Page 205 of His To Erase

This time, I open the folder labeled REDACTED – R. INHERITANCE CLAIM.

And this time… I find something else. A document that looks like it’s only half scanned, and burnt along the edges. It looks like a will. It’s signed with a signature I’ve seen before—only once. There’s also a surveillance photo, and standing next to Frank like a shadow from the past, is someone I recognize.

But it’s the clause at the bottom of the page that stops me cold.

In the event of my passing, my estate shall pass to one A. R., my blood and only heir. No other claim shall override this.

I go still.

Everything in me locks down. It’s a half-buried detail—one I brushed off because it didn’t feel relevant.

My blood.

I sit back, piecing it all together. This isn’t just some vague reference. This is a legal transfer of power. This isn’t about Frank laundering money or manipulating girls anymore. This is about Frank having control.

Now I can’t fucking breathe because if I’m right, then she’s not just tangled in this, she’s the center of it.

And she doesn’t even know it.

Or she does and she’s lying through her teeth while she sleeps in my bed, and moans my name while she’s playing me.

I don’t know which truth is worse.

I press my hands into the edge of the desk, trying to stay calm—but my knuckles are white and the only thing I can think about is her face, and the way she looked when she flinched in her sleep. The way she sounded when she whispered, “Don’t let him take me.”

Fuck.

She’s mine. That’s never changed—not since the first time I saw her. Flashing eyes, smart ass mouth, and that untouchable fire buried beneath all that fear. I wanted her then. I want her now. But if she’s tied to this—if she’s been protecting Frank— I don’t know if I want to drag her home… or punish her for it.

She knows something. But does she know who he really is?

She sure as fuck doesn’t know who I am. Because if she did—if she had any idea what I’ve done for less than what she’s worth—She wouldn’t have left my house. She wouldn’t have gotten in his car. And she sure as fuck wouldn’t be looking at another man like he could give her a future I haven’t already decided for her.

I pace across the room, heat crawling up the back of my neck like a fuse begging to be lit. Every part of me is wired and crackling. I'm halfway to the door when my phone buzzes on the desk.

Travis: You’re gonna want to see this.

The file hits my inbox a second later. It’s a timestamped image with surveillance footage with low res, and grainy as hell. But not so grainy that I can’t make out the woman in it.

No. Fucking. Way.

My vision narrows and all I hear is static. I’d recognize that face anywhere, but it can’t be her. It’s not possible. But the longer I stare, the more certain I am.

She has the same dark eyes, the same slope of her mouth and the same defiant tilt to her jaw—like the whole world could fall and she’d dare it to land on her first.

My thoughts snap straight to that night, when all I could see was a gun pointed at her head. Her body dragged forward like a shield, and his voice behind her.

“One move and I paint the walls with her.”

I’d never moved so fast in my life. Then there was the scream that’s haunted my nights every day since. I came to with blood in my mouth and a hollow feeling in my chest that’s never healed.

She was gone.

It was taken outside a building I already flagged once—a shell corp buried under layers of offshore money and fake tax IDs. It’s one of his.

Which means this wasn’t random. She wasn’t spotted on the street out and about, this wasn’t an accident.

Was she working? Was she complicit?