The Aunt's Plan
Chapter 02 - The Aunt's Plan
The SUV's headlights faded behind them once the driver cut down an unmarked service road, and for the first time since she'd stepped in front of the car, Sophie let herself really look at the man beside her.
Calm. Composed. Nothing about him suggested panic, even with someone actively following them through a storm.
"What do you mean, you hold my family's debt," she asked, her voice steadier now, anger starting to burn through the fear.
"Bennett Manufacturing has an outstanding loan with my firm," Daniel said. "Substantial. Overdue on several payments in the last year."
Sophie's stomach turned.
"Vivienne told me the company was stable," she said. "She told me the merger with Mr. Castellan's firm was about growth, not survival."
"Merger," Daniel repeated, something sharpening in his expression. "Is that what she called it?"
"She said marrying into his family would strengthen the business. Combine resources. She made it sound like an opportunity."
Daniel was quiet for a moment, clearly recalculating something.
"Castellan doesn't own a firm that would meaningfully strengthen a manufacturing company like yours," he said slowly. "He owns a shell company that's changed hands twice in three years, mostly used for asset shuffling. If your aunt was steering you toward a marriage with him specifically, it wasn't about combining resources."
*Flashback: six months earlier, Vivienne introducing Mr. Castellan at a dinner, laughing too easily at his jokes, steering the conversation toward "family alliances" in a way Sophie had found strange even then, though she hadn't had the vocabulary yet to name why.*
"Then what was it about," Sophie asked, though some part of her already suspected the shape of the answer, even without the details.
"I don't know yet," Daniel admitted. "But given that your aunt has called my office four times this week alone, insisting on discussing 'restructuring options' for the company's debt, I'd guess she was trying to get ahead of something before the marriage happened."
Sophie's hands tightened around the coat at her shoulders.
"She's been talking to you," she said. "Separately. Without telling me."
"Every conversation," Daniel confirmed. "All week. I assumed it was standard due diligence on her part, given the loan situation. I didn't realize it was happening at the same time she was pressuring you into a marriage to a man connected to a shell company."
The two facts sat there between them, ugly and obvious once spoken aloud together.
"She was trying to erase the debt through the marriage," Sophie said slowly, "before you or anyone else looked closely enough to ask why the numbers didn't add up."
Daniel didn't answer right away, which felt like its own kind of answer.
"I need to see the loan file properly," he said finally. "Compare it against whatever discrepancies might exist in the company's actual finances. If your aunt was trying to bury something before your marriage closed the deal, I want to know what, before she has the chance to bury it more permanently."
Sophie studied him, this stranger who'd become, in the span of twenty minutes, the person holding the most concrete information she had about her own family's collapse.
"Why are you helping me," she asked. "You could have just driven past. You could still hand me back to her right now if the debt matters more to you than I do."
Something flickered across Daniel's face, brief but real.
"Because whatever your aunt has been doing," he said, "using a debt I hold to pressure a twenty-four-year-old into marrying a man connected to a shell company isn't just bad business. It's exactly the kind of thing that gets people—and companies—destroyed, eventually, one way or another."
He paused.
"I'd rather figure out what's actually happening before that destruction lands on you specifically."
Sophie let that settle, some of the fight in her shoulders finally easing, just slightly, for the first time since she'd climbed out that bathroom window.
The car slowed as it approached a modest but well-kept house on the edge of the city, nothing like the sprawling estate she'd left behind.
"This is my guest house," Daniel said. "You'll be safe here tonight. Tomorrow, we start figuring out what your aunt's actually been hiding."
Sophie nodded, exhaustion finally catching up to her all at once, the adrenaline of the last hour draining out of her limbs like water through a cracked vessel.
*I ran from one nightmare and landed directly inside the one piece of information that might actually explain it.*
As the car came to a stop, Daniel's phone buzzed once more in his hand.
He glanced at the screen, jaw tightening slightly.
May you like
Vivienne, again.
He didn't answer it this time either.
