Dao stilled.
Rafael watched, waiting to confirm an enemy. It wouldn’t take much: a flash of guilt, a twitch of interest.
Dao’s entire body tensed. “Bea’s not like that.” The statement was cold, so were his black eyes.
The pressure eased. “I know it’s fake,” Rafael said. “I remember the night and what she was doing there. I’m not here for that.”
“Then why are you here?” Dao’s tone turned clinical.
“Because whoever paid for that footage wants me to believe it was Gavin Trenor.”
“And you don’t?”
“I went to him. He denied it,” Rafael said. “I have an invoice chain, but my gut tells me it’s too clean.”
For a moment, Jaxon was silent. “Trenor is capable. But if he did it, he’d be a bigger dumbass than I remember.”
“I want the source.”
“You asking a favor?” Dao asked. “Or Bea?”
She’d wanted to be the one to approach Dao; had tried to insist that it made sense that way. But there was no world in which he’d let his wife be indebted to another man.
“Me.”
Jaxon leaned back, tipping the chair onto two legs. “You hate that she trusts me.”
He wasn’t wrong. Yet for the first time, Rafael had begun to think Dao might actually be safe to stand near Bea. He gave a brief huff. “Prove her right.”
Jaxon dropped the chair forward with a quiet thud. “You have suspicions?”
“More than one.”
“Start at the beginning.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bea woke to an empty bed.
She sat up, sheets pooling at her waist. She didn’t need a clock, her body knew the time. She pulled on her nightie—crumpled on the floor from last night—and padded barefoot down the hall. She found him in the same place he’d been almost every morning since returning from their honeymoon, as if the world were waiting for him to blink first and he refused to.
As soon as she entered, his chair swiveled toward her. His hair was wet from a shower; he’d already gone for a run.
She went to him, stepped between his thighs and wrapped her arms around his neck. Felt him exhale, slowly, as his hands encircled her.
“Come back to bed,” she whispered. “Let me take care of you.”
“I can’t.”
Her fingers moved over the back of his neck, stroking where the tension had gathered. “It’s getting worse?”
He didn’t answer at first. Just leaned down and pressed his face into her sternum like it was the only quiet place left, and nodded.
“Tell me.”
“It’s the same site issue,” he said, voice muffled against her. “That first accident. Not fatal, but it shouldn’t have happened. We halted the section to review protocols and they called it overreach.”
She’d heard that part before. “They think you’re imposing foreign standards because they’re compliant under local code.”
