Chapter 18-The Truth Exposed #2
All of it is about to hit the Bar Association in?—
The Bar Association was four blocks north. I checked my watch.
9:03 AM.
Three minutes since they opened.
My phone rang.
Charlotte.
I answered.
"Blaire. Where are you?"
Her voice was tight.
Wrong.
"Morrison Plaza. Conference room. Crowe was here."
"Shit." A pause. "Listen, there's something you need to know. Your father..." Another pause. "He knew. Crowe contacted him weeks ago. Some kind of warning. Professional courtesy between old colleagues."
The room tilted.
"And he didn't tell me."
"He thought he was protecting you. Hired additional security monitoring. Had someone watching Crowe's movements. He planned to handle it quietly."
My hands tightened around the phone.
"Richard didn't know about Whit's involvement," Charlotte said quickly. "I can confirm that much. But Blaire, your father... he made a choice. And it was the wrong one."
I ended the call.
Sat there with the phone in my hand.
My father had known for weeks.
While I was checking locks.
While I was wondering if I was losing my mind.
While I was rearranging files and questioning my own memory.
While someone was gaslighting me, and I thought I was going crazy.
While Charlotte was calling to check on me.
While I was alone.
Whit knew.
I thought of the gala. The moment I'd understood, later, what he'd kept from me then — the conversation he'd had with Rowan before everything fell apart, the warning he'd decided I didn't need to hear.
The pattern had started there, long before this morning.
My father and Rowan both thought protecting me meant controlling me.
Both thought they knew better than I did what I could handle.
Professional courtesy.
Old colleagues.
Protecting me.
Rowan had said it once, in one of our last arguments. That I was like a robot. That I didn't feel things the way other people did.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe I didn't.
Because this should have shattered me.
But all I felt was cold.
Clear.
Like the last piece of a pattern I'd been too afraid to see.
I picked up my phone.
Texted Richard.
Come up. Conference room 4B. Now.
I didn't know if he'd known too.
Didn't know if this was another betrayal or if he was the only person who'd actually been on my side.
But I needed to find out.
Thirty seconds later, the door opened.
He took one look at my face.
"What happened?"
I couldn't answer.
Couldn't form words past the panic closing my throat.
Richard crossed the room in three strides.
Knelt in front of me.
Just close enough I could see the concern in his eyes, the question he wasn't asking.
"Crowe was here." My voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away. "Morrison. There was no Morrison. Just Crowe. He had photos. Months of surveillance. He wanted me to sign a false statement or face a Bar complaint."
Richard's jaw tightened. "What did you?—"
"I didn't sign." I met his eyes. "Charlotte called. Right after he left."
Something shifted in his expression.
"She told me my father knew. Weeks ago. Crowe contacted him. Professional courtesy." The words tasted bitter. "Whit hired security. Handled it quietly. Never told me I was being stalked."
"Blaire—"
"Did you know?"
The question hung between us.
"About your father's involvement?" Richard's voice went quiet. "No. I knew Crowe's name — Declan surfaced it through the shell company investigation. But Whit?" He shook his head once. "If I'd known he had information, I would have told you. The same way I've told you everything else."
"You would have told me," I finished.
"Yes."
I believed him.
He knew Crowe's name. He hadn't known my father knew it longer.
Those were two different things.
I had to hold onto that.
"What do we do now?"
The question came out smaller than I meant it.
Broken.
Richard's thumb brushed across my knuckles.
"Now?" His voice went quiet. Purposeful. "We fight back. Not your father's way. Not Crowe's way. Your way."
He meant it.
I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way he held my gaze.
"Together?"
"Together."
The word hit somewhere I wasn't ready to look at yet. Part of me still believed good things disappeared if you trusted them.
But part of me believed him immediately.
And part of me still didn't know how to trust something this good without waiting for it to disappear.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Morrison: Got a call from someone at the Bar Association. What's going on?
9:17 AM.
Crowe had gone straight from this conference room to the Bar Association building. Filed the moment he got there.
Everything I'd built was already burning.
I stood.
Richard stood with me.
"We need to call Charlotte," I said.
"Already texting her."
He was already thinking three steps ahead while I was still trying to breathe through the panic.
My hands shook hard enough that I curled them into fists.
And underneath all of it was one terrible thought:
What if I've just destroyed my life?
But I'd made it.
I'd chosen.
Richard's hand found mine.
"We'll figure it out," he said.
For so long, survival had meant staying in control.
Staying perfect. Prepared. Untouchable.
But standing there with Richard, I realized I didn't want to survive anymore. I wanted to live. Even if living meant being vulnerable enough to lose.
I believed him.
And my hands still shook while I dialed Charlotte's number.