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CHAPTER TWENTY SIX : Missing
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-05-28 10:17:59
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The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY SIX : Wakefield’s Terms
LEON’S POVNobody moved for a moment.Wakefield stood on that step looking at our car with the expression of a man who had prepared for this specific moment and was now finding the reality of it slightly different from the preparation. Not frightened. Not confident either. Something between the two that hadn’t decided which direction to fall yet.I got out first.The night air was cold. The residential street was completely still around us, curtains drawn in every house, the ordinary world doing its ordinary thing, indifferent as always.Kate got out beside me. Carter came out of the back slowly, and I heard the moment Wakefield clocked him, a small shift in his posture, the recalculation of someone who hadn’t known Carter would be in that car.Good. Surprises ran both directions tonight.Stefena looked at me when I reached the step. Her composure was back, mostly, the familiar architecture of it reconstructed over whatever the past few hours had actually cost her. But it was thinner
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE : The Drive
KATE’S POVWe put Carter in the back seat.Not roughly. Not with any particular ceremony either. Leon just opened the rear door and Carter got in and that was the shape of it, a man who had run out of options sitting quietly while the people he’d been outmanoeuvring all night drove him somewhere he’d been hoping not to go.Leon took the wheel. I sat beside him. Nobody spoke for the first few minutes.The city at this hour was thin and unhurried, mostly empty roads and amber streetlights doing their patient work. I watched it move past the window and thought about nothing specific, which wasn’t accurate, I was thinking about several things simultaneously but none of them had resolved into anything I could hold properly yet.Carter’s letter in Leon’s pocket.Stefena’s voice on the phone, stripped of every layer she usually kept between herself and the world.Justin in a room somewhere with a borrowed phone and thirty seconds to say one name.The name he’d said.I glanced at Leon. His ey
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR : The Study
LEON’S POVThe front door was unlocked.I’d locked it myself before we left for the marina. I knew exactly what that meant but I didn’t say it out loud. Just pushed the door open slowly and stepped inside.The entrance hall was dark.No sounds. No movement. Just the particular quality of a house that had someone in it trying very hard to seem empty.Kate was behind me. Close. I could feel her presence without looking back and I was glad for it in a way I hadn’t expected to be, the specific steadiness of having someone beside you whose instincts you’d learned to trust.I moved down the hallway.The study door was closed. Light had been coming from under it thirty seconds ago. Now nothing. Which meant either Carter had finished what he came for, or he’d heard the car and killed the light and was standing on the other side of that door right now doing exactly what I was doing.Waiting.I stopped outside it.Put my hand on the handle.Opened it.Carter was standing at the desk.Not rummag
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY THREE : Stefena Calls
KATE’S POVLeon had the car turned around before she finished the sentence.I grabbed the door handle as the tyres found the road again, the city tilting briefly as he cut across a junction, headlights sweeping across an empty pavement.Stefena was still on the line.I picked up the phone from the dash and put it to my ear because Leon needed both hands and whoever had given her a phone to make this call might take it back at any moment.“Stefena,” I said. “Where are you.”A sound on her end. Movement. Her voice dropped lower. “A house. I don’t know the address. We drove for about thirty minutes, mostly highway, then residential streets.” A pause. “Justin is with me. He’s fine.”“Is anyone in the room with you right now.”“No. They left us alone. I think they’re watching the door.” Another pause, shorter. “Kate, Carter doesn’t know I’m calling. Nobody does. I found a phone in the room. Old one, belonged to someone.”“Okay,” I said. “Keep your voice low. Is there a window.”“Yes. Groun
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY TWO : The Other One
LEON’S POVI pulled the car over.Not carefully. The tyres found the kerb and I stopped and sat there with both hands on the wheel and the engine running and the name Justin had said sitting in the car with us like something that had taken up physical space.Carter.My father.Kate was looking at me. I could feel it without turning my head.“Leon,” she said quietly.“Give me a second.”She gave me the second.I thought about the marina. Carter sitting on the cabin floor with blood on his chin, glaring up at Natalie like a man who’d been wronged. The way he’d waved Bryan off when Bryan tried to help him up. The way he’d answered my call from the paramedic tent, jaw supposedly hurt, voice perfectly clear and controlled.I thought about the boat. The way Natalie had looked when we walked in. Not panicked. Not cornered. Almost expectant, like she’d known we were coming and had arranged the scene accordingly.Carter on the floor.Carter who had gone to that boat alone.Carter who had calle
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY ONE : Glass
KATE’S POVI hit the floor before I understood what had happened.Leon was already down, already moving, one arm across me, pushing me toward the island in the middle of the kitchen. Glass everywhere. The cold night air coming through the broken window in a rush, curtain lifting, something dark on the kitchen tiles that my brain took a second to identify.A brick.Just a brick. Wrapped in paper, held together with a rubber band.I stared at it from the floor while my heart did something violent in my chest.Leon was already on his feet, moving toward the window low and fast, staying below the line of it, pressing himself against the wall beside the frame and looking out at an angle. I watched him scan the grounds, his jaw set, his breathing controlled in a way mine absolutely was not.“Stay down,” he said.I stayed down.Thirty seconds passed. Maybe forty. Leon didn’t move from the wall.Then he crossed to the brick and picked it up, pulled the paper free, smoothed it against the coun
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
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIVE : Forced Proximity
KATEThe cathedral bells bellowed ceremoniously.The wedding was finally over. Then came the marriage. The actual marriage.Mrs Romano's smile was ice as she held up my bulk wedding dress, just for the cameras of course, so I could slide into the white limousine. I let out a deep breath I didn't
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