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CHAPTER FORTY : Everyone In One Room
publish date:
2026-06-12 02:15:50
Latest chapter
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY ONE : Confession
KATE’S POVNobody moved.Stefena Romano, the woman who had made an art form out of saying exactly as much as she intended and never a syllable more, was sitting in that chair looking at her husband like she had finally run out of road.Carter had gone very still.Not the polite stillness of a man waiting for someone to finish speaking. The kind that meant his body had made a unilateral decision to stop while his mind caught up.“Stefena,” he said. Just her name. Low and careful.“Let me finish,” she said.He sat back down slowly.She didn’t look at anyone else in the room. Not at Justin standing by the wall with his jaw tight. Not at me. Not at Fiona, who had gone very quiet in the way of someone who already knew what was coming and was bracing for the version of it spoken aloud.She kept her eyes on Carter.“I found out about Martha three years into your relationship with her,” she began. “Not the affair, I knew about that earlier. I mean I found out about the child.”Carter’s expres
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY : Everyone In One Room
LEON’S POVJared Adams was standing in my entrance hall.Not invited. Not expected. Just there, with his jacket slightly creased and his eyes doing that thing they did when he had been drinking enough to feel brave but not enough to be stupid. Fiona stood a few feet away from him, which told me the two of them had not arrived together by choice.Carter was near the door.He looked at me when I came in and gave a small tight shake of his head that meant he hadn’t known Jared was coming either.“How did you get past the gate?” I asked.Jared smiled. The particular smile of a man who thought charm could patch over anything. “Your security recognised me from the wedding.”I made a mental note to deal with that later.“Leon.” Carter’s voice was low. “We need to talk. All of us. It’s time.”I looked at Fiona.She was watching me with that steady expression she had, the one that gave nothing away from a distance but said quite a lot if you knew where to look. She looked tired. Not the tiredn
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER THIRTY NINE : Allison At The Door
KATE’S POVI stared at the message for a moment.I’m outside. I think I owe you both an explanation.Twelve words. Sitting on my screen with the particular weight of something that had been composed and deleted and recomposed several times before being sent. I knew Allison’s texting well enough to recognize when a message had cost her something.This one had.I looked at Leon.He was already reading it over my shoulder, his expression giving nothing away, that careful neutral face he used when he was deciding how to handle something rather than reacting to it.“I’ll go,” I said.“Kate—”“She came to me,” I said. “Not to you. Not to the situation. To me.” I held his gaze. “Let me go to the door.”A pause.He nodded.I walked out of the sitting room and down the entrance hall. Behind me the house was full of a particular kind of loaded silence, Stefena in her chair, Justin standing with his arms folded, Leon watching everything.I reached the front door and stopped with my hand on the h
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT : Live
LEON’S POVI pulled up the news on my phone.It loaded in the particular way that breaking stories loaded, slightly slower than usual, like the servers were straining under the weight of everyone trying to reach the same thing at the same time.The headline was the first thing.Then the image beneath it.I looked at it for a moment without speaking. Then I crossed to the television on the far wall of the sitting room and switched it on, finding the news channel without having to search for it because it was already the first thing that came up.The screen filled with a press conference.Live.Natalie Smith was standing at a podium.She was dressed carefully, the kind of careful that had been thought through, dark and composed, the visual language of someone presenting themselves as a victim rather than an aggressor. Her auburn hair was pulled back. Her expression was controlled and serious and designed for exactly this moment.Behind her stood two people I recognised as her family’s l
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN : The MatriarchI’m
KATE’S POVI didn’t stay in the car.I know he asked me to. I heard the please in his voice which was rare enough to register and I had sat there for approximately fifteen seconds genuinely trying to honour it before something overrode it entirely.This was my house too.Whatever was happening behind that open door was happening in a place that had my name attached to it and involved people whose decisions had shaped my entire life and I was done sitting in cars and waiting rooms and corridors while other people handled things that belonged to me as much as anyone else.I got out.Justin was already opening his door.I looked at him briefly.He looked back with an expression that said he understood the instruction had been given and had also decided it didn’t apply to him.We went in together.The entrance hall was quiet. Leon was standing just inside the doorway to the sitting room, his back to us, completely still in that way that meant every part of him was paying close attention t
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER THIRTY SIX : The Drive Back
LEON’S POVWe left Luciana with her sister.Not because it was the safest option necessarily but because it was the option Luciana had chosen and she had earned the right to make that particular choice. I left my private contact posted at the end of the street with instructions to call me directly if anything changed and to let nothing through that he couldn’t account for.Justin came with us.That hadn’t been planned but it hadn’t been a surprise either. He had stood in that sitting room after everything settled and looked at me with Carter’s eyes and said quietly that he wasn’t going back to wherever he had come from until he understood the full shape of what he had walked into.I couldn’t argue with that.Carter drove separately. We had spoken briefly in the hallway before leaving, just the two of us, while Kate sat with Justin in the sitting room and Luciana’s sister made tea that nobody drank.My father had looked at me in the hallway with an expression I hadn’t seen on him befor
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