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Chapter 23: Marcus Sees Too Much
publish date:
2026-04-19 14:48:03
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One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: WHAT NATHAN STERLING LEFT IN THE SYSTEM
Noah Bennett arrives at the penthouse on a Thursday evening with a laptop, a hard drive, and the particular energy of a man who has spent seventy-two hours inside someone else’s digital infrastructure and has emerged with things that cannot be unseen.He is not what I expected the first time I met him. Sophia described him as a former cybercrime investigator and I built a picture in my head of someone severe and technical and difficult to read. He is actually warm, slightly rumpled, with the kind of face that defaults to humor and switches to focus so completely when it matters that the transition is almost startling. He kisses Sophia on the cheek when she lets him in and then immediately sets the hard drive on the kitchen island and says to the room, “You are not going to like this.”“Tell us anyway,” Lucian says.Noah opens the laptop. “I went into the Blackwood Holdings server logs at Sophia’s request. Standard forensic review, looking for anything that the internal audit would hav
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT REWROTE THE TIMELINE
Ethan and Daniel are already in the penthouse when Lucian gets home.I arranged it from the hospital. Lucian did not know until he walked through the door and found them at the kitchen island with Daniel’s laptop open and Ethan’s files arranged in the particular neat stack that means he has already been working for at least an hour. Lucian looked at the setup and then called me.“You organized this from a hospital bed,” he said.“I was resting,” I said. “Restfully.”He was quiet for a moment.“Dr. Carter is going to revoke your laptop,” he said.“She has to find it first,” I said. “Tell me everything after.”He hangs up. I know because the call drops and then thirty seconds later a text arrives. One word.Insufferable.I take that as affection and go back to Daniel’s preliminary report on my screen.Lucian presents the photograph detail to Ethan and Daniel the way he presents everything that matters, without editorializing, just the facts in sequence. The folder on Gabriel’s assistant
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: GABRIEL KANE MAKES A HOUSE CALL
Lucian leaves the hospital at nine the next morning.Not because he wants to. Because I tell him to, and because Dr. Carter tells him to, and because between the two of us we represent a combined force of persuasion that even Lucian Blackwood cannot comfortably resist. He has a meeting that cannot be moved, a call with the compliance team about Nathan Sterling that Daniel arranged and that Ethan says needs to happen before end of week, and a company that is still running despite everything trying to slow it down.He leaves with his jacket over his arm and his phone already in his hand and he pauses at the door of the room and looks back at me in the bed with my breakfast tray and my laptop that Dr. Carter has not technically forbidden and says, "No working.""I'm reading," I say."What are you reading," he says.I show him the cover of the novel Olivia brought last night along with a change of clothes and three things from the kitchen I did not ask for but apparently needed. He looks
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE SECRET THAT WAS NEVER JUST HERS
Dr. Carter is already in the examination bay when we arrive.I do not know how that is possible. I did not call ahead. I did not have Olivia call ahead. But she is there, in her white coat with her notepad and her direct, unhurried expression, and she looks at me and then at Lucian beside me and then back at me with the particular look of a woman who has been expecting this visit and is unsurprised only by the timing.“Mrs. Blackwood,” she says. “Sit down.”I sit on the edge of the examination table. Lucian stands beside it. He has not let go of my hand since the cab and he does not let go of it now, which I know Dr. Carter registers because she registers everything, but she does not comment on it.She checks my blood pressure first. Then my pulse. She asks me questions in the brisk, methodical way she has, and I answer them honestly because I am past the point of managing what I tell her. Skipped meals. Disrupted sleep. The dizziness in the board meeting corridor two weeks ago. Today
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER TWENTY: THE COLLAPSE SHE CAN’T HIDE ANYMORE
The strategy meeting is at two.It is the kind of meeting that under normal circumstances I would have run without difficulty, twelve people in the Blackwood Holdings main conference room, acquisition timelines, media response framework, the quarterly risk assessment that Marcus insists on regardless of what else is happening because Marcus believes that structure is what keeps things from becoming chaos and he is not wrong.I arrive at one fifty with my notes and my coffee and the particular focus I have been using as a load-bearing wall for three weeks, the professional version of myself that does not flinch and does not stumble and gives the room exactly what it needs for as long as it needs it.I take my seat. The meeting starts. I present the first section of the risk assessment and the numbers hold and the questions are answerable and for forty minutes everything is exactly as it should be.Then the room tilts.Not dramatically. Not the way it tilts in films, not a sudden lurch
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend CHAPTER NINETEEN: WHAT ISABELLA SAID WHEN NO ONE WAS LISTENING
I do not tell Lucian about the meeting.Not immediately. Not because I am keeping it from him, but because I need to understand what Isabella said before I hand it to anyone else, and the only way to do that is to sit with it in the quiet of my own head without other people’s reactions filling up the space where my thinking needs to happen.I text her the morning after the Evelyn lunch.I want to meet. Just us. No lawyers, no buffer, somewhere we won’t be recognized.She takes forty minutes to respond. I spend those forty minutes not watching my phone, which is to say I spend them watching my phone.Her answer is a coffee shop name and a time. Thursday at eleven. A place in the West Village that I have never been to and she apparently knows well enough to choose without deliberation, which tells me something about where she goes when she wants to be left alone.I take a cab. I wear sunglasses I do not usually wear. I arrive two minutes early and find a corner table with my back to the
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 26: Ethan’s Unannounced Visit
Friday arrives like a storm.I’m in my office reviewing the Meridian proposal when Lena appears in my doorway.“Ethan Cole is here,” she says. Face tight. “In the lobby. Asking for you.”My stomach drops. “What?”“He told reception he’s an old friend. Wanted to surprise you.” She lowers her voice.
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 25: The Agreement They Can’t Keep
“What do you know, Ethan?” I’m standing in the parking garage. Phone pressed to my ear. Heart in my throat.“Don’t play dumb. I’ve been watching. The gala. The photos. The way he looks at you.” His voice is tight. Controlled anger. “Something’s going on between you and Lucian.”“We work together. T
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 24: The Late Night That Broke the Rules
Wednesday, seven PM. I’m standing outside Lucian’s office with my laptop and competitive analysis.Professional. That’s what tonight is. Professional.I knock.“Come in.”He’s at his desk. Sleeves rolled up. Tie loosened. Looking like every corporate fantasy I’ve tried to ignore.“Right on time,” h
One Night with My Ex's Billionaire Best Friend Chapter 22: The Project That Binds Them
Monday morning, I’m at my desk at seven AM.Early enough that most of the office is empty. Early enough to avoid the stares. The whispers.The resignation letter sits in my bag. Printed. Signed. Ready.I just need to deliver it to Marcus.My email pings.**From: Marcus Hale****Subject: Urgent - Pr
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