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CHAPTER FIFTY : Not A Prisoner
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2026-07-12 00:30:12
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The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY : Not A Prisoner
LEON’S POVI took the phone off speaker.“Say that again,” I said.“He’s not being held,” Bryan said. “My contact watched him for twenty minutes. He’s moving around freely. Talking to Allison. Nobody’s guarding him, nobody’s restraining him.” A pause. “He walked out of that press conference and went straight there, Leon. He knew exactly where he was going.”I set the phone down on the table.Kate was already there before I could say anything. Reading my face, putting it together, the way she did things quickly and without needing them handed to her step by step.“He’s with them voluntarily,” she said.“Yes.”She sat back in her chair. Something moved through her expression, not quite betrayal, more like the specific exhaustion of someone who had extended a version of grace toward a person and was now watching that grace get used against them.Oliver hadn’t been grabbed outside that press conference.He’d walked away from it on his own two feet and gone directly to the people who had f
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY NINE : What Leon Hid
KATE’S POVI stepped back from the phone.Not far. Just enough to put a breath of space between me and that screen and the words on it and the way Leon’s face had gone when I’d read them.He hadn’t denied it.That was the part I kept coming back to. He hadn’t said it immediately the way innocent people said things immediately, the automatic no that came before thought. He’d just stood there holding the phone and looking at me with an expression I didn’t have a name for yet.“Leon.”“Kate—”“Don’t manage this.” I said it quietly. No heat behind it. I was too tired for heat. “Whatever it is, just say it.”He set the phone face down on the table.That small action, phone face down, told me more than anything he’d said in the last ten minutes. It was what he did when he needed to remove something from the equation so he could think clearly. I’d watched him do it enough times to understand the language of it.He pulled out a chair and sat down.First time all night he’d sat down somewhere
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT : Your Move
LEON’S POVI read the note twice.Then I set it down on the cushion exactly where I’d found it because some instinct said don’t disturb anything, this is a crime scene now whether anyone has called it that yet or not.The sitting room looked wrong in the specific way rooms looked wrong when something had happened in them recently. Not ransacked. Not violent, at least not visibly. Just off. A glass broken near the chair. Stefena’s bag still on the side table, which meant she hadn’t left voluntarily, nobody left their bag, not even in a hurry, not if they had a choice about it.Justin was gone too.“Check the house,” I said to Kate.She was already moving, out of the sitting room and down the corridor, calling Justin’s name. I heard her take the stairs, heard her voice moving through the rooms above me, and I stood in the sitting room and looked at that empty chair and felt something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a very long time.Helpless.Just for a moment. Then I pushed it back
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN : Three Days Ago
KATE’S POVThree days ago.I did the math without meaning to. Three days ago was before the dinner where she’d dropped that photograph of me and Oliver on the table. Before any of us knew Carter had found anything. Before the press conference, before Martha’s name made headlines, before any of it had cracked open in front of the cameras.Stefena had authorised a security firm before everything became public.Leon had gone completely still beside me, phone pressed to his ear, and I watched something move behind his eyes that I’d only seen once before. The night his composure had actually broken in that car, after the dinner, after the photograph.“Send me everything you have on that authorisation,” he said. His voice didn’t shake. It just went flat. “Every detail.”He hung up.For a second neither of us said anything. The marina had gone quiet again, just water against the dock and the distant hum of the city beyond it. Luciana’s sister was sitting on a bench a few feet away, wrapped i
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY SIX : Dark Water
LEON’S POVThe scream cut off almost as fast as it started.I grabbed Kate’s wrist in the dark and pulled her toward the cabin door, my other hand finding the wall, the doorframe, anything solid. Behind me Wakefield was saying something, fast and panicked, but I wasn’t listening to him anymore.“Bryan.”“Here.” Close. He’d already moved toward Carter.“Get my father off this boat.”“On it.”The deck outside was no better, the marina lights along the pier dimmed to almost nothing, just the faint glow of distant buildings and the moon catching the water in broken patches. I could hear movement. Footsteps on wood. Someone running.“Stay with me,” I said to Kate, and felt her hand grip my arm tighter in response.We came out onto the deck and I scanned the dock as fast as the darkness allowed. The scream had come from somewhere to the left, further down the pier, past the next two berths.A shape moved near the water’s edge.I started toward it before I’d fully decided to, Kate right behi
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY FIVE : Pier Fourteen
KATE’S POVThe silence after Carter’s voice was worse than the shout itself.Bryan moved first. Low along the dock, fast. Leon caught my arm before I could follow him.“Stay behind me.”“Leon—”“Please.” Just that. Not a command this time.I stayed half a step back. Close enough to see. Far enough that he could tell himself I was listening.We reached the gangway. Bryan crouched near the boat’s edge, signaling something with two fingers, then one. Leon understood it immediately. I didn’t, not until later, but I followed anyway.He went up first.The deck creaked. He froze. Waited. Nothing happened so he kept going, slower now, and I went with him, my heart somewhere up near my throat where it had been sitting most of the evening.Through the cabin window I saw Wakefield standing near a table, hands raised slightly, palms out. The posture of a man trying to look reasonable in a situation that had stopped being reasonable several minutes ago.Natalie stood beside him.And Carter was on
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER TWENTY SIX : Missing
KATE’S POVI watched Leon’s face change.It was subtle, the way his expressions always were, but I had been paying enough attention over the past few weeks to catch it. The slight tightening around his eyes. The way his jaw set a fraction harder than usual. The stillness that came over him that was
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER ELEVEN : The Photograph
The silence at the table lasted too long. I could feel everyone in the room waiting. Carter had gone very still. Bryan had set down his glass without making a sound. Even the staff near the far wall seemed to have stopped breathing. And Leon. Leon hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. But something abou
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER SEVEN : The Return
LeonI know I’m rigid on the outside, I know how calculated I am but that doesn't mean I lack blood running through my veins and emotions. Nights were terror to me, my thoughts deprived me of sleep and my heart beat never rested. I really don't care about my ex-girlfriend and her stunts, I know I
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER SIX : Our Wedding Night
KATE “What kind of bride ditches her wedding reception before the toast?”I sighed in frustration. “An unhappy bride.”To save face I returned my attention to the wardrobe, desperate to put something on, but not before I saw his mouth twitch at my statement.Where were my clothes? They were here b
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