## Chapter 7
Forty-eight hours later, Miles walked in carrying a thin file that weighed more than a thousand pages.
“We found it. The money trail that paid the shooter. It moved through three anonymous accounts, but we traced it back. The original account was created from a computer inside Cross Estate, logged in through the house’s internal network, using a personal confirmation code — the kind only the account holder could have.”
“Whose was it?”
Miles set the paper down. One name, bold: *Griffin Cross.*
Ezra stared at the name he had called brother for thirty-three years. “He’s my brother. I gave him everything.”
“He wanted you dead, Ezra,” Miles said plainly. “He planned for you to fall. That’s not greed. That’s murder.”
Ezra lowered his head, braced against the table, shoulders trembling. When he looked up, something had died in his eyes — the pain, the disbelief, the fragile hope he’d been wrong. What remained was absolute coldness.
“It’s time to tell Willa the truth.”
An hour later, Willa stood outside the secret apartment, heart pounding, not knowing what waited on the other side. She pushed the door open, saw Miles first, then a figure in the corner who stood and turned.
Her world tilted. “You — you’re dead.”
“No,” Ezra said, low and steady. “I’m still here.”
Shock turned to anger. “You faked your death,” she said, her voice trembling with the effort of holding herself together. “While Rosie cried every night, while she sat alone in the dark holding that teddy bear and asking why everybody kept leaving her, while she thought there was no one left in this world who loved her anymore — where were you? What were you doing?”
“I know.” Ezra didn’t look away from her anger. “I saw everything. I heard everything. And I’ll live with it for the rest of my life.” He paused, his voice dropping lower. “But I did it to protect her. Someone wanted me dead, Willa. Someone hired a killer to put a bullet in my head. And that person was living in my house. If I came back without knowing who my enemy was, I’d die for real, and Rosie would be left in their hands forever.”
He told her the essentials — the assassination attempt, the decision to fake his death, two weeks of surveillance, and the truth they had just uncovered. Griffin was the mastermind.
Willa stood still, absorbing every piece of it. Her anger slowly began to settle, replaced by understanding, and something that looked very much like resolve.
“I need you,” Ezra said. “Not as a nanny. As an ally.”
“Is Rosie all right?” Willa asked quietly.
“No,” Ezra answered honestly. “She’s not all right. That’s why I need this ended quickly.”
Willa drew a breath, her green eyes sharpening. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
The plan came together over two days at the old wooden table, gathering every piece of evidence they had. Financial records showed Griffin had sold more than a dozen family assets in the span of two weeks — priceless paintings, cars, shares of stock. Altered documents showed Paige had quietly added her own name to the list of co-owners on several properties. And most important of all, there was the transfer order carrying Griffin’s personal confirmation code, sent to the account of the hired killers on the night of the attack.
Miles contacted the loyal people inside the organization, senior members he knew for certain didn’t stand with Griffin. They didn’t know Ezra was alive, didn’t know the plan unfolding around them, but they would be present at the meeting tomorrow and would move when given the signal. Security was positioned discreetly around the estate.
On the night before the meeting, Willa sat alone in her small apartment, looking at a photograph of Rosie laughing brightly in the flower garden behind the estate. She remembered her first day there — Rosie hadn’t spoken to anyone, hadn’t smiled, hadn’t played, only sat in a corner holding her teddy bear. It had taken three months of patience, three months of reading stories aloud even when there was no response, before Rosie laughed again, clear and bright as the ringing of a bell.
“Just wait a little longer, Rosie,” she whispered into the darkness. “Willa’s coming back, and this time no one will ever pull us apart again.”
The day of Griffin’s will reading — the day he intended to declare himself heir and send Rosie away — would be the day Ezra Cross returned from the dead.
