Chapter 8

Sebastian

"Mr. Sinclair."

Warren pushed the door open while I was reviewing next week's scheduled appointments. He stood by the doorway for a few seconds, confirming I wasn't on a call or handling urgent matters, before walking in.

"The information has been compiled."

I turned around and gave him a nod. He walked over, placed the folder on the desk, and stepped back.

"This is everything we can confirm so far. Six months ago, she met face-to-face with an unidentified man five times, booked several flights, and made two hotel reservations, though the departure and arrival records don't match up." He paused. "The last time was a week before the wedding."

I opened the file.

The first few pages contained Vivian's basic information—education, social connections, travel records. The content was thorough, all publicly accessible data. Her social media updates weren't frequent either. The most recent post was from a week before the wedding, at a riding ground, wearing a helmet that obscured her face. Margaret often took her hunting. The Clairmont family had traditions in this regard, and the younger generation—whether Vivian's brother Theo or Vivian herself—had all handled firearms to some degree. But Margaret's interest in this daughter seemed to extend far beyond cultivating an heir.

There had been reasons for choosing Vivian.

The Clairmont family's situation wasn't good. Ever since Howard Clairmont took over the seat, their family assets had been shrinking steadily. The vineyard had been losing money for years, and their remaining properties were slowly depreciating. Later, Margaret actively intervened in her husband's business affairs, becoming the actual power holder of the Clairmont family. Even so, the situation hadn't improved much, especially considering that the Round Table's allocation was redistributed based on contribution. If they couldn't survive the next assessment, they would be expelled.

Margaret needed a backer to preserve the seat.

Two years ago, through certain means, I replaced Victor as the Sinclair family's seat holder at the Round Table. That period hadn't been peaceful—although Arthur and Jessica had abandoned their ambitions for the seat, the process hadn't been dignified. Fortunately, the Hastings family move had gone smoothly, but the cost was that everyone was watching me. Beatrice remained resentful about it, and the elders from the family's collateral branches had never stopped gossiping. I needed to do something to silence these people.

A respectable marriage was the most direct solution.

Though the Clairmont family had declined, they still held a seat. A marriage alliance could at least buy a few years' buffer. More importantly... both horse training and hunting required patience, while maintaining a seat required sufficient ambition—she appeared to lack neither. Given my parents' temperament, Beatrice had always been extremely demanding of women entering the Sinclair family. Though Victor wouldn't take a stance, he wouldn't stand on my side either. Previously, my brother Arthur's wife Jessica had been subjected to Mother's constant criticism, from wedding preparations to post-marriage living arrangements—not a single thing escaped scrutiny.

I didn't want to repeat that pattern.

Vivian didn't seem like someone who would be easily crushed.

I continued flipping through the pages.

There was a photograph taken from across the street, dated exactly six months ago. Vivian stood by the roadside wearing a black Burberry trench coat, facing a blonde man whose back was to the camera. The photo was clear enough to see Vivian's expression—her mouth slightly open, eyebrows relaxed, smiling as she spoke to the person in front of her.

"Name?"

"No identity confirmed yet."

"There are hotel reservation records but no identity?"

"He used an alias for the bookings. No matching records in the registration system."

An alias.

I continued flipping. Warren stood beside me, and only after I finished reading did he add more information.

"There's one more thing... the night before the wedding, there was an unusual hiring record at the Clairmont estate. Margaret's butler verified the identity of a newly arrived servant with a domestic service company early on the wedding day."

I looked up at him.

"What company?"

"Twilight Line."

This was getting interesting.

Twilight Line domestic service company ostensibly provided high-end household services, but in reality did far more than that. It had a parent company called Meridian Product Inc. Their public operations covered risk assessment, VIP protection, cybersecurity, and so on, but everyone within the Round Table families knew it specialized in providing temporary personnel for various families. Many families, when needing to handle matters inconvenient for their own people to touch, would arrange personnel through Twilight Line or Meridian to enter target locations.

"Any reaction from Margaret's side?"

"After the butler verified the situation and reported it to Margaret, she said not to worry about it, that the person would leave after the wedding ended."

"Security records?"

"The night before the wedding, the infrared sensor near the side entrance was triggered once. Security personnel went to check and found nothing. That servant left early the next morning."

I closed the folder.

The night before the wedding, a suspicious person appeared.

On the wedding day, the ceremony proceeded as normal, and the suspicious person disappeared.

What a coincidence.

Warren stood before the desk for a moment, then asked, "Should we investigate that man's identity?"

"No rush. Let it sit for now."

Warren nodded without further questions. He turned to leave, but I suddenly called out to him.

"Wait."

He stopped and turned back.

"Tell Willow to go to the villa and get those East District documents. Right now."

"Now?"

"Yes. And have her check what Vivian is doing while she's there."

"Understood."

After Warren left, the office fell quiet.

I reopened the folder, staring at Vivian's face in the photograph for a few seconds. Completely different from her expression on the wedding day. That bride had smiled too, but not so openly.

At first, I'd assumed she was just nervous. Fortunately, she hadn't been frightened off by Beatrice's remarks. What truly made me suspicious of her was the day I took her to the shooting range—her movements clearly showed training, though she was deliberately slowing down. People just learning firearms are uncomfortable with recoil, but she was very accustomed to it, not to mention the target hits—obviously she'd deliberately scattered the impact points.

A knock sounded at the door again.

"Come in."

I looked up to see Alex Reynolds, the person responsible for family security matters. I'd recently assigned him to conduct a security system inspection.

"The preliminary inspection of the villa is complete," he walked to the desk without sitting down. "Most areas showed no issues, except for a blind spot in the garden. Also... I asked Mrs. Sinclair if she needed separate security personnel assigned."

"What did she say?"

"She said it wasn't necessary, that being with you was fine. Incidentally, she was the one who discovered the garden blind spot."

"What position?"

"Southwest corner. Between two lighting fixtures, there's about a four-to-five-second visual blind spot. The wall isn't high—theoretically, if someone outside cooperated, they could climb in without triggering the alarm. She asked me if anyone had noticed that position before."

"I told her it was a legacy issue from the old design and that we were already preparing to update it. After I came back, I checked the records—that position indeed hasn't been mentioned in any security assessment reports."

I did know about that position. When the villa security system was originally designed, I'd deliberately had someone leave that gap and ensured it wasn't written into the assessment reports. The reason was simple—sometimes you need to let certain people think they've found an "unknown" entrance to facilitate "fishing."

She'd lived at the villa less than a week and had already spotted it.

"What did she say, her exact words?"

"She said, 'If I were a thief, I'd climb in from here.' Then she smiled and said she was joking."

I didn't ask further.

I told Alex to attend to his duties first and have someone patch up that blind spot.

The office fell quiet again.

The servant who appeared at the estate the day before the wedding, the woman who said "I do" on the wedding day, the deliberately skilled marksmanship at the range, and that security vulnerability in the southwest corner that no one had ever discovered...

Interesting.

What was the Clairmont family's purpose in sending such an unidentified "asset"?