Chapter 4 - Why Adrien Hired Her
Adrien’s first instinct was violence.
Camille knew it because his shoulders changed.
She touched his arm.
“Wait.”
Samuel’s hand emerged from his coat holding no weapon.
Only an envelope.
Adrien’s name was written across it in Viktor Kovac’s handwriting.
Adrien recognized it instantly.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your father gave it to me.”
“Eleven years ago?”
“Fourteen.”
Adrien took the envelope.
“Why now?”
“Because Camille found the house.”
Henri Laurent looked older than he had at the engagement dinner.
Celeste confronted him.
“You knew?”
Henri closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“You let me plan a wedding while hiding this?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Samuel answered.
“The Kovac succession.”
Adrien opened his father’s letter.
Viktor wrote that years earlier he had discovered financial crimes inside companies bearing the Kovac name.
Not crimes ordered by him.
Crimes committed by a hidden network led by someone close enough to forge authorizations.
Evelyn Ward found the same network.
Marianne Arden helped her preserve evidence.
Henri financed the investigation.
And Samuel handled the legal documents.
Then Evelyn died.
Marianne disappeared from Chicago with Camille.
Henri withdrew.
Viktor spent years dismantling the network quietly.
But he never found its leader.
Before his death, he left instructions.
One concerned Camille Arden.
Adrien read the sentence twice.
If Marianne’s daughter ever applies to work for the company, hire her. Do not tell her why until she discovers Ardan House herself. Marianne demanded that her daughter be allowed to choose her own life.
Camille stared.
“I applied six years ago.”
Adrien looked at Samuel.
“You arranged it.”
“No. That was the point. Nobody contacted her. Nobody manipulated her application.”
Camille laughed softly.
It sounded broken.
“So I got the job because of my mother.”
“No,” Adrien said.
She looked at him.
“You got the interview because of her.”
He remembered Camille’s interview.
She had corrected a scheduling error made by the hiring manager before she sat down.
Then she had told Adrien that his executive calendar was “a crime against mathematics.”
He hired her that afternoon.
“You kept the job because of you,” he said.
Camille looked away.
Henri sat heavily.
“There’s more.”
Nobody wanted more.
There was always more.
Henri explained that Evelyn and Marianne had planned Ardan House together.
The name itself combined their surnames.
ARDen.
Ward.
ARDAN.
Camille stared at the sign she had designed without understanding why the name had felt right.
“My mother suggested that name?”
“Yes.”
Tears burned behind Camille’s eyes.
She refused to let them fall.
Adrien saw anyway.
He always saw more than people assumed.
Samuel pointed to the ledger.
“That contains coded payments.”
“To whom?” Adrien asked.
“We never broke the final code.”
Adrien opened it.
Initials.
Dates.
Amounts.
One symbol appeared repeatedly.
A crown inside a circle.
Adrien froze.
He had seen it recently.
On wedding invoices.
Camille saw his reaction.
“What?”
He looked at Celeste.
“Your family crest.”
Celeste went pale.
Henri shook his head violently.
“No.”
Adrien showed him.
Henri stared.
“That isn’t ours.”
“It’s almost identical.”
“Almost.”
Camille took the ledger.
The Laurent crest had three points.
This crown had four.
She remembered something.
“Adrien.”
“What?”
“The invitations.”
“What about them?”
“The wax seal.”
Celeste frowned.
“We chose my family crest.”
“No,” Camille said. “The first proofs had the wrong crown.”
Adrien remembered Camille rejecting them.
Four points instead of three.
The printer blamed a graphic conversion.
Camille had made them redo five hundred invitations.
“Who supplied the original artwork?” Adrien asked.
Camille’s face changed.
She knew.
“Your wedding planner.”
Adrien frowned.
“You are my wedding planner.”
“The outside coordinator Celeste’s family insisted on hiring.”
Celeste whispered the name.
“Margot Vane.”
Samuel dropped his glass.
Everyone turned.
“You know her?” Adrien asked.
Samuel’s face had gone gray.
“Margot Vane isn’t her name.”
“Then what is?”
Before Samuel could answer, the ballroom windows exploded inward.
Adrien threw Camille to the floor.
Glass rained across them.
Tomas and his men stormed through the entrance.
A vehicle screamed away outside.
No gunshot.
A brick lay among the shattered glass.
Something was wrapped around it.
Adrien removed the paper.
One sentence.
THE WEDDING WILL HAPPEN.
Camille stared.
Celeste whispered, “Why would anyone care whether we get married?”
Adrien looked at the ledger.
Then at Henri.
Samuel was no longer beside them.
The rear door stood open.
May you like
And on the floor where Samuel had been standing was his phone, displaying one unfinished message:
MARGOT VANE IS VIKTOR’S—
