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All Chapters of BROKEN BILLIONAIRES: Chapter 51 - Chapter 57

57 Chapters

51

LOLETTE.FIVE YEARS AGO.The movie had been running for almost an hour and I couldn't have told you a single plot point if my life depended on it.Not because it was boring. Because Adrian's knee was pressed against mine under a blanket neither of us had bothered to ask permission to share, and my entire nervous system had apparently decided that was the only information worth processing tonight.The den was dark except for the television throwing blue light across everyone's faces. Sev had Erin tucked against his side on the other couch, her legs thrown over his lap. Sasha had disappeared somewhere around the forty-minute mark, which nobody had questioned, because questioning Sasha's whereabouts was its own kind of pointless hobby.I shivered. Just a small one, the kind that came from central air set two degrees too aggressive, nothing dramatic.Adrian noticed anyway.He had a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth when he stopped and turned to look at me instead."You cold?"I open

52

LOLETTE.FIVE YEARS AGO.I finished the assignment somewhere around midnight, mostly out of spite.Theodore's voice was still looping in my head. I didn't take you in to raise a whore. I'd typed half my essay with my jaw clenched so tight it ached, like getting an A on some meaningless English paper could somehow prove him wrong about anything at all.It couldn't. It never did. But I finished it anyway.I'd just closed my laptop when something tapped against my window.I froze, one hand still on the lid, listening. Another tap. Then another, quick and deliberate, definitely not a branch or a bird or anything my brain wanted to blame it on first.I crossed the room and pulled the curtain back.Adrian stood on the roof of the garage below my window, one hand braced against the siding, grinning up at me like this was a completely normal Tuesday activity.I shoved the window open. "What are you doing?""Visiting my favorite person." He glanced down at the eight-foot drop beneath him like

53

ADRIAN.The email arrived at 1:47pm. Fifty-three minutes into the hour Damien had given us.I'd been staring at my phone so hard my eyes had started to ache, sitting in the back of the car while Marcus idled somewhere on the FDR because I couldn't stand the thought of sitting still in an office building while my sons were still God knows where.The notification came through with no warning. No sender name. Just a subject line that read: Instructions."It's here," I said.Lolette's head snapped up from where she'd been staring at her hands in her lap. "What does it say?"I opened it with a hand that wasn't quite steady.No greeting. No explanation. Just an address in Red Hook, a warehouse district that hadn't seen legitimate use in a decade, and a time.3:00pm. Come alone. No police. No FBI. If either follows, this ends the way you don't want it to end.I read it twice to make sure I hadn't misunderstood something."Alone," I said out loud.Lolette grabbed the phone out of my hand and

54

ADRIAN.The warehouse looked exactly like every abandoned building in every movie I'd ever seen, which somehow made it worse instead of better.Rust bleeding down corrugated metal siding. Windows either boarded or broken, no in-between. A chain-link fence with a gap someone had cut through years ago and never bothered fixing.Marcus stopped the car two blocks out like Richard had instructed. I sat there for a second with my hand on the door handle, feeling the wire taped against my ribs under my shirt, and tried to remember how to breathe normally."Sir." Marcus's voice was tight. "You don't have to do this.""Yes I do."I got out before he could say anything else.The walk took four minutes. I counted them, because counting gave my brain something to do besides imagining every possible way this could go wrong.The warehouse door was already open when I reached it, hanging on one hinge like it had been that way for years. I stepped inside and let my eyes adjust to the dim light filter

55

LOLETTE.I counted every single car that passed the intersection while I waited.Forty-one. Forty-two. Marcus had circled back to the block two streets over the second Adrian disappeared into that warehouse, and I'd spent every minute since watching the clock on the dashboard tick forward in increments that felt physically painful.Richard sat in the front seat with a laptop open, radio silent, his jaw tight enough that I could see the muscle working from where I sat."How long has it been?" I asked."Nineteen minutes.""That's too long.""It's not." He didn't look up from the screen. "If it were going wrong, we'd know."I didn't ask how he'd know. I didn't want to think too hard about what "knowing" would actually look like in this situation.At twenty-three minutes, my phone buzzed.ADRIAN: Coming to you now. I'm okay.Relief hit me so hard I actually pressed a hand against my chest, like I needed to physically hold myself together.He appeared on foot four minutes later, walking fa

56

ADRIAN Sasha didn't yell. He never yelled. Which was somehow worse than if he had, because his voice went quiet and precise instead, each word landing like something he'd already calculated the weight of."You want me to draft legal documentation," he said, "granting a man we've never met, who kidnapped your sons, an equal ownership stake in a company worth eleven billion dollars.""Yes.""Based on a claim you haven't verified, delivered under duress, with no guarantee he releases the boys once it's filed.""Yes."Sasha set his pen down on the conference table with a precision that felt more threatening than if he'd thrown it across the room. We were alone in his office, twenty floors above the street, the city spread out gold and indifferent through the windows behind him."Adrian. Think about what you're asking me to do.""I have thought about it. For the last two hours, that's the only thing I've thought about.""Then think harder." He stood and walked to the window, hands in his

57

ADRIAN.Sasha stood in the middle of the conference room with the printed terms in his hand, reading them for the third time like he expected the words to rearrange themselves into something less insane if he just looked hard enough."You want to give him twenty-five percent of the company," he said finally."Yes.""Twenty-five percent. Equal to what you, Sev, and I each hold." He set the paper down on the table with a precision that felt more dangerous than if he'd thrown it. "Based on the word of a man who kidnapped two four-year-olds to get your attention.""I know how it sounds.""Do you? Because from where I'm standing, it sounds like you walked into a warehouse and let a stranger dictate the terms of our family's entire company in under ten minutes.""He's not a stranger. He's our brother."That landed harder than I meant it to. Sasha's jaw tightened."We don't know that.""He looks like Dad, Sasha. Same eyes. Same jaw." I pushed a hand through my hair. "And he knew things about

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