Chapter 4 In The Line of Fire

The roses arrived without a sound.

No doorbell, no knock, it was just there like it wasn’t and I almost walked past them.

They sat outside the penthouse door in a crystal vase, perfectly arranged, looking impossibly white. A dozen elegant and pristine roses which appeared surgical in their beauty. The kind of flowers people send when they want to say something without using words.

My breath caught in my throat so hard that it hurt because white roses had been my mother’s favorite.

My mother, who died quietly, mysteriously, wrapped in half-truths and closed doors and a grief my father never allowed me to fully examine. A death that had been labeled unfortunate and then sealed away like a faulty file. My eyes stung with a certain kind of emotion that rooted me in place.

My legs didn't move. I stood there staring, my mind racing backward in time—to perfume lingering in hallways, to a voice humming softly while brushing my hair, to hands that were gentle in a house that never was but all of that seemed to have gone up in smoke.

Behind me, I felt Jack before I heard him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I didn’t turn. “Are those from you?”

My voice sounded thin and brittle.

“No,” he said immediately. “And I don’t like surprises.”

Neither did I.

"I don't too," I muttered.

We brought the roses inside like they were evidence and not gifts. Jack set the vase on the marble counter, careful and deliberate. The scent filled the room—sweet, sharp, but almost taunting. It felt invasive, like someone had reached inside my chest and stirred old wounds just to see what would bleed.

That was when I saw the envelope tucked beneath the vase.

My hands shook a bit as I pulled it free.

Inside was a photograph, a photo of my mother.

She looked young, laughing, and alive.

She was holding me as a baby, her face turned slightly toward the camera, eyes bright with a joy I barely remembered. And behind her—half-shadowed, partially out of frame—stood a man.

A man who looked hauntingly familiar.

My stomach twisted violently.

“That’s not me,” Jack said, even before I turned the photo toward him. He’d already read my face, already sensed the fracture.

I handed it to him.

The color drained from his face.

“That’s my father,” he whispered.

The silence that followed felt enormously crushing. Like the penthouse itself was holding its breath.

“You didn't talk about him,” I said quietly, like we hadn't agreed to not talk about the past.

“He disappeared when I was eight,” Jack replied. His voice was distant, like he was speaking from somewhere far away. “He left me and my mother and vanished. I never saw him again.”

“But he knew my mother,” I said. The words tasted wrong in my mouth.

Jack’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know how to explain that but I think someone wants us to know it.”

The next two days blurred into shadows and screens and sleepless hours. But there remained a truth that I refused to admit even to myself, I was exhausted.

Jack tore through records with a focus that bordered on obsession—hospital archives, foundation guest lists, old press photos, donor rosters buried so deep they were practically fossils. Meanwhile, I reached out quietly and carefully, to the few staff members who had worked closely with my mother.

People who remembered her before she became my father’s wife.

One name kept surfacing.

Julian Graves.

A brilliant and discreet consultant for the Vale Corp Foundation, who was fired quietly and erased completely.

“I’m telling you,” Jack said, tapping his screen late one night, eyes bloodshot. “Julian Graves isn’t real. It’s an alias. My father used aliases all the time. Graves was one of them.”

My chest tightened. “And he left the Foundation around the same time my mother died twenty years ago.”

We stared at each other.

If Jack’s father had been working inside the Foundation, then maybe he could’ve uncovered something dangerous...

“Maybe your mother found out something fishy and tried to stop it,” Jack said softly.

“And paid for it with her life.” I finished for him.

I almost felt like all we had was assumptions, no prove. My mother knew his father and I couldn't help to question if meeting Jack the first time was mere coincidence. I didn't even know what to think.

Marietta DuPont lived in a quiet estate filled with antiques and secrets. She greeted me with a long look, like she was seeing both the child I had been and the woman I’d become. She was the one person who knew my mother closely.

“I always knew your mother was afraid,” she said eventually. “She’d call me late at night. Whispering. Saying she’d seen documents she wasn’t meant to see.”

My throat closed. “Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

“Because your father made sure no one would listen,” Marietta said. “And because a week after she tried to resign from the Foundation, she was dead.”

Jack leaned forward. “Do you remember Julian Graves?”

Marietta went still.

“Yes,” she said. “He was charming, brilliant but also dangerous. He vanished the same month Clarissa did.”

The name hit me like a blow.

Clarissa.

That was my mother’s name.

My father had forbidden us and even friends and relatives from using it. She’s not to be idolized, he’d always said 'Call her my wife.'

Now I understood why—my mother had been a mere tool for him and not ever loved or considered a partner.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I drifted through the penthouse like a ghost, the truth scraping against me from every angle. The man who raised me had erased my mother—not just her death, but her existence. And my marriage, my reckless rebellion, had cracked open a door that had been sealed for years. But I blinked back the moisture in my eyes and kept my emotions at bay.

I found Jack on the rooftop, city lights flickering beneath us.

After a long silence, I asked, “If your father is alive… what would you do?”

He thought for a long time. “I used to want revenge for abandoning my mother and I but now, I just want answers.”

"And what about your mother?" I asked.

He exhaled through his mouth. "She died after I turned twelve."

"I'm sorry to hear that." I muttered.

"I'm sorry about your mother too." He said as he stared ahead. "You know despite being a rogue tech CEO, I haven't been able to track my father's location all these years. Now that I think about it, I desperately want answers."

I nodded slightly, desiring to touch the linings of his tattoos but I didn't. “I thought control was strength. Now I think strength might be knowing when to burn the rules.” I mumbled not sure if he heard me.

The next morning, everything exploded—the headlines were brutal.

JACK ROMAN’S PAST EXPOSED.

FROM BLACK-HAT HACKER TO CORPORATE SPY.

And worse, screenshots of our marriage contract were leaked. How did it get to the media?

I immediately knew it was my father's doing, he probably sent his men to search my house. But I still couldn't understand it because I had doubts that my father had access to my penthouse code. Or maybe he did and I had no idea.

Jack sat on the edge of the bed, jaw set. “I believe it's Richard Harrow's doing.”

“Alongside my father, he will use this to push me out.” I raked my hair with my hands.

Fire burned through me.

“Then this situation calls that we go public.” he said.

I looked at him like he'd gone mad because that would mean trippling every ounce of confidence I still had left. That had always been exhausting for me ever since my ninth year birthday. But this situation calls for it and I'd have to show up even if I'd have to pretend to get it over with.

At the press conference, I stood tall.

“Yes,” I said. “Our marriage began as strategy, but it became something real.” I lied between my teeth.

Jack spoke beside me. He looked honest and unflinching.

For one brief moment at the face of the media, it felt like we won.

But that night, I found an envelope on my pillow.

Inside—a single white rose petal.

And a note.

THE TRUTH COMES NEXT.

ARE YOU READY TO BLEED FOR IT?

I clasped my eyes shut—convinced that my father has access to my penthouse.

I whimpered, wasn't I bleeding already?