Chapter 4 - The Wife Nobody Expected
Lena was out of her chair before Adrian could stop her.
“We’re going.”
“No.”
“That’s my apartment.”
“And whoever sent that wants you there.”
“Daniel is there.”
“That’s exactly why we don’t walk into it.”
Lena glared at him.
“You said you trusted him with your life.”
“I do.”
“Then act like it.”
Adrian called the police.
He also called a security team that did not report through Vale Meridian.
Twenty minutes later, they entered Lena’s apartment.
Daniel was gone.
The chair remained.
So did the rope.
Nothing else appeared disturbed.
Then Lena noticed her kitchen drawer.
Open.
She crossed the room.
“My father’s things.”
The box was gone.
It had contained photographs, old tax records, letters, and a cheap wristwatch that had stopped the day Elias died.
Adrian stood beside her.
“They knew what they wanted.”
Lena looked at the empty drawer.
“So did my father.”
“What do you mean?”
“He never threw anything away.”
She knelt.
At the back of the drawer was a loose strip of wood.
Her father had repaired it years earlier.
Lena pulled.
A narrow compartment opened.
Inside was an envelope.
Adrian stared.
“You knew that was there?”
“No.”
The envelope contained a single photograph of Elias standing outside a warehouse.
On the back was an address.
And two words.
Lantern records.
Adrian wanted to go immediately.
Lena refused.
“We keep reacting.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We make Victor react.”
The next morning, Lena became the most photographed woman in Chicago.
News of Adrian Vale’s midnight marriage had leaked.
Photographers gathered outside the hotel.
Headlines called her Cinderella.
The Billionaire and the Maid.
Midnight Bride.
Six-Hundred-Thousand-Dollar Wife.
The amount had leaked too.
Lena stood in Adrian’s penthouse reading the stories.
“I hate every one of these.”
“So do I.”
“One says you rescued me from poverty.”
Adrian winced.
“I can have communications correct it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor expects me to hide.”
She turned.
“I want a press conference.”
Adrian stared.
“Absolutely not.”
“You don’t control me.”
“This is about safety.”
“No. This is about you being accustomed to deciding.”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
“Fine.”
At noon, Lena walked into the hotel ballroom.
She wore a simple navy dress she had bought herself.
Adrian stood beside her.
Reporters shouted questions.
“How much were you paid?”
“Was the marriage consummated?”
“Are you really a cleaner?”
“Did you marry him for money?”
Lena stepped to the microphone.
“Yes, I clean hotel rooms and public spaces for a living.”
The room quieted.
“No, I did not accept six hundred thousand dollars.”
Adrian glanced toward Victor, standing near the rear doors.
Victor’s face tightened.
“I agreed to marry Adrian Vale because he agreed to investigate working conditions affecting employees who rarely get invited into rooms like this one.”
A reporter shouted, “Are you in love?”
Lena almost smiled.
“No.”
The room exploded.
Adrian leaned toward his microphone.
“That may be the most accurate statement anyone has made about my marriage.”
Laughter broke the tension.
Even Lena looked at him.
Then she continued.
“If this marriage gives people a reason to listen, then listen to this: dignity does not depend on the uniform you wear.”
Victor left before the conference ended.
Exactly as Lena hoped.
A security team followed him.
He drove to a warehouse on the south side.
The address matched the photograph.
That night, Adrian and Lena waited in a surveillance vehicle nearby.
“You were good today,” Adrian said.
“I told the truth.”
“Most people become worse at that when cameras appear.”
“Maybe rich people do.”
He looked at her.
“Probably.”
She smiled.
Adrian did too.
Their eyes remained together slightly too long.
Lena looked away first.
“This is fake.”
“The marriage?”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“Why are you reminding me?”
“Because you were looking at me strangely.”
“I was looking at you.”
“Strangely.”
He leaned back.
“You’re impossible.”
“You proposed to a woman holding a mop.”
“Fair.”
A security officer interrupted.
Victor had left.
The warehouse was empty.
They entered.
Rows of boxes filled the interior.
Most contained old accounting records.
Then Lena found a cabinet marked LANTERN.
Locked.
Adrian used bolt cutters.
Inside were employee files.
Hundreds.
Lena pulled one.
Rosa Delgado.
Another.
Martin Kessler.
Another.
Daniel Cho.
She froze.
“Adrian.”
He took Daniel’s file.
Inside was a payment record.
Northstar Facility Partners had transferred $180,000 to Daniel three years earlier.
Adrian’s face emptied.
“No.”
Lena turned the page.
There was a signed confidentiality agreement.
Daniel’s signature.
Then they heard movement upstairs.
Adrian signaled security.
Footsteps.
A door slammed.
They ran toward the stairs.
At the top, a man disappeared through another doorway.
Security pursued him.
Lena saw something on the floor.
A phone.
Daniel’s phone.
Its screen was cracked but illuminated.
A recording app was running.
She pressed stop.
The newest audio file had been recorded seven minutes earlier.
Lena played it.
Victor’s voice came first.
Then Daniel’s.
And then a third voice spoke.
Adrian went completely still.
May you like
He knew that voice.
It belonged to someone who had been sitting beside him at every board meeting for fifteen years.
