Franz’s west wing study was insulated from the sounds of the house. Awards lined the shelves — early indie trophies alongside the heavier industry recognition that had co later. The frad movie posters covered the walls in careful arrangent, and the desk was cluttered with scripts and contracts, the daily evidence of Noah Hart’s other life. The door was closed.
Five people had gathered in their usual formation, though the room was different now. Gone were the cinderblock walls and fluorescent hum. Only the warm glow of Franz’s desk lamp remained, and the particular weight of five people who had been through enough together to skip the formalities.
Gilbert spoke first. He had his tablet with him, the screen tilted toward the group. "The PI sent an update about Arianna Brennan’s younger brother."
Arianne’s expression gave nothing away. She had been waiting for this since the double date, since she had given Gilbert the na Howard, since her grandmother had sat in her study and laid out decades of secrets across a polished desk.
"His na was Howard Brennan. He was ten years old when Arianna died." Gilbert paused, his voice steady but carrying weight. "She was pregnant when she jumped. She lost the child first—a miscarriage, the PI believes—and then she took her own life. Howard was the one who found her body. A ten-year-old boy, alone in the apartnt with his dead sister."
The room absorbed the information in silence.
Franz’s hand found Arianne’s. She allowed the contact without acknowledging it, her focus remaining on Gilbert. "How did the PI confirm the pregnancy?"
"A dical record. A clinic visit approximately two months before her death. She was examined, the pregnancy was confird, and she was given prenatal guidance. No father was listed in the file." Gilbert didn’t elaborate on who the father must have been. He didn’t need to elaborate. Gabriel Sumrs had been her lover for five years. The pregnancy was his, and he had married Ysabella Conway while Arianna was carrying his child.
"She was going to keep the baby," Arianne said.
"It appears that way. The clinic records indicate she was planning to continue the pregnancy."
"Three months. She was three months pregnant when she lost the child and jumped, and her ten-year-old brother found her body."
"Yes."
Arianne said nothing more. Her face revealed nothing. But the room had gone utterly silent around her.
"After Arianna’s death," Gilbert continued, "Howard was taken into child services. There was no other family willing to take him, or none that could be located. He spent three years in state care before he was adopted at the age of thirteen. The adoption records are sealed. The PI believes it may take considerable ti to access them, and there is a real possibility they will never be opened. So sealed adoptions remain closed permanently. We may never know whether Howard assud a new na or identity through the adoption process."
"He would have changed it," Arianne said. Her voice was even, almost clinical. "I have never encountered the na Howard Brennan before. Not in any business context, not in the Conway records, not anywhere. If he had kept that na, I would have found him by now. He assud a new identity through the adoption and used it to build everything that followed."
"So he could be anyone," Julian said. "Soone you have t. Soone you have worked alongside. Soone who has been in the sa room as you, and you would have no way of knowing."
"Yes."
The word hung in the air. Arianne did not elaborate, because elaboration was unnecessary. The man who had spent decades trying to destroy her, who had bled the Conway trust, who had aid Dominic at her like a weapon, who had killed Alex and Layla to cover his tracks—that man could be anyone. A business associate whose hand she had shaken. A face she had seen a hundred tis and never examined closely. Soone who had been watching her for years.
"How old would he be now?" Franz asked.
"Mid-forties," Gilbert said. "Arianna was in her early twenties when she died. If Howard was ten at the ti, he would be in his early to mid-forties today. Old enough to have built a career. Old enough to have established himself in whatever identity he assud. Old enough to have spent decades planning his revenge."
Nate leaned forward. "What about tracing him through the child services system? The placents before the adoption, the institutions that handled his case. Those records would predate the sealed adoption and might still exist."
"The PI is pursuing that angle. It is slow work. Decades-old bureaucracy, paper trails that may have been destroyed, facilities that have closed or rged, staff who have retired or died. The records may still exist sowhere. They may not. The PI will keep us inford."
Julian shook his head. "Thirty years. He has been planning this for thirty years."
"Longer, if you count the years before Arianna died," Nate said. "He was ten when he found her. He carried that for three years in the system. He carried it into whatever ho adopted him. He has been carrying it his entire life."
Arianne listened to all of this without interruption. Her hand remained in Franz’s, though she had not looked at him since Gilbert began speaking.
"The motive makes sense," she said. "It has always made sense. A ten-year-old boy finds his pregnant sister dead. The man who caused her death faces no consequences. The family that forced the marriage faces no consequences. The child who is born afterward and given his sister’s na grows up with everything his sister was denied. I have understood the motive since my grandmother told the truth."
She paused.
