All Chapters of Kissed by the billionaire i can't stand : Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

The champagne hit Alexander Knight's chest before Elena Brooks even registered she had fallen.Three hundred people watched.Twelve cameras caught it.And in the ten seconds of absolute silence that followed, Elena did the only thing her exhausted, desperate, completely ruined brain could think of.She laughed.Not a polite laugh. Not an embarrassed laugh. A real one, short and shocked, that escaped before she could stop it. The kind that comes out when your body doesn't know whether to cry or run, so it picks the worst possible option instead.The sound cut through the silence like a knife.Elena slapped her hand over her mouth immediately, but it was too late. The laugh was already out there, already floating through the Plaza Hotel ballroom, already landing on the ears of three hundred of New York's most powerful people.And on Alexander Knight himself.He stood completely still, champagne soaking through his white dress shirt, spreading dark and wet across his custom tuxedo jacket

The words sat between them like something sharp."It wasn't an accident."Elena heard them. She understood each word individually. But her brain refused to put them together in a way that made sense."What do you mean it wasn't an accident?" she asked.Alexander didn't answer immediately. He stood up from his desk and walked back to the window, his hands clasped behind his back again. Like he needed distance from what he was about to say.Elena watched him. She noticed things about him that she hadn't clocked last night. The way he moved, deliberate and unhurried, like every step was a decision. The slight tension in his jaw when he was choosing his words carefully. The fact that he kept his mother's watch in his left hand pocket, touching it briefly before he turned to face her.She didn't know yet that it was his mother's watch.She just noticed he touched it when things got heavy."Your father discovered something," Alexander said finally. "Inside this company. Inside Knight Holdin

Elena didn't take the elevator down.She pressed the button for the fiftieth floor instead.The doors opened back onto Alexander's reception area. The woman behind the curved desk looked up with mild surprise. Elena walked past her without stopping, pushed open the double doors without knocking, and stepped back into Alexander's office.He was on the phone.He looked up when she entered, and something in his expression changed immediately. Not guilt exactly. But awareness. Like a man who knew a conversation was coming and had been calculating how long he had before it arrived.He said something quiet into the phone and ended the call."That was fast," he said."Were you there?" Elena asked. "The night my father died. Were you there?"The office went completely still.Alexander set his phone down on the desk with careful, deliberate movements. He didn't answer immediately. He did that thing again, reaching into his left hand pocket, touching something briefly before his hand came back

Elena didn't lower the photograph.She held it between them, steady, waiting.Alexander was looking at the image with an expression she hadn't seen on his face before. Not the controlled blankness he used in meetings. Not the careful assessment he'd turned on her since the night of the gala. Something underneath all of that. Something older."You know her," Elena said again. "I need you to tell me who she is."Alexander reached out and took the photograph from her hand. He looked at it for a moment, then turned it over and read her father's handwriting on the back.She knows everything. Keep her safe.He was quiet for long enough that Elena started to feel the silence like pressure."Her name is Diane Mercer," he said finally.Elena waited."She was a senior accountant at Knight Holdings," he said. "Eight years ago. She worked directly alongside your father during his consultancy period." He paused. "She was the one who first flagged the financial irregularities to Thomas. Before he b