All Chapters of REBORN TO BE A BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

74 Chapters

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

ADRIAN'S POVI received her response four days after I sent the message. It was a single line text sent to the same personal number I had used. The message came on my phone at exactly six forty-one in the morning, I was already at my desk and the city outside was still deciding whether to be day or night.Ten in the morning on Sunday. Crestfield Lane, the third building from the eastern end. The door would be unlocked.I read it just once and dropped my phone.She hadn't asked for confirmation, she had given an address and a time with the confidence of someone who didn't expect to be questioned about either.I picked up my phone again and looked up Crestfield Lane online.It was a narrow street in the older residential quarter of the city, just twelve minutes ride from Laurent Group headquarters, the kind of street that existed in every old city. The buildings along it carrying the particular dignity of structures that had survived long enough to stop needing to prove itself. The thi

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

AVA'S POVI had spent the morning at the city records office going through land registry documents connected to the shell company, the same thread I had been pulling at for four years, and by early afternoon, I was already exhausted.My studio was three streets from the records office. I had found the space few months after arriving in the country, a cheap sublease through a contact.I unlocked the door and stepped inside.The smell hit me first the way it always did, linseed oil and turpentine and the dry-cold smell of a room that held large amounts of canvas. I exhaled slowly as my shoulders dropped half an inch. Then I stopped, I sighted the two chairs at the small table near the window.That was not what surprised me, I knew the chairs were there. But I kept them pushed together against the wall when I wasn't using them, a habit so ingrained I did it without thinking.But the chairs were not pushed together against the wall. They were positioned at opposite ends of the small tabl

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

AVA'S POVI couldn’t sleep that night. I sat at the small table in my rental apartment from the moment I got home until the grey light of early morning began pressing through the curtains. The Redwater Holdings document spread open in front of me alongside every page of my notebook that touched the same thread.The third director’s name I saw on that old note was Damien Laurent.It was listed clearly in the ownership section that every other copy I had ever found had blacked out. Like the thoroughness of people who understood exactly what they were hiding and had paid enough to hide it completely.Damien was Serena’s husband, Adrian, younger brother. I had heard Serena mention him maybe a dozen times across the years of her marriage, and each time in the same brief way. Once near the end, when she was already exhausted. “I don't know why but he makes me feel uneasy sometimes.” Those were Serena’s exact words to me one day. I had pushed it away the way I pushed things Serena said abou

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

SELENE'S POVThe security alert came through few minutes to mid-day. It was not an unauthorized access attempt. It was a visitor flag from the Arden Tower lobby, routed to my personal security feed rather than the standard corporate channel, which meant Floyd Quake had made a judgment call about who needed to see it before deciding what to do with it.I was in the middle of a call with some foreign partners when the notification popped on the tablet beside me. I glanced at it once, noted the name and felt the rest of the conversation recede to a significant distance.A woman, Ava Bennett is at lobby level. She’s requesting access, she states that she has information relevant to Arden Corporation’s current market interests. REFERRED BY INTERNAL CONTACT AT THE RECORDS DIVISION, CITY MUNICIPAL OFFICE.I kept my voice completely even for the remaining minutes of the call with the foreign partners. When it ended I picked up the tablet and looked at the notification again.Ava had found a

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

SELENE'S POVAva looked at me with specific attention of someone whose instincts had just fired on what they couldn't yet name.I had said it and I could not unsay it. What I could do was manage what came next."Miss Bennett," I said. "There’s something I’ll like you to know.”Ava sat still, her full attention on me. "I'm listening."I stood from the desk and walked to the credenza along the far wall, buying myself enough time to reconstruct my words well enough to convince Ava. I poured two glasses of water and carried them back, setting one in front of Ava and keeping the other in my hand. I sat back down."I have been investigating the Westbridge accident personally for two years," I said.Ava's eyes didn't leave my face. "Why?""Because someone I cared about was connected to it." I let that sit for a moment before continuing. "And I had reasons to understand that it predate Arden Corporation's existence."Ava looked at me intensely, her eyes moving in assessment. I knew she was me

