Sweet Love 2x: Miss Ruthless CEO for our Superstar Uncle-Chapter 197: Then It Remains Unproven

The front lights were off. The sign outside was dark. Only the interior glow showed through the glass.

Nate didn’t leave the bar open when he expected them. Not anymore. It wasn’t about secrecy. It was about not having to explain to anyone else why the place was lit at this hour with no customers inside.

Inside: wood darkened by time. Shelves lined with bottles moved and replaced too many times to count. The low, persistent smell of alcohol that never quite left.

Arianne stepped in first. The warmth hit immediately. She took in the room once—the way the light fell, where people were sitting, what had changed since the last time.

Franz followed just behind her. The door closed.

Julian came in next, adjusting as he moved. Nate was already behind the bar, finishing something that didn’t need finishing.

Gilbert was seated.

His hair was black.

The silver that had been there for as long as Arianne could remember was gone. The new color was darker, sharper against the bar’s lighting. It didn’t soften him. If anything, it made his face look more defined.

She walked toward the table. "You changed it."

Gilbert didn’t look surprised she noticed. "It was time."

He picked up his glass and turned it once before lifting it.

Nate came out from behind the bar, dried his hands, tossed the cloth aside. "He doesn’t want to look older than Audrey."

Julian exhaled. Short. Nothing more.

Gilbert didn’t respond to Nate. No denial. No confirmation. He just drank.

That was enough.

They settled without instruction. Arianne near the center with Franz beside her. Julian opposite, slightly angled. Nate at the head. Gilbert across.

Nate poured without asking. Arianne’s glass first—the same thing she’d always drank here, the same pour. He set one in front of Franz, then sat.

A beat of silence. The low hum of the refrigeration behind the bar carried through the room. Somewhere deeper in the building, something clicked.

Then Nate leaned forward.

"I checked everything again." No preamble. Daryll wasn’t here. Gio wasn’t here. This was their side of it. "Nothing solid on my end."

His fingers tapped once against his glass. He picked it up, set it back down without drinking. His gaze went to Arianne. "Sorry."

"I expected that," Arianne said. Not a comfort. Just a fact.

Julian leaned back, one arm along the side of his chair. "No pattern?"

"Not one that holds."

Franz said nothing. He listened. Tracked the gaps as much as the statements.

Gilbert hadn’t said a word since they sat down.

Arianne looked at him. "You haven’t said anything."

He met her gaze. Didn’t deflect.

"Is this connected to what you mentioned before?"

The room went quiet. Nate’s posture shifted. Julian’s attention sharpened. Franz’s focus locked onto Gilbert.

Gilbert nodded once.

He set his glass down. And didn’t pick it up again.

"Before Alex died," he said.

He stopped there. Not for effect. Just because saying those three words—before Alex died—was something he had to get through before he could say anything else. Almost ten months. That’s how long it had been. Almost ten months and it stopped him mid-sentence every time, like a step he hadn’t known was there.

He breathed.

"Before Alex died," he said again, "we were looking into something."

Franz’s hand was on the table. He didn’t move it. But it had gone tight.

He hadn’t known this. Whatever Gilbert was about to say—Alex had been looking into something before he died, and hadn’t said a word to him. Almost ten months ago. His brother. And he was finding out now, in a closed bar, because a leak happened and the pieces were coming back up.

He kept his face even. It was the only thing he had control over right now.

Julian leaned forward. "What kind of something?"

"Inconsistencies. Patterns that didn’t resolve."

Nate frowned. "Business?"

"Partially."

"Partially?"

Gilbert looked at him, then back to the table. "Movement that didn’t line up. Records that pointed somewhere and stopped. Connections that broke when you followed them through."

Julian’s gaze narrowed. "You traced it?"

"We tried."

"And?"

Gilbert’s jaw set. "It didn’t close."

A pause.

"Dominic."

No one spoke.

Arianne didn’t move. Julian leaned back. Nate sat straighter.

Franz looked at his glass. Not away from the conversation—into it. Taking a second he needed but didn’t want anyone to see him needing.

"When did this start?"

The question came out faster than he meant it to. He’d been holding it since Gilbert said Alex’s name.

