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After that, Eliana worked.

Sebastian prepared a contract — a development partnership on a property in East Edinburgh — and Eliana brought it to her father.

"Sebastian is offering you a stake in the East Edinburgh project. He thinks you're worth working with."

Gerald Ashford's expression opened like a door. He had the contract reviewed by his own lawyers. They spent an hour going through it, line by line.

It was a genuine contract. The project was real, the terms were favourable, and there was nothing in it that a careful reader would flag. Gerald signed.

When Eliana left, she allowed herself one quiet breath.

The fish has taken the hook.

The contract was legitimate. The project itself would also be legitimate — up until it wasn't. Eliana had purchased the land through her own new company, using the Calloway Group as backing. When the project eventually failed — as she had arranged for it to fail — the contractual liability would fall entirely on Gerald.

Simultaneously, she used Sebastian's resources to look into her two half-brothers. Both of them had been receiving money from Gerald for years under the pretence of education and living expenses. Both of them had been gambling offshore and amassing debts they'd never disclosed. Eliana documented everything.

Over the following month, she operated like someone who had eliminated sleep as a variable.

Gerald asked her regularly to use her connections with Sebastian to smooth over projects that kept going wrong. Each time, she arrived with a solution — another contract, another introduction — and each time, she was quietly redirecting another asset out from under him. His trust in her grew exactly as she needed it to.

She was in the Ashford Group offices three days a week. She was filing company paperwork from a café in Edinburgh's New Town in the early hours. She was on overnight flights and catching sleep in the seat with a report balanced on her knees.

She didn't read Adrian's messages. She blocked the number entirely.