“I know.”
“Do you?”
Marcus looked at him.
They had known each other nineteen years.
Marcus was one of the few people who could answer Damian honestly.
“You think I want someone to blame.”
“I think you want this solved before you become angry enough to skip the solving part.”
Marcus gave a humorless smile.
“Fair.”
They reviewed footage.
The medication arrived at 5:42 the previous evening.
Courier authenticated.
Package intact.
Evelyn signed.
A guard carried it to the medical storage room.
The house nurse logged it.
At 6:10, she placed it in Damian’s study cabinet for the morning.
Everything looked normal.
Then Marcus stopped the footage.
“There.”
At 11:48 p.m., someone entered the east corridor.
No face.
Only a shoulder passing the camera edge.
The next camera went dark for ninety-three seconds.
Damian leaned closer.
“Equipment failure?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it came back without a reset alert.”
Someone had disabled the feed locally.
That required access.
Marcus pulled the entry logs.
One badge had opened the service door near the study at 11:46.
Alina Hayes.
Damian said nothing.
Marcus looked at him.
“She was supposed to leave at nine.”
“Where is she?”
“Kitchen.”
Damian found Alina peeling apples beside the sink.
She looked up.
Immediately knew something was wrong.
“Mr. Cross?”
“Your badge opened the east service door at 11:46 last night.”
Her face changed.
“No.”
Marcus watched her hands.
They stopped moving.
“I was home.”
“Can you prove that?” he asked.
Alina swallowed.
“My sister called me at eleven-thirty. We talked almost an hour.”
“Phone records can confirm it,” Damian said.
She looked relieved for half a second.
Then frightened again.
“My badge.”
“When did you last see it?”
“This morning.”
“Before that?”
Alina thought.
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Did anyone borrow it?”
“No.”
Then she froze.
“What?”
“The laundry office.”
Damian waited.
“I changed aprons around four. I left my badge clipped to the old one while I took Sophia to the nurse because she scraped her knee.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”
“Who was there?”
Alina looked toward the doorway.
“Mr. Bell.”
Marcus’s face hardened.
Arthur Bell.
Deputy household manager.
Twelve years in the Cross organization.
Trusted enough to manage staff clearances.
Trusted enough to issue replacement badges.
Trusted enough that nobody questioned seeing him almost anywhere.
Damian did not order anyone to bring Bell to him.
He called the outside investigator already on retainer for corporate security matters.
Then he told Marcus:
“Preserve everything connected to Bell before he knows we’re looking.”
It took six hours.
Not six dramatic hours.
Six tedious ones.
Badge audits.
Camera logs.
Vehicle records.
Phone metadata.
Internal purchasing records.
Interviews.
By evening, the shape of the problem was clearer.
Bell had used Alina’s badge.
A hidden camera in the supply corridor caught him returning it to her apron.
But Bell had not acted alone.
The medication itself had entered the property already altered.
Someone in the delivery chain had substituted the package after pharmacy verification.
Bell’s role had been to move the questionable bottle into Damian’s morning cabinet and remove the legitimate one.
Marcus stared at the report.
“Who paid him?”
“Not yet.”
“You know what I’m asking.”
Damian did.
Who wanted him dead?
But a more useful question came first.
“Who benefited from knowing I took those pills without looking?”
Marcus went still.
That narrowed the circle.
The medication schedule was private.
The exact morning routine even more so.
Someone had observed Damian long enough to know he never checked the tablets.
Or had been told.
The answer arrived from an unexpected place.
Sophia.
She was sitting at the breakfast table the next morning coloring a picture when Damian walked past.
She looked up.
“Your medicine is blue again?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He stopped.
“Sophia.”
She kept coloring.
“Have you ever heard grown-ups talking about my medicine?”
Alina immediately looked alarmed.
“Mr. Cross—”
“It’s all right.”
Sophia thought.
“Mr. Bell told the lady you never look.”
Every adult in the room froze.
“What lady?”
“The one with the red shoes.”
Marcus crouched.
“When?”
Sophia shrugged.
“Last week.”
“Where?”
“By the back stairs.”
“What did they say?”
Alina touched Marcus’s shoulder.
“Don’t lead her.”
Marcus nodded and backed off.
Damian sat across from Sophia.
“You don’t need to remember exact words. Just tell me what you remember.”
Sophia drew another yellow line across the page.
“Mr. Bell said, ‘He doesn’t even look at them anymore.’”
“Anything else?”
“The lady said, ‘Then don’t make this complicated.’”
Damian’s expression changed.
“Did you see her face?”
“A little.”
“Would you know her?”
Sophia looked up.
“She comes to dinner sometimes.”
Marcus and Damian exchanged a glance.
“Who?”
Sophia pointed toward a framed photograph on a sideboard.
A charity gala from six months earlier.
Damian stood in the center.
To his right was his cousin and chief financial officer, Adrian Cross.
To his left stood Adrian’s wife.
Victoria.
Red-soled shoes visible beneath a silver dress.
Sophia pointed.
“Her.”
Damian did not react.
That took effort.
Victoria had been family for fourteen years.
Elegant.
Intelligent.
Always charming to staff children because she claimed adults revealed themselves by how they behaved around people “too small to matter.”
Apparently she had forgotten children also listened.
Still, Damian did not make the child responsible for proving a crime.
Her statement became one piece.
Nothing more.
The investigators found the rest.
Encrypted payments from a shell company tied to Victoria’s private investment office.
Transfers to Bell.
Messages discussing Damian’s schedule without naming the medication directly.
And a much larger motive.
Three months earlier, Damian had ordered a forensic review of Cross Development after discovering unexplained losses.
The review was days away from exposing a scheme involving Bell, Victoria, and two outside contractors.
Millions had been diverted through inflated maintenance and construction invoices.
Adrian knew nothing.
Victoria apparently believed Damian’s death would delay the audit and shift voting control long enough for records to disappear.
Damian read the findings alone.
Marcus waited by the window.
Finally:
“Where is she?”
