11. Jasmine
JASMINE
The signet ring shouldn't bother me this much.
I have a photo of it on my phone, taken three weeks ago without thinking—Sebastian's hand flat on a boardroom table, the heavy gold band catching light while he signed something.
I'd zoomed in only because the crest looked cut by hand, a small bird ringed in thorns, too precise for anything stamped by a machine.
I forgot about it until last night, when I couldn't sleep and started scrolling, and the crest stopped me cold.
Because I'd seen it somewhere else. On a painting.
The portrait hangs in a side wing of the museum downtown.
I wandered in weeks ago on a slow Sunday and laughed at it then—a man in a high collar, dark hair, silver-gray eyes, half-turned as though someone behind the painter had said his name.
Rich families recycle good bones, I'd thought.
Someone in the Crowe line had cheekbones to spare.
"You've been here a while."
A museum attendant appears behind me, soft gray cardigan, a visitor's badge clipped beside her staff one. She isn't smiling, isn't frowning. She looks at the portrait, then at me.
"It's a beautiful piece," I say.
"It isn't usually out." She tilts her chin slightly. "Did Crowe send you?"
The name sits wrong in her mouth—too quiet, too familiar. "I'm sorry?"
"Some families are careful about what stays on the walls." She straightens a card that doesn't need straightening. "They prefer to know who's looking. You understand."
"I don't, actually."
"No," she agrees, almost gently. "You don't." And she walks back toward the marble landing, leaving me alone.
By evening I'm three hours into public archives I didn't know existed—digitized newspaper morgues, scanned society pages, photographic plates from before color. I call it thoroughness. That explanation gets thinner by the minute.
The first clipping is misfiled, tagged to the wrong decade. A charity gala, 1924, men in tailcoats on a marble staircase. Three of them stand near the margin of the frame, not posed, caught mid-conversation.
One man in the frame makes my stomach dip. Not because he is Sebastian. That would be impossible. The photograph is dated 1924, and old newspaper scans do strange things to faces. Shadows sharpen cheekbones. Bad ink turns strangers into ghosts.
But there is something in the angle of his head. The dark hair. The formal stillness. The ring on his hand, caught in a blur when I zoom too far.
Two men stand near him, both half-turned from the camera. One is broad through the shoulders, pale-haired, his face lost to grain. The other is leaner, set slightly behind the group, watching others instead of the photographer. I stare until the pixels give up.
Generational wealth with a strong family resemblance and a talent for unsettling portraits. It is the only answer I can make fit.
On Monday, Penny is in the eighth-floor kitchen, and I make myself sound casual. "Random question. How long have Gideon and Elias been with Sebastian?"
She's stirring her coffee. "Forever, basically. They came as a package. Why?"
"Found an old photo. Family-resemblance thing. Made me curious."
The spoon stops. She sets it down carefully and steps closer than the conversation needs.
"Jazz." Her voice drops. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"There was a guy—comms team, before you.
Sharp. He got curious about the archive contracts, all the old media licenses we buy that nobody else wants.
" She glances around, making sure no one is listening.
"He started asking around. Then he transferred.
I went looking for him once, I needed something he did and—nothing.
No profile, no forwarding. Like he got scrubbed from existing. "
"Penny—"
"I like this job. I like you." She picks the spoon back up, performing normal. "Some things here aren't ours to look at. Leave whatever you've found, girl."
I consider what she says but I can't leave it. Instead, I just get more careful. That afternoon I bring Sebastian a folder he didn't ask for and stand in his office while he reads.
"Does your family keep portraits?" I ask. "Old ones."
He doesn't look up. "Some."
"You favor them. There's one at the museum downtown."
The pen stops moving. Just that.
"Do you have brothers?" I go on. "You and Gideon hold yourselves the same. Elias too. I wondered if you were related before the company."
He places the pen on the desk and raises his eyes, and what's in them isn't irritation. Not guilt. Not anger. I can't decide if it's fear or annoyance.
"Where did you see the portrait, Jasmine?"
"I told you. The museum."
"Who were you with?"
"No one."
"Did you photograph it?"
The questions come fast now, even, each one set down like a stone. He isn't asking what I found. He's asking who else knows.
"It's just a painting," I say.
"Then it shouldn't matter where it hangs." He stands, and for one second, before he smooths it away, I see it. Fear—and not fear of being caught in a lie. Fear for me. The realization lands somewhere warm and dangerous, and I want, God help me, to cross the room and promise I'll stop, but I don't.
"You should be careful which galleries you wander into on weekends," he says quietly. "Some collections stay private because exposure has consequences."
"Noted."
"Jasmine." My name, softer now. He hesitates, and then continues, "Never mind."
I'm unsure if he was about to reveal something profound, but I just leave and head to my desk to open the archive contracts Penny named. Media licenses. Old photographic estates. Newspaper morgues bought wholesale and quietly closed to the public.
Crowe Technologies isn't only burying corporate leaks. It's buying history. Taking faces off walls. Erasing people from existing.
Nothing adds up. Something is completely misconstrued, but whatever this is. The missing pieces are starting to itch under my skin. Sebastian is keeping something from me, and I'm going to find out.