He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 101

Chapter 101

Maya’s POV

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The investigator’s name was Carter.

I had used him once before… eighteen months ago, when a supplier contract had shown signs of irregularity and I had needed someone outside the company’s legal structure to verify what I was seeing. He was thorough, discreet, and understood that the value of his work was in what he found rather than what he said about finding it.

I called him at eight in the morning from my office with the door locked.

“I need you to go deep,” I said. “Not the surface…. the infrastructure underneath. A three-year period ending with my father’s death. Financial records I’ve already started mapping, but there are gaps I can’t access through official channels.” I paused “And I need you to look at the people connected to those records. Not just Mason’s family. Others.”

“How far outside the company?” he asked.

“As far as the money went,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment

“This is going to take time,” he said.

“I know. Start today.”

I gave him what I had. The phantom account….. The transaction dates. Richard Voss’s name attached to the final transfer. The advisory firm that had dissolved one month after my father died.

He listened without interrupting

When I finished he said: “I’ll be in touch”

I trusted that he would.

The morning moved as mornings moved when the important work was happening somewhere else…. the surface work proceeding on its own momentum while the mind ran underneath it, tracking the real current

I signed three contracts.

Reviewed two board communications.

Answered Lila’s questions about the afternoon’s schedule with the composed efficiency of someone whose composure was functional rather than felt

At noon I ate at my desk…. something Lila had left without comment, the small, consistent care of someone who had noticed I forgot to eat when the work became absorbing.

So I ate

Checked the encrypted channel Carter had set up….

Nothing yet.

Put the phone away.

Picked it up again five minutes later.

1:4

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The post appeared on my screen at two-seventeen.

I had been scrolling through industry news…. the passive monitoring I did in the quieter afternoon hours, the habit of staying current, when Catherine Voss’s name appeared in a tagged photograph.

I stopped scrolling

The photograph showed a venue….. a room, high-ceilinged, with the specific quality of a space being assessed for an occasion. Catherine stood in the centre of it, smiling at the camera, holding what appeared to be a fabric swatch. The caption she had written read: Beautiful space for a beautiful beginning. Spring can’t come soon enough.

I looked at it….

Clicked through to her profile.

Three posts in four days.

The first: a florist, with a comment from one of Alex’s aunts…. So perfect for the date you mentioned.

The second: a photograph of what appeared to be invitation samples, shared from a stationery account, tagged with three family members I had met at the party.

The third: a venue walkthrough video, posted that morning, which included a date in the caption that I had not agreed to, had not been consulted about, and was apparently already circulating among a family network that had decided the decision was made

I put the phone face down on the desk…

Picked it up.

Read the date again

It was real. The same date in three separate posts, referenced by three separate family members with the casual confidence of people confirming rather than discussing.

The wedding had been scheduled without me…..

I sat at my desk in my office with my name on the door and my eighty percent in the governance register and thought about the specific, familiar quality of a life being arranged around me rather than with me

Not maliciously… I understood that. Catherine’s warmth was real. The family’s enthusiasm was genuine. They were not doing this to exclude me; they were doing it because, from their position, the decision was made and the next step was logistics.

But I had not made the decision.

I had said yes to a ring on a bedroom floor at midnight while frightened and grateful and in love with a man who had just told me he would protect us.

I had not agreed to a spring date in a venue I had never seen, shared publicly among people I had met once, while I was sitting in my office trying to map who had killed my father.

I pressed my hand flat on the desk….

The ring caught the light.

I looked at it

2:4

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Then I picked up my phone and opened a message to Alex.

Typed: Your family has posted a wedding date online. I wasn’t consulted.

Deleted it….

Typed: We need to talk.

Deleted that too.

Put the phone down.

Because the conversation I needed to have required a room and a face and the specific, honest quality of two people saying real things to each other, and I was not going to have it in a text message while Carter was somewhere in the city looking at records that might tell me whether Alex’s father had been in a room with the men responsible for my father’s death.

Those were not compatible conversations to have simultaneously

I needed to be very careful about the order of things.

Lila knocked at three-forty

“Your four o’clock has confirmed,” she said through the door. “And there’s a call from Rivaldi’s office when you have a moment.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Give me ten minutes.”

Her footsteps retreated

I looked at Catherine’s posts on my screen….. the venue, the fabric swatch, the date that was now public knowledge among people I had met once and felt the complicated weight of someone who was beginning to understand that saying yes to one thing did not mean saying yes to everything that followed it….

I had agreed to a ring.

I had not agreed to lose the authorship of my own story.

Not again

My phone buzzed.

Carter.

I picked it up immediately….

One message. No preamble. No context.

You need to see what I just found about your father’s last day alive.

I stared at it

The venue posts were still open on the other screen…… the spring date, the florist, Catherine’s smile.

Two screens.

Two simultaneous realities pressing on me from opposite directions

I typed back to Carter: Send it.

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