Gilbert looked at him. "Before she disappeared."

Arianne’s gaze stayed forward.

"Before the annulment," Gilbert added. "Her engagement with Dominic."

The timeline aligned.

"Why wasn’t I told?"

Also too fast. Franz heard himself say it and didn’t take it back.

Gilbert held his gaze. "It wasn’t complete. We didn’t have enough to bring to anyone."

"Alex knew."

"Yes."

"And chose not to say anything."

"He wouldn’t. Not without something solid. You know how he was."

Franz picked up his glass. Put it back down. "I know."

He did know how Alex was. That was the problem. Alex would have kept it quiet to protect him, to protect everyone, until he had something concrete. That was who he was. And Franz had spent almost ten months trying to understand what it meant to be the brother who was left behind, the one who didn’t know the things Alex had been carrying.

"What exactly did you find?" he asked.

Gilbert exhaled. "Structure without completion. Built to look functional but designed not to resolve if you followed it."

"Financial?" Julian asked.

"Not only. Positioning. Movement. Timing."

"Did it intersect with anything connected to me?" Arianne asked.

"Yes."

The word landed.

Nate’s hand went flat on the table. Julian’s fingers closed around his glass.

Arianne didn’t react. Not on the outside.

But she went still. Not the stillness of composure. The stillness of something hitting and her body locking down before her mind could catch up. Her fingers pressed flat against the table. She didn’t move them.

She was putting it together.

She had come back because Alex died. That was the thing that had broken through five years of distance—not time, not resolution, just his death pulling her back. And she had kept those two things separate in her head. Her situation with Dominic. And then Alex’s death, later, unrelated.

But Gilbert was saying that before Alex died, there were already patterns connecting to her. Connecting to Dominic. Connecting to whatever had pushed her out of her own life five years ago.

What if they were never separate.

"How?" she asked.

"Overlap. Not constant. But consistent enough to track."

"Did it lead to the accident?"

No buildup. No hesitation. The question that had been in the room since Gilbert said Alex’s name.

Gilbert shook his head. "No evidence."

A beat.

"But I can’t rule it out."

Nate’s hand stayed flat on the table. Julian’s fingers tightened around his glass.

Franz didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Julian looked at the table. Then back up. "What did they find?"

"Nothing," Gilbert said. "Authorities cleared it. No mechanical issues. No external interference."

"And the investigator?" Franz asked.

"Hired one after. Same result. No tampering."

Franz held that.

"Then it’s unproven." Not dismissal. He was putting it in the right category so he could keep looking at it without losing the thread.

Arianne leaned forward. "I want everything you have."

Gilbert didn’t answer right away.

His gaze dropped to the table. His glass was right there. He didn’t touch it.

He had put this away. After Alex died, he had put all of it in a folder and put the folder somewhere he didn’t have to look at it, because looking at it meant sitting with the question of whether he had been too late. Whether he had seen something before his best friend died that might have mattered, and hadn’t moved fast enough to make it matter. He didn’t know. He might never know. But pulling it back out meant deciding to live with that question again.

Franz spoke. "I need to see it."

Simple. No pressure in it. But the weight was there. Alex. Everything that had stopped with him. And the fact that Franz hadn’t known any of this until tonight.

Gilbert looked at him.

Not at Arianne. Not at Nate or Julian.

At Franz. Alex’s brother. The person in this room who had the same reason as Gilbert to want the answer—and the same reason to be afraid of what the answer might be. The grief between them was different in shape but not in weight. Gilbert knew that. He had known it since Alex died and he’d watched Franz hold himself together at the funeral with the particular posture of a man who had decided not to fall apart in public.

Gilbert had been Alex’s person. That was a fact. But Franz was his brother. And Alex was gone. And the people left behind had to decide what to do with what he’d left them.

He held Franz’s gaze for a moment.

Then nodded. "Not here. Come by."

No one pushed further.

Nate picked up his glass and drank. Julian leaned back, less wired than before but not at ease.

Arianne sat forward, already running through the implications.

Franz sat beside her. He hadn’t touched his glass.

The conversation was over.

But what had surfaced wasn’t going anywhere.