... things she had grabbed from the Vale house in a hurry she hadn't examined until now. Old files. ...A leather portfolio of her father's she had taken without thinking, simply because it had been on his desk when he turned his back, Financial summaries from years ago.

She spread them across the floor . Seven years ago, Vale Industries and Blackwood Holdings had partnered on a waterfront development. The project had been announced with fanfare — photographs of Richard and Adrian's father shaking hands, smiling, then, three months later, the deal collapsed. Blackwood Holdings pulled out. The official reason was "strategic differences."

One week after the withdrawal, Marcus Blackwood died.

Elena's hands shook as she held the timeline together. Accident...Strategic differences.

She didn't hear the door open.

"You're awake."

She shoved the papers beneath her sweater, the movement too fast, too guilty. Adrian stood in the doorway in a shirt unbuttoned at the collar, holding two cups. He looked at the floor beside her knee and his gaze flickered.

"I couldn't sleep," she said.

He walked in and set one cup on the desk. He didn't sit instead He stood over her, and she felt his attention like a weight, pressing the air from her lungs.

"You're different tonight," he said.

"Different how?"

"Distracted." He tilted his head. "Ever since you came back from the Vale house."

Elena's pulse hammered. She kept her eyes on the cup, on the steam rising from it, on anything but his face.

"I told you. My father and I don't get along."

"That's not what I mean."Adrian crouched down. Not close enough to touch her, but close enough that she could see the flecks of silver in his eyes, the scar tracing his jaw, the way his mouth held a question he hadn't yet asked.

"Elena." Her name was quiet and Dangerous. "Have you been investigating Marcus?"

The lie rose in her throat like bile. She felt it there, She had never lied to him before. She had been angry, defiant, silent but never false.

"No," she said.

The word hung in the air between them.

Adrian didn't blink. He studied her face with the same intensity he had brought the contract.

Elena held his gaze. She didn't look away. She didn't breathe.

"Drink your tea," he said. He stood. "It helps with sleep."

He walked to the door and paused then he was gone, and Elena sat alone with her lie burning in her chest like a coal.