Ava couldn't sleep.
She lay in her bed—the one Lucien had chosen, in the apartment he paid for—staring at the ceiling and replaying the stranger's words over and over in her mind. You look just like him. The shock in his voice. The way he'd looked at Lucien with such contempt before walking away.
And Lucien's reaction. The sudden pallor, the rigid fury, the absolute refusal to explain what had just happened.
After three days of apparent progress, of him trying to be more open and less controlling, he'd shut down completely. The car ride home had been silent. He'd walked her to her door with mechanical politeness, said goodnight without meeting her eyes, and left before she could ask any more questions.
That had been two days ago. Two days of carefully professional distance at the office, of him avoiding her except for necessary work communications, of walls slamming back into place just when she'd thought they might be coming down.
She was done waiting for him to decide when she deserved answers.
At 3 AM, she gave up on sleep and opened her laptop. The company network access that Lucien had given her was extensive—far more than a typical executive assistant would need. At the time, she'd thought it was just another way for him to test her loyalty, to see if she would snoop where she shouldn't.
Now, she was grateful for the access. And she fully intended to snoop.
She started with her own father's name: David Lane. It felt strange to type it, to search for information about a man who'd died when she was six years old. Her memories of him were fragmented—a laugh that boomed through their small apartment, strong hands lifting her onto his shoulders, the smell of his aftershave when he kissed her goodnight.
And then he was gone. Car accident, her mother had said. Quick, painless, nothing anyone could have done. Ava had been too young to question the details, too overwhelmed by grief to wonder about the specifics.
But now, with the stranger's words echoing in her mind and Lucien's refusal to explain, she wondered what else she'd been too young or too trusting to question.
The basic search turned up the expected results—obituary from twenty years ago, a few scattered mentions in local news archives. David Lane, age 35, survived by his wife Patricia and daughter Ava. Memorial service held at St. Mary's Church. Nothing unusual, nothing that explained why a stranger at a charity auction would look at her with such shock and recognition.
She dug deeper, adding business-related search terms. Her father had been a businessman of some kind—she remembered him wearing suits, remembered him leaving early and coming home late, remembered her mother complaining gently about his long hours.
An article from 1998 appeared on her screen: "New Tech Venture Promises Revolutionary Communication Platform."
Ava clicked through, her heart beginning to pound as she read the details. The article described a startup company called "Drake Industries" that was developing cutting-edge telecommunications technology. The founders were described as visionary entrepreneurs who would change the face of business communications.
Drake Industries. The name sent ice through her veins.
She scrolled down to the founders' names, already knowing what she would find but needing to see it anyway:
Richard Drake, CEO and Primary Investor
David Lane, Chief Technology Officer
Her father had been in business with someone named Richard Drake.
Lucien's father.
The room seemed to tilt around her. This couldn't be coincidence. Lucien had been watching her for months before they met, had researched every detail of her life, had orchestrated her employment with meticulous precision. And all along, their fathers had been business partners?
With shaking hands, she continued searching. More articles appeared, charting the rise of Drake Industries through 1998 and into early 1999. The company had been featured in tech magazines, had received venture capital funding, had been positioned as the next big thing in business communications.
And then... nothing. No articles after March 1999. Just a sudden, complete absence of information.
She searched for "Drake Industries dissolution" and found a brief mention in a business journal from April 1999: "Drake Industries Declares Bankruptcy, Founders Part Ways Acrimoniously."
Acrimoniously. The word seemed to carry weight beyond its definition.
Another search: "Richard Drake bankruptcy 1999." This time, she found more substantial information. An investigative piece from a business magazine that had apparently covered the spectacular failure of what had been a promising startup.
The article was brutal in its assessment. Richard Drake had made a series of high-risk investments that had nearly bankrupted the company. When questioned about his decisions, he'd blamed his business partner for technical failures that had cost them major contracts. David Lane, the article noted, had been found dead in a car accident just days after the company's collapse, leading some to speculate about the stress of the failed business.
But there was a section near the end that made Ava's blood run cold:
"Industry insiders suggest that the partnership between Drake and Lane was troubled from the start. Sources close to the company claim that Richard Drake systematically undermined Lane's technical expertise, taking credit for innovations while blaming Lane for any setbacks. The SEC briefly investigated allegations of financial misconduct, but the case was dropped after Lane's death and the company's dissolution."
"When reached for comment, Richard Drake expressed regret over his partner's death but maintained that Lane's technical failures had been solely responsible for the company's collapse. 'David Lane was a brilliant man who made critical errors in judgment,' Drake stated. 'I tried to save the company, but his mistakes were too severe to overcome.'"
Ava stared at the screen, her father's name swimming before her eyes as tears blurred her vision. Her father hadn't just worked with Richard Drake—he'd been destroyed by him. Blamed for failures that might not have been his fault, investigated by the SEC, publicly humiliated... and then he'd died.
Car accident, her mother had always said. But the timing—just days after the company's collapse, just as his reputation was being systematically destroyed—felt too convenient.