"That understanding does not extend to what he did to Alex and Layla. Whatever pain he has carried, whatever rage has driven him for thirty years, Alex and Layla had nothing to do with it. He killed them because Alex was getting too close to the truth. That is unforgivable."
No one argued.
Nate waited a beat before he spoke. "I have sothing as well. It is not as significant, but it connects to the broader picture."
He pulled up his own tablet. "The investor Angelika ntioned. The old man who told her father that Alex’s death was caused by the pressure of Rochefort Group. The one who was spreading that narrative before anyone had even asked questions."
"He died," Julian said.
"Six months ago. Natural causes. Old age." Nate set the tablet on the table. "Before his death, he conducted business with Sumrs Corporation. Several transactions over a period of years, during Gabriel Sumrs’ tenure. Investnts and partnerships that appeared legitimate on their own. The timing of so of those transactions, however, aligns with the early years of the siphon. The first few paynts out of the Conway trust occurred while he was actively involved with the company."
"He might have been connected to Howard," Gilbert said. "Or he might simply have been soone who knew enough to spread a useful narrative when the ti ca."
"Either way, that trail ends with his death. But I am tracing his surviving connections. Business partners, family mbers, anyone who might know more about his relationship to the Brennan siblings. If he was part of the network, there may be soone still alive who has that information."
"What about the Sumrs Corporation transactions?" Arianne asked. "Can you trace who authorized them?"
"I am working on it. Many of those records were archived years ago. So may have been lost during the restructuring when you took over. But I am looking."
Arianne nodded. "Good."
The group sat with the information. Two reports, two threads, each one advancing the investigation by inches. Howard Brennan, who had been erased by adoption, who had found his sister’s body at ten years old and disappeared into the system with a grief that had curdled into sothing lethal. An old investor, dead now, who had once done business with Gabriel Sumrs and spent his final years spreading lies about Alex Rochefort’s death.
"There is sothing I do not understand," Julian said. "If Howard was adopted at thirteen and assud a new identity, how did he build the network? The shells, the siphon, the connections to Blackwood—those required resources and access. How does a child from the system build that kind of infrastructure?"
"He had thirty years," Arianne said. "And he had a motive that never faded. He also had sothing to offer people who shared his goals—people who wanted to see the Sumrs family diminished, or the Conways, or both. He was not working alone. He built alliances over decades. He found people who could give him access and resources. He has been constructing this since before I was born."
"Before you were even a target," Franz said.
"I was always the target. My father nad after her. I was the living symbol of everything he had lost. He has been waiting for to be old enough and visible enough to destroy."
The room took in the weight of this in silence.
Gilbert closed his tablet. "The PI will continue working on the adoption records. I will update everyone when there is news."
"I will keep tracing the investor’s connections," Nate said. "And the Sumrs Corporation transactions. Sothing may surface."
Julian leaned back in his chair. "And we wait again."
"We have been waiting for years," Gilbert said. "A little more will not change anything."
The eting wound down shortly after. There was nothing else to discuss, no sudden breakthroughs to celebrate, just the slow and grinding work of an investigation that had been unfolding for decades and would continue to unfold for however long it took.
Nate and Julian left first, their voices fading down the hallway. Gilbert lingered near the door.
"The PI is going to keep pushing on the adoption records," he said. "If there is anything to find, he will find it."
Arianne nodded. "Thank you. For bringing this tonight."
"It is what we do." He paused with his hand on the doorfra. "You should get so sleep. Both of you. It has been a long day."
"We will," Franz said.
Gilbert left. The door clicked shut behind him.
The room fell silent. Franz did not speak. He did not move toward her. He waited, the way he always waited, for her to decide what she needed.
After a long mont, Arianne said, "She was going to keep the baby."
"Yes."
She stood and walked to the window. Outside, the estate was dark, the garden lights casting soft pools of gold across the lawn. Sowhere in the house, the twins were asleep. Sam and Audrey had gone ho with Gilbert a while ago. The new year had begun.
"I understand why he wants to burn everything down." She paused. "But he killed Alex and Layla. Whatever was done to him, whatever pain he has carried since he was ten years old, that does not justify what he did to them."
"No. It does not."
She turned from the window and t his eyes. "I am going to find him. Whatever na he is using now, whatever identity he is hiding behind, I am going to find him. And I am going to make sure he answers for Alex and Layla."
Franz crossed to her. He took her hand in his, and he held it. "I know you will."
There was nothing more to say — not about the difficulty, not about the records that might never open, not about the man she was hunting who could be anyone. He simply held her hand in the lamplight, the warmth of the room around them, the investigation waiting for morning.
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