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

ADRIAN'S POV Damien came to my office unannounced around two in the afternoon, which was unusual enough on its own. These days, he almost never came to Laurent Group headquarters without a reason, he preferred his own territory, the advantage of receiving people rather than going to them. When he walked in he was carrying two cup of coffees, which was the kind of gesture that in anyone else would have read as casual. In Damien it read as prepared. "You look like you haven't slept for nights," he said, setting one cup on my desk. "I've been sleeping fine." I looked at him. He sat in the chair across from me with the easy unhurried movement of a man who had nowhere more pressing to be. He took the lid off his coffee and looked at it for a moment before speaking. "I thought you should know something," he said. "Before you hear it somewhere else." That construction, before you hear it somewhere else, was one of Damien's oldest moves. It positioned whatever was coming as an a

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

ADRIAN'S POVThe Laurent residence on Marchfield Avenue had not changed in thirty-five years.That was the thing about houses maintained by women like Victoria Laurent, they didn't change because change implied that the original arrangement had been insufficient, and insufficiency was not a condition Victoria acknowledged in anything she controlled. The same pale wallpaper in the entrance hall. The same arrangement of white flowers on the console table replaced weekly by the same florist for two decades. The same smell of the house, something between cedar and expensive candles, that had lived in my memory since childhood as the smell of a place where performance was the primary language.I arrived at few minutes past seven in the morning. Damien was already there, standing near the fireplace in the main sitting room with a drink in his hand, his posture carrying its usual ease. He looked at me when I entered and raised the glass slightly as a greeting that was also a confirmation. *

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

SELENE'S POVThe document arrived through Clara at nine in the morning, flagged urgent, sourced from the secure archive channel Martin Reeves had been using before he went dark.Which meant Reeves had not gone entirely dark and he had chosen this specific moment to resurface what he had been holding back deliberately.Clara placed the envelope on my desk without opening it, which was her way of telling me she had read the cover notation and understood it was meant for me alone. I thanked her and waited until she closed the door before I picked it up.Inside was a single document. Eight pages, dense with financial records, corporate registration histories and a genealogical summary that looked like it had been assembled by someone with access to records that didn't exist in any public archive.I read the first page standing up.Then I sat down and read it again from the beginning.The inheritance claim connected to my mother's family line. An old fortune attached to a family name that

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

SELENE'S POV I picked up my phone and called Adrian, he answered on the second ring. "I need to meet," I said the moment he answered. The document was still spread across my desk and the specific cold clarity of what I had read was still sitting in my chest like a weighty object. There was a brief pause on his end. "When?" "Now, but not at the office. Not anywhere with cameras." There was another pause, shorter than the first. "Give me forty minutes." He ended the call without asking why. I stood from the desk and went to the bar, I poured whiskey into a glass and stood holding it while I thought about what I was going to tell Adrian and what I was going to keep. The Leonard document couldn't go to Adrian whole. Not yet. The full revelation that the man who had rebuilt me had been stealing the inheritance I was entitled to for years cannot be disclosed yet. Not to Adrian. To him I was Selene. Not Serena! Selene Arden. I was still working through exactly where the line sho

CHAPTER FIFTY

SELENE'S POVI arrived at the municipal library first, twelve minutes before Adrian.The library smelled exactly the way I remembered it.Old paper, cedar wood and some faint metallic smell from the heating system that had probably not been updated since the building was renovated in the nineties. The kind of smell that existed in layers, each one belonging to a different decade of the same place.The third floor reading room was empty the way it always was on weekday mornings. Four long tables and wooden chairs with the specific discomfort of furniture built for function rather than comfort. Tall windows that let in grey morning light without warmth. A row of reference shelves along the far wall that nobody consulted anymore because everything they contained existed faster and more completely on a screen.I chose the table in the far corner, back to the wall with clear sightline to the door and both staircases.I sat down and placed my phone on the table and waited.Floyd had sent a

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