One Night With My Fiancé Ruthless Uncle

Chapter Twelve: A Ghost From The Past

Carter didn't say a word until they were both inside the car, the door sealed shut behind them, the muffled sounds of the gala fading as the driver pulled away from the estate.

"Carter." Jennifer's voice came out sharper than she intended, fear and frustration tangled together. "Who was that?"

His jaw was still locked tight, knuckles pale where his hands rested against his knees. For a long moment, he said nothing at all, staring straight ahead like the answer required more courage than she'd ever seen him need for anything else. The city lights slid past the window in long, silent streaks, and Jennifer waited, watching him fight some internal battle she couldn't fully see the shape of.

"Marcus Vane," he said finally, voice low and controlled in a way that felt more dangerous than if he'd simply shouted. "My old attorney. The one who represented me during the board hearing ten years ago."

"Your attorney." Jennifer frowned, turning the name over, trying to place it against everything Carter had told her so far about the fraud, the exile, the decade of quiet rebuilding. "Why would seeing your own attorney at a party terrify you like that?"

"Because he sold me out," Carter said, something raw finally cracking through his careful composure. "He was supposed to be defending me. Instead, he handed the board exactly what they needed to bury me, doctored records, forged signatures, whatever they asked for. I never understood why. I assumed money. I assumed Margaret paid him to guarantee the outcome she wanted." His hands curled into fists against his knees. "I haven't seen his face in ten years. He disappeared the same week I was exiled from the family. I always assumed he'd fled the country entirely, taken whatever he'd been paid and vanished somewhere I'd never think to look."

"And now he's standing at a Kane family gala," Jennifer said slowly. "Talking to Sylvia."

"Yes."

"That can't be a coincidence."

"No," Carter agreed grimly. "It can't."

The car fell silent again, both of them turning the implications over in their heads. Jennifer thought of Sylvia's face in that moment, the shift from fear to something that looked disturbingly like recognition, and felt a fresh wave of unease settle low in her stomach. She thought too of every conversation she'd had with Carter over the past weeks, every piece of the puzzle he'd shared with her in fragments, always careful, always measured, and wondered now how many more pieces he was still holding back, whether out of caution or simply because some wounds went too deep to speak of easily.

"Do you think Margaret brought him back?" she asked. "To finish something?"

"I think," Carter said slowly, "that if Marcus Vane has resurfaced after ten years of silence, it's because someone finally needed him again. And I can't think of anyone with more reason to need a man like that than Margaret Kane, especially now, with both of us circling closer to the truth than she'd like."

"What would she need him for now? The board hearing is ten years in the past."

"Cleanup," Carter said, the word landing flat and cold. "Loose ends. Whatever proof still exists somewhere that could tie her to what really happened back then, Marcus would know exactly where to find it, and exactly how to make it disappear."

Jennifer's phone buzzed in her clutch. She pulled it out, and her stomach dropped at the name on the screen.

Sylvia.

"It's her," Jennifer said, showing Carter the screen.

"Answer it," he said immediately. "Put it on speaker."

Jennifer's hands trembled slightly as she accepted the call. "Sylvia?"

Silence greeted her at first, just the sound of ragged, uneven breathing, like Sylvia had been running, or crying, or both.

"Jennifer." Sylvia's voice came out barely above a whisper, thin and terrified. "You need to listen to me. Right now. I don't have much time."

"Sylvia, who was that man? What's going on?"

"His name is Marcus," Sylvia said, words tumbling out fast and unsteady. "He, God, Jennifer, I didn't know, I swear I didn't know what Margaret was actually planning when she asked me to get close to you again. I thought it was just information. I didn't think—"

"Didn't think what?" Jennifer's grip tightened around the phone. "Sylvia, what did she ask you to do?"

A sharp, muffled sound crackled through the line, like a door slamming somewhere in the background. Sylvia's breath hitched audibly, and when she spoke again, her voice had dropped to something barely above a terrified murmur.

"She's here," Sylvia whispered, voice suddenly frantic. "I have to go, I have to—"

"Sylvia, wait, tell me what's happening—"

"He knows about your mother," Sylvia blurted out, words spilling faster now, desperate to get them out before she lost the chance. "Marcus was there, Jennifer. Ten years ago. He knows exactly what happened to her. He's the one who—"

The line went dead.

Jennifer stared at her phone, the silence roaring in her ears louder than anything the gala's music had managed all night.

"Sylvia?" she said uselessly into the empty line. "Sylvia!"

Nothing.

She looked up at Carter, whose face had gone paler than she'd ever seen it, some deep, buried fear finally surfacing behind his usually impenetrable composure.

"Carter." Her voice shook. "What does that mean? What did he do to my mother?"

Carter's throat worked, like he was fighting to find words steady enough to say out loud.

"I don't know," he admitted quietly. "But if Marcus Vane was involved in whatever happened to your mother ten years ago, and if Margaret just found him after all this time..."

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.

The car rolled to a stop outside the penthouse, but neither of them moved, the weight of what they'd just heard pressing down on the silence between them.

Then Jennifer's phone buzzed again.

Not Sylvia this time.

An unknown number, no name attached, just a single message glowing on the screen.

If you want to know the truth about your mother, meet me alone. Tell no one. Not even him.

Jennifer's breath caught. Her thumb hovered over the message, rereading it twice, three times, the words rearranging themselves into something colder and more threatening with every pass.

"What is it?" Carter asked, noticing the shift in her expression immediately. "Jennifer. What did she say?"

Jennifer hesitated, torn between two instincts warring violently inside her chest. Every ounce of caution she'd built over the past weeks screamed at her to show him the message, to let him in, to trust the one person who'd been fighting this same war alongside her since the morning she'd walked into her father's office and found him waiting. But the message's final line sat there on the screen like a blade, deliberate and precise.

Tell no one. Not even him.

Whoever had sent it knew exactly what she and Carter were to each other. Knew enough to specifically warn her away from him, which meant either they viewed Carter as a threat to whatever truth they were offering, or they wanted to isolate her from the one person capable of protecting her.

Neither possibility settled the unease twisting through her stomach.

"Jennifer." Carter's voice had gone quiet, careful, the same tone he used when he was trying not to spook something fragile. "You can tell me."

She looked up at him, searching his face for any trace of the same doubt currently tearing through her own thoughts, and found only steady, unwavering focus, the expression of a man who had spent ten years learning exactly how to hold himself together under pressure.

For a moment, she almost told him everything.

Then she thought of Sylvia's terrified voice cutting off mid-sentence, of Marcus Vane's slow, knowing smile across the crowded ballroom, of a decade of secrets that had already cost her mother her life once before.

She turned her phone screen down against her lap, hiding the message from view.

"It's nothing," she said quietly. "Just Sylvia again. Nothing that can't wait until morning."

Carter studied her for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, and Jennifer couldn't tell whether he believed her or simply chose not to press.

"Get some rest," he said finally, opening the car door. "Tomorrow, we figure out exactly what Marcus Vane is doing back in this city."

Jennifer nodded, following him up toward the penthouse, her phone burning like a live coil against her palm the entire way, the unknown sender's warning looping endlessly through her mind.

She had no intention of telling anyone where she'd be tomorrow night.

Not even him.