POV: HIM
I don't sleep.
That's not unusual.
What is unusual is that my insomnia has a face now.
Evelyn Hale.
While the city hums below, I sit in my study with three screens lit and a glass of untouched whiskey sweating beside my keyboard. Security footage scrolls silently on one monitor hallways, entrances, the guest wing.
Her door stays closed.
I don't know why I check.
I do know why I open my laptop.
If she thinks she's the only one capable of planning years ahead, she's underestimated me. I built an empire on knowing people better than they knew themselves.
I start with the obvious.
Birth records. Education. Employment.
Evelyn Hale exists but not the way she should.
She's too… clean.
No social media before age twenty. No juvenile records. No mess. No visible desperation.
People who come from nothing leave fingerprints everywhere.
She hasn't.
I dig deeper.
Her brother's death real. Tragic. Unsolved. Mugging gone wrong, the police said.
But the clinic?
I frown.
Blackwood Urban Renewal never directly shut it down. Funding wasn't cut—it was redirected through a shell nonprofit.
Someone intervened.
Someone saved it.
My jaw tightens.
That doesn't fit her story.
I pull financial archives, cross-referencing donor lists, off-books transactions.
Then I see the name.
Not hers.
Her mother's.
Margaret Hale received a private medical trust two years after Kingsway fell. Enough to cover long-term care. Enough to live comfortably.
Enough to not drink herself into ruin.
So why lie?
Unless
My phone buzzes.
Security.
"Yes."
"Sir," the guard says quietly, "Mrs. Blackwood left the penthouse twenty minutes ago."
I straighten. "Where did she go?"
"Unknown. She declined escort."
Of course she did.
I grab my jacket.
She's hiding something.
And whatever it is, it's worth leaving the penthouse at midnight to protect.
By the time I reach the garage, I've made a decision.
This marriage isn't a cage.
It's a hunt.
And I intend to be the one holding the knife.