Chapter 8
Iris Vale.
Not the name on her employment contract.
The name she had chosen and never told him.
Her blood went cold.
“How do you know that name?”
Nicholas did not answer immediately.
Outside, thunder rolled over the city, low and distant.
“Nicholas.”
He looked at the envelope, then at her.
“Because I didn’t hire you by accident.”
Iris stood from the bed as if the mattress had burned her.
“What does that mean?”
His voice was hoarse now. “It means my father knew your mother.”
The air left her body.
Iris stared at him.
“My mother died when I was four.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything about her.”
“I know she worked for Valmont Group.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“She did.” Nicholas’s face tightened. “Not publicly. Not under her real name.”
Iris shook her head. “Stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No,” he said, and there was agony in it now. “I can’t, because if I die before telling you, my uncle will bury everything.”
Iris clutched the envelope so hard the paper bent.
“What everything?”
Nicholas swung his legs over the side of the bed. He looked weaker than he had minutes ago, but something desperate had entered him, something stronger than pain.
“The company wasn’t built only on acquisitions,” he said. “My father stole from people. Destroyed families. Yours was one of them.”
Iris’s heartbeat became a roar.
“My family had nothing to steal.”
“That’s what you were meant to believe.”
She backed away.
The bedroom door stood behind her, open to the dark hall.
Nicholas saw the movement and looked terrified for the first time.
“Iris, please.”
“No. Don’t say my name like that.”
He tried to stand.
His knees failed.
Iris moved before thinking, catching him as he fell against the bed. Anger and instinct collided inside her so violently she nearly cried out.
“Don’t touch me,” he gasped, not because he wanted distance, but because he could not bear what he had done to deserve it.
But her hands were already on him.
He was shaking.
The man who had commanded boardrooms, ruined competitors, dismissed lovers, and bought silence with the ease of signing his name was shaking in her arms.
Iris lowered him back to the bed.
Then she stepped away.
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “All of it.”
Nicholas looked at the envelope.
“Inside is a key,” he said. “A bank vault. Documents. Your mother’s file. Mine. The proof that my father used her research, framed her for theft, and let her disappear when she threatened to expose him.”
Iris could not speak.
Nicholas’s eyes shone in the dim light, not with tears yet, but with the force of holding them back.
“I found it three years ago,” he said. “The same month I promoted Mrs. Whitmore and personally reviewed household staffing.”
“The month you hired me.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who I was.”
“I knew who you might be.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I was trying to confirm it.”
“For five years?”
“No.” His voice broke. “For two months. After that, I was a coward.”
The storm outside broke.
Rain struck the windows hard, sudden and furious.
Iris stood in the middle of Nicholas Valmont’s bedroom holding an envelope that might contain the remains of her life before she had learned to survive it.
“You hired me because of guilt,” she said.
“At first.”
She flinched.
Nicholas closed his eyes as if the sight hurt him.
“At first,” he repeated, because the truth was ugly and he would not dress it up. “Then I started watching you rebuild order in a house that had never deserved it. I started waiting for your footsteps in the morning. I started lying to myself that keeping you close was protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“My uncle. The board. Anyone who knew what that file meant.”
“And now?”
He opened his eyes.
“Now I need you to live long enough to use it.”
The words chilled her more than the rain.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Before Nicholas could answer, a sound cut through the room.
The mansion security alarm.
One long, low pulse.
Then another.
Iris turned toward the hall.
Nicholas’s face drained of color.
The intercom beside the bed crackled.
For a second, there was only static.
Then Marcus’s voice came through, strained and frightened.
“Sir… there’s a car at the gate.”
Nicholas reached for the panel.
“Who is it?”
Static again.
Then Marcus said the name that made Nicholas close his eyes like a man hearing the first shovel of his own grave.
“Victor Valmont.”
Iris looked at him.
“Your uncle?”
Nicholas grabbed her wrist—not hard, but with terrifying urgency.
“Take the envelope,” he whispered. “Go through the service stairs. Do not let him see you.”
“Nicholas—”
“Listen to me. Camille didn’t leave angry because I cut her out of the will.”
The alarm pulsed again.
Nicholas looked toward the dark hallway.
“She left because I told her I was giving everything to you.”
Downstairs, the front door opened.
May you like
And a man’s voice, smooth as polished bone, called into the mansion:
“Nicholas, my boy. I hear congratulations are in order.”