She wiped her eyes and kept searching, driven by a desperate need to understand. More articles appeared, each one painting a slightly different picture. Some portrayed her father as incompetent, others suggested he'd been a scapegoat. But they all agreed on one thing: by the time Drake Industries collapsed, David Lane's professional reputation had been in ruins.
And Richard Drake had emerged relatively unscathed. He'd lost money, certainly, but his reputation as a shrewd businessman had somehow survived. Within two years, he'd founded a new company—the company that would eventually become the Drake Enterprises empire that Lucien now controlled.
Built on the ruins of a partnership with her father.
Ava sat back from her laptop, her mind racing with implications. Lucien had known about this. Of course he had—his obsessive surveillance of her life would have uncovered the connection immediately. He'd known that his father had destroyed hers, had probably been the reason her father died, had built his fortune on what might have been stolen innovations and destroyed reputations.
And he'd hired her anyway. Had watched her for months, had orchestrated her employment, had systematically inserted himself into her life knowing that their fathers' history connected them in ways she couldn't have imagined.
The question was why. Was it guilt? Some twisted attempt at restitution? Or was there something darker at play—some need to possess the daughter of the man his father had destroyed?
She thought about the stranger at the auction, the way he'd looked at her and said you look just like him. He must have known her father, must have worked with him or invested in Drake Industries. And seeing her with Lucien—the son of the man who'd destroyed David Lane—must have been shocking enough to break through normal social etiquette.
Ava's phone buzzed, startling her out of her thoughts. A text from Lucien, sent at 3:47 AM:
Can't sleep either. Come to my office. We need to talk.
Her heart hammered as she stared at the message. The tracking app was disabled—he'd kept his promise about that. So how did he know she was awake at this hour?
Unless he was also lying awake, unable to sleep, tortured by the same secrets that were keeping her from rest.
She should ignore the message. Should wait until morning when she had time to process what she'd discovered, to figure out how to confront him about his father's history with hers. Should maintain some semblance of professional boundaries instead of running to his office in the middle of the night.
But she was tired of waiting. Tired of being patient while he decided when to share information that directly concerned her life. Tired of playing by rules he'd established to maintain control.
She pulled on clothes—jeans and a sweater, not the professional attire he preferred—and grabbed her laptop. The evidence of what she'd discovered was still on the screen, articles about Drake Industries and her father's destroyed reputation glowing in the darkness.
The drive to the office was surreal at 4 AM. Manhattan never truly slept, but it was quieter at this hour, the streets populated by delivery trucks and the occasional taxi. The Drake Enterprises building rose like a monument to everything Lucien had built—everything his father had built on the ruins of her father's career.
Security waved her through with barely a glance. They were used to seeing her at odd hours, used to the demanding schedule Lucien kept and expected others to match. She rode the elevator to his floor, her laptop clutched against her chest like a shield.
His office door was open, warm light spilling into the darkened hallway. She found him standing at the windows as he so often did, hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the city that had witnessed both their fathers' rise and fall.
"You know," she said from the doorway, her voice steady despite the emotions churning in her chest.
He didn't turn around. "Yes."
"You've known the whole time."
"Yes."
The simple admissions hit harder than elaborate explanations would have. He wasn't going to deny it, wasn't going to make excuses or try to manipulate the situation. Just raw acknowledgment of the truth.
"Your father destroyed mine," she said quietly.
"Yes." His voice was tight, controlled. "He did."
"And you hired me knowing that. Watched me for months, orchestrated my employment, systematically inserted yourself into my life—all while knowing that your family was responsible for destroying mine."
"Yes." He finally turned to face her, and she saw something in his expression that looked like pain. "All of it. Every calculated decision, every manipulation. I knew exactly what my father had done to yours, and I did it anyway."
Ava stepped into the office, setting her laptop on his desk with more force than necessary. The articles were still visible on the screen, evidence of the research that had led her to this moment.
"Why?" The question came out as barely a whisper. "Why would you do that?"
Lucien looked at her across the expanse of his office, and for the first time since she'd known him, she saw something that looked like shame etched across his features.
"Because I'm my father's son," he said quietly. "And I inherited more than just his company."
The words hung in the air between them, loaded with implications that Ava wasn't sure she wanted to understand. But she'd come too far, uncovered too much, to stop asking questions now.
"What does that mean?"
He moved to his desk drawer and pulled out a file—the same kind of thick manila folder that had held her surveillance photos. But this one was older, the edges worn with handling, as if he'd looked at it many times over the years.
He held it out to her. "It means that everything you think you know about your father's death is wrong. And what you're about to learn will make you hate me even more than you already do."
Ava took the file with trembling hands, already knowing that whatever was inside would change everything. That the careful balance they'd achieved over the past few days—the tentative progress, the cautious opening of doors—was about to shatter completely.
She opened the folder and began to read, and with each page, each carefully documented piece of evidence, her world fell apart and reconstructed itself into something darker and more terrible than she'd ever imagined.
Because the file didn't just contain information about the failed business partnership between Richard Drake and her father.
It contained evidence that her father's death hadn't been an accident at all.