POV: HIM
I don't believe in coincidences.
So when my offshore accounts light up like a breached vault codes I wrote myself overridden by an unknown signature I don't panic.
I calculate.
"Who else knows about them?" I ask Evelyn as we walk back to the car.
"Very few people," she replies. "You. Your father's old fixer. And"
She stops.
"And my brother," she finishes quietly.
That lands heavier than I expect.
The drive back is silent. Not the tense kind worse. The thinking kind. The kind where every past decision starts rearranging itself into a different shape.
Back at the penthouse, I don't bother taking off my coat.
"Sit," I tell her.
She raises an eyebrow. "That's not how"
"This is not a power play," I snap. "This is survival."
She studies my face, then sits.
I pull up the access logs and project them onto the wall.
"This user didn't just access my accounts," I say. "He rewrote my encryption architecture."
Her breath catches.
"That's impossible," she whispers.
"I said the same thing," I reply. "Then I remembered one person who could do it."
I type a command.
A live video feed appears.
Static for half a second.
Then a face.
Male. Early thirties. Calm eyes. A scar at the edge of his mouth like punctuation.
Evelyn goes white.
"Hello, sis," the man says pleasantly. "Took you long enough."
The room tilts.
"You're alive," she breathes.
"Obviously," he replies. "And married, I see."
His gaze shifts to me.
"So you're Adrian Blackwood," he says. "You look… smaller than I imagined."
My spine goes rigid.
"Who are you?" I ask.
He smiles.
"Your consequence."
Evelyn stands abruptly. "You weren't supposed to contact him."
"I didn't," he says mildly. "He contacted me. The moment he dug into your past, his system pinged mine."
I stare at her. "You set this up."
She swallows. "I prepared for it."
The man leans back in his chair, somewhere far away and very secure.
"Let's stop pretending," he says. "You destroyed a neighborhood, Adrian. You displaced people who knew things. People who didn't want to be quiet."
"I didn't order murders," I say again.
"No," he agrees. "You ordered silence. Others translated."
His eyes sharpen.
"And now, you're in too deep to walk away."
"Why now?" I ask. "Why surface?"
"Because my sister married you," he replies simply. "Which tells me phase three has begun."
My blood chills.
"Phase three of what?"
He glances at Evelyn.
She doesn't look at me.
"Of taking everything you own," she says softly.
Including you.
The screen goes dark.
Silence fills the penthouse like smoke.
I laugh once short, humorless.
"You married me to protect me," I say.
Evelyn finally meets my eyes.
"I married you," she says, "because you're the only leverage strong enough to end this without a war."
"And if it fails?"
Her voice drops.
"Then we burn it all down."
For the first time, I understand the truth.
This woman didn't chain herself to me for revenge.
She did it to stop something far worse.
And wanting her?
That might be the most dangerous variable of all.