SOLD INTO HIS ARMS

CHAPTER 3: The Message That Changed Everything

I did not remember the bus ride to Mirabel's flat. I did not remember knocking on her door. I only remembered her arms around me, her voice saying my name, and the hard surface of her kitchen table against my cheek as I laid my head down and cried until there was nothing left.

Mirabel sat beside me the entire time, one hand rubbing circles on my back, saying nothing because there was nothing to say.

When the tears finally stopped, she placed a glass of water and a plate of toast in front of me.

"Eat," she said. "You are carrying a baby."

I looked at the toast and felt sick.

"Evelyn... Eat."

I forced down three bites and drank half the water. Mirabel sat across from me, still in her nurse scrubs, her dark braids pulled up high. Her round face was tight with anger.

"Tell me everything," she said.

So I told her. The contract, the fifty million pounds, Victor's dead sister, the three-year clause, Tonia's smile through the car window. I told her all of it in a voice that sounded hollow and far away, like it belonged to someone else.

Mirabel did not interrupt. When I finished, she pressed both hands flat on the table and breathed out slowly.

"I am going to kill him," she said.

"Mirabel."

"I am serious. That man sat in this flat last Christmas and ate my jollof rice while knowing he was destroying you. I should have trusted my gut. I always said something was off about him."

I shook my head. "I was blind."

"You were in love. That is not the same as blind." She reached across the table and grabbed my hand. "What are you going to do?"

"I do not know." The words felt heavy. "I have no money, no job. Innocent's school fees are due next month. I have nothing."

"You have me. And you have time to figure this out." Mirabel squeezed my hand. "Stay here as long as you need."

I nodded, but something inside me felt hollow. My father was dead. My husband never loved me. I was pregnant and alone in a city that was never really mine.

I slept on Mirabel's sofa that night, curled under a thin blanket with my phone clutched against my chest. At 3 AM, it buzzed with a message from a number I did not recognize.

"Your father did not jump from that building. He was pushed. I have proof. If you want the truth, meet me at the cafe on Elm Street tomorrow at noon. Come alone."

Sleep disappeared. I sat up in the dark, reading the message over and over, my heart pounding so hard it made my hands shake.

For two years I told myself something was wrong about my father's death. He was not a man who gave up. He raised me through poverty, through my mother's illness, through bankruptcy. He fought for everything. Suicide did not match the man I knew.

But everyone told me I was in denial. The police, the therapist Victor sent me to, even Innocent's school counselor. Everyone said grief makes us see what we want to see.

This message said otherwise.

I did not sleep again that night. When morning came, I told Mirabel about the message.

"It could be a trap," she said. "Someone trying to hurt you."

"Or it could be the truth."

"Evelyn, you just left your husband yesterday. You are pregnant and exhausted. This is not the time to go meeting strangers."

"If my father was killed, I need to know who did it."

Mirabel stared at me. Then she grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door. "I am coming with you."

"The message said come alone."

"I will sit at another table. I will not leave you alone with some stranger."

At noon, I walked into the cafe on Elm Street. It was small and warm, filled with the smell of coffee and fresh bread. I chose a table near the window and sat with my hands wrapped around a cup of tea.

A man walked in five minutes later. Tall, with a serious face and kind eyes behind thin glasses. He wore a dark coat and carried a brown folder under his arm. When he saw me, he stopped for a moment, then crossed the room.

"Evelyn Williams?" he asked.

"Yes."

He sat across from me. "My name is Francis. We studied at the same university, though I was a few years ahead of you."

I looked at his face, searching my memory. It came to me slowly. Francis from the law faculty. We shared a class in second year.

"I remember you," I said. "You sent the message?"

"I did." He placed the folder on the table between us. "I am a solicitor now. Six months ago, a client brought me a box of old documents found in a storage auction. Financial records, letters, and personal files belonging to someone connected to the Casmir family."

My stomach tightened. "Connected how?"

"The files belonged to Benjamin Casmir. Victor's uncle."

I knew Benjamin. A silver-haired man with a warm smile who attended our wedding. Victor spoke of him with respect, called him the man who raised him after his father withdrew from the world.

Francis opened the folder. "Your father was being blackmailed in the months before he died, Evelyn. Large payments from his accounts went to a shell company owned by Benjamin Casmir."

"Blackmailed? For what?"

Francis slid a piece of paper across the table. Old, worn, with shaky handwriting I recognized immediately. My father's hand.

"I found this among the documents," Francis said. "It appears to be a statement your father wrote two days before he died."

I picked it up and read.

"I did not take that child. I was set up. Benjamin Casmir planted evidence on my property to frame me for Grace's disappearance. He used it to destroy my business, my reputation, and my family. If something happens to me, tell my daughter to look in her mother's music box. The truth is inside. I am sorry, Evelyn. I should have told you sooner."

My hands went numb. The paper blurred.

"Evelyn," Francis said gently. "There is one more thing."

"What?"

He looked at me across the table, his face grave. "I was in the building across the street the day your father died. I saw two men on the roof with him. One of them pushed him.”