Chapter 2 He Was Fine Ten Minutes Ago
Brooke
My father was laughing when I came back into the ballroom. That was the only reason I didn’t confront him immediately.
He stood near the bar with Cullen’s father and two men from Ardner Global, one hand curled around a glass of scotch while he told some story that had all three of them smiling. He looked relaxed and completely ordinary, as though I hadn’t just found his signature beneath paperwork connecting my company to missing women.
I stopped at the edge of the room with the message still open on my phone.
If you want to know who your father truly was, do not trust anyone tonight.
Was.
The word had been clawing at me since I left his office. Maybe it was nothing more than a grammatical mistake, an anonymous stranger trying to frighten me badly enough that I would believe whatever came next.
“Brooke.”
Cullen appeared beside me, and I locked my phone. His eyes dropped to it anyway.
“Where were you?”
“Bathroom.”
“For twenty minutes?”
Apparently he had timed me.
“I got distracted.”
“By what?”
I looked across the ballroom at my father. “Nothing.”
Cullen followed my gaze. “What happened?”
“Why does something have to have happened?”
“Because you look like you’re about to fire someone.”
Before I could answer, my father spotted me and raised two fingers in the sharp little gesture that had summoned me across rooms since childhood. I had just discovered evidence potentially connecting him to human trafficking, and he was still calling me over like I was twelve.
“Brooke,” Cullen warned quietly when I didn’t move.
That did it. I crossed the ballroom.
My father excused himself from the conversation as I approached. “Where have you been?”
Apparently tonight had become an investigation into my bathroom habits.
“Walking around my own house.”
“You disappeared in the middle of your engagement party.”
“I was gone twenty minutes.”
“You’re being rude to our guests.”
My temper, already hanging by a thread, tightened. “Our guests?”
His eyebrows drew together, so I glanced at the men beside him. “Could we talk privately?”
Something changed in his face, small enough that nobody else seemed to notice.
“About what?”
There were a dozen questions trying to tear their way out of me. Why did he have internal Mitchell Systems records? Why were the Ardners moving money through my company? Why were missing women listed beside financial transactions, and why was his signature on any of it?
Then I remembered the message.
Do not trust anyone tonight.
“I need to ask you something about the company.”
His expression hardened instantly. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
“It’s important.”
“So are the people standing in this room.”
There it was, the answer I had heard my entire life. Investors mattered. Connections mattered. Appearances mattered, and whatever I wanted could wait.
“I’m not discussing business with you tonight,” he continued. “Especially when you’re clearly upset.”
My jaw tightened. “You don’t even know what I want to discuss.”
“And I know you well enough to recognize when you’re looking for a fight.”
Cullen had followed us, of course he had, and he touched my arm. “Maybe we should take a minute.”
I pulled away before I could stop myself.
“So this is what we’re doing tonight?” my father asked.
“What exactly am I doing?”
“Embarrassing yourself.”
That landed harder than it should have, maybe because four hundred people had spent the evening admiring the perfect Mitchell daughter while my father apparently used the company she built to hide criminal transactions.
“You know what?” I lowered my voice. “Forget it.”
“Brooke.”
“I said forget it.”
I walked away, not because the argument was over, but because suddenly I didn’t want either of them to know what I had found. Not until I understood it myself.
I made it halfway across the ballroom before Cullen caught up.
“You need to calm down.”
I stopped. “Do not tell me to calm down.”
His face remained pleasant because people were watching. “Then stop behaving like this.”
“Like what?”
“Emotional.”
There were moments when Cullen could make a perfectly ordinary word sound like a character defect.
“I’m going upstairs.”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly I almost wondered if I had imagined it.
“What?”
“You cannot disappear again. People are here for us.”
“I need five minutes alone.”
“You’ve had twenty.”
His hand closed around my wrist, not hard, because it didn’t need to be. I looked down at his fingers until Cullen released me.
“Fine,” he said quietly. “Go. I’ll make excuses.”
How generous of him.
I headed toward the stairs, but I barely reached the landing before a scream cut through the music. Everything below stopped, and then someone shouted for a doctor.
People were already rushing toward the rear hallway, toward my father’s office.
My stomach dropped, and I ran.
Someone had pushed the office door wide. My mother stood just inside it with both hands over her mouth while Senator Whitmore’s wife held her upright.
My father lay beside the desk, his glass shattered near his hand and whiskey spreading through the rug.
“Dad?”
I shoved past someone, but Cullen caught me around the waist before I reached him.
“Brooke, don’t.”
“What happened?”
A physician who had apparently been among the guests crouched beside my father and checked his pulse. The room went strangely quiet before he finally looked up.
“I’m sorry.”
My mother made a sound I had never heard from her before.
I stared at my father. He had been laughing ten minutes ago and arguing with me less than five minutes ago. Around me, someone said heart attack while someone else mentioned the fall. With the shattered glass near his hand, it almost looked believable.
Almost.
Except his desk lamp was still on, and the folder was gone.
The police arrived before most of the guests had left, and by midnight my engagement party had become a crime scene.
Cullen stayed beside me for every photograph taken by reporters outside the gates. He held my hand while officers moved through the house and put his jacket around my shoulders when someone asked whether I needed anything. Anyone watching would have thought he was holding me together.
Privately, he was issuing instructions.
“Don’t mention your disagreement with him unless they ask.”
I looked at him. “Why?”
“Because people misunderstand things.”
“They’re investigating my father’s death.”
“And you’re grieving. Let me handle this.”
“There is nothing for you to handle.”
His jaw tightened, but an officer approached before he could answer.
“Ms. Mitchell?”
“Yes?”
“I need to clarify something about the timeline.”
Cullen moved closer while the officer glanced between us.
“Several guests reported seeing you and your father arguing shortly before he was found.”
My skin went cold. “We disagreed.”
“What about?”
“Nothing important,” Cullen answered before I could.
The officer looked directly at me. “That isn’t the part we’re concerned about.”
I swallowed. “What part are you concerned about?”
He opened the small notebook in his hand.
“Right now, Ms. Mitchell, you appear to be the last person anyone remembers seeing your father argue with before he died.”
