The report arrived at eleven.
Not by email.
Jane didn’t trust email for things like this.
It came in a plain envelope, no name, no return address, just slid under the hotel room door by someone.
For a long moment she didn’t open it, because she was anxious and didn’t know what to expect.
Then she did.
The report was eleven pages.
Her insider had been thorough — she had to give him that.
He always was.
That was why she paid him what she paid him and had kept him on retainer for three years.
Page one, Leon Cole.
Date of birth.
She looked at the date for a long time.
She picked up her phone and opened the calculator.
She counted backwards to the year Evelyn left.
It was exactly 5 years.
She put the phone down and kept reading.
Page two was hospital admissions.
His first episode was when he was 3 years old.
It was a hereditary cardiac condition — suspected paternal origin.
Maternal history was clear.
She underlined that with her fingernail, pressing into the paper.
Suspected paternal origin, she thought.
Aidan never spoke to her about any hereditary conditions concerning him, but that didn’t clear her doubts.
She started panicking inside.
Page three was his birth certificate.
Father listed as unknown.
She stared at the word unknown for a moment.
Unknown, not absent, not deceased but unknown.
Which meant Evelyn had stood in a registrar’s office with a newborn and written that word deliberately with complete intention.
Her hands formed into a fist as she kept reading.
Page four.
Page five.
Medical details she didn’t fully understand; terminology, markers.
But she didn’t need to understand all of it.
She had seen and understood enough.
And suddenly she couldn’t breathe properly.
” No!” she whispered.
Her chest tightened so sharply it almost hurt.
“No, this can’t happen.”
She stood up too fast, the chair scraping hard against the floor.
The report slipped from her lap and scattered across the carpet.
She stared at the papers spread everywhere like they had personally betrayed her.
Then she laughed once, a vile, horrible sound.
“Oh my God.”
She pressed both hands against her forehead and started pacing.
The dates were corresponding.
“Evelyn, you sneaky bitch,” Her voice echoed through the suite.
She kept pacing.
Her mind moved faster and faster, jumping ahead of itself.
If Leon was Aidan’s son—
No.
If Aidan even suspected Leon was his son–
No, worse.
What if he already did?
Her stomach dropped.
She thought about the hospital visits.
The way he kept going back to that hospital.The way he looked lately whenever Evelyn’s name came up.
Jane stopped walking.
A terrible understanding settled slowly into place.
He was already emotionally attached.
Even before proof, before confirmation, before anything concrete.
And if Aidan Smith loved something, he committed to it completely.
That was the dangerous part about him.
If Aidan gets proof that Leon was his son, everything would change, everything.
Their marriage, her image, her position beside him, the life she had built.
The name.
Mrs.
Jane Smith.
She had spent years protecting that name, attending stupid events beside him, building connections.
Learning how to stand beside wealth without looking overwhelmed by it.
She had earned her place.
Hadn’t she?
She walked to the minibar, grabbed a bottle of wine and drank directly from it.
Her hand was shaking badly enough that some spilled onto her wrist.
She cursed softly.
“You’re a bitch, Evelyn.”
Then louder.
Then suddenly she slammed the bottle onto the counter so hard it shattered everywhere completely.
“Fuck!”
The word ripped out of her.
Her chest was rising and falling too quickly now.
She thought about Evelyn standing calmly in that press conference.
” Who do you think you are, Evelyn?”
She thought the way Aidan watched her, about the way he defended her on the phone and the fact that he was still here in Milan.
Jane closed her eyes.
This was no longer about an old relationship reopening.
This was about a family.
And families were harder to compete with, especially when there was a child involved.
She walked carefully, towards her bed and smiled cockishly.
“I guess I’ll just have to get rid of that child then,” she chuckled.
“Poor child.”
********
Evelyn’s morning looked nothing like Jane’s.
It looked like work.
It looked like Rosa pinning a hem while Evelyn stood over a cutting table with two fabric swatches and a frown.
It looked like Sophie appearing in the doorway every twenty minutes with something that needed a decision.
It looked like Zara’s voice coming from the sample room, asking someone to move the rack left, or the other left.
Not perfectly or completely, but enough.
Enough that the atmosphere inside LUXE no longer felt like a disaster.
Sophie appeared this time beside her holding a tablet.
“The updated numbers,” she said.
Evelyn took it.
The article correcting the original claims was spreading faster than expected.
Comments had shifted direction completely.
People weren’t asking whether the accusations were true anymore.
Now they wanted to know who planted them.
Good.
That was exactly where Evelyn wanted the conversation.
“You should eat something,” Sophie said carefully.
Evelyn glanced at her.
“Was that Zara talking through you?”
Sophie looked mildly offended.
“No.
That one was me, ma’am.”
Despite herself, Evelyn smiled faintly.
“I’ll eat later.”
”That’s what you said three hours ago, ma’am.”
”I was busy three hours ago.”
”I’ll get you food, ma’am”
”Oh no, Sophie.
I’m doing just ok.”
Sophie gave up on persisting and simply went back to work.
Evelyn looked back towards the dress, Rosa was working on.
She pressed her thumb along the edge of a swatch and felt the weight of it.
The way it moved.
“This one,” she said to Rosa.
“I thought so,” Rosa said.
Evelyn put the first swatch aside and got back to work.
*********
Back in the hotel room, Jane had stopped panicking.
She had the hotel staff clean up the broken glass.
She had washed her face ready to debrief everything.
She had mapped it out the way she mapped everything.
Cause, consequence, option, outcome, the risks, the moves available to her and the ones that were not.
She could not let Aidan find out.
She was going to make sure she kept the truth in the ground where Evelyn had buried it.
Keep the boy at a distance.
She picked up the report she had arranged, folded it carefully and put it in the inside of her cupboard.
Then she picked up her phone and scrolled to a name she had not called in a long time.
From six years ago when she had needed someone by her side as her partner in crime.
She smirked and pressed call.
It rang twice.
“Jane.” His voice was careful and surprised.
Not entirely comfortable.
Good, she thought.
He should be uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable people were useful people.
“Marcus,” she said.
She kept her voice completely even.
“It’s time for us to start planning, Marcus.”