All Chapters of REBORN TO BE A BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

74 Chapters

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

SELENE’S POV"His name is Gerald Fitch," Adrian said. "He was the lead investigator on the Westbridge accident four years ago. The investigation that went cold."I kept my expression neutral.Gerald Fitch. The name existed in the files I had assembled over the past four years. The man who had closed the investigation before it reached anything significant. "Where was this taken?" I asked."The building is a private storage facility in the east dock district," Adrian said. "Fitch visited it at three forty-one in the morning six days ago and stayed for approximately twenty-two minutes." He paused. "The facility has a registered tenant in the unit he accessed. The tenant name is a shell registration." Another pause. "The shell traces back to Redwater Holdings."The room felt very still suddenly. I stared at the photograph in front of me."Damien is moving his evidence," I said quietly."Or destroying it," Adrian said. "Fitch wouldn't be making a visit at such early hours of the morning,

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

AVA'S POVI found the address three days ago, more by luck.It was through a mere conversation in a coffee shop I had stopped at to get a cup of latte. A woman whom I later knew as Petra, who had worked as a filing clerk for the city's regulatory office for twenty-two years had mentioned it in passing to a man she was talking to over coffee, that she remembered a property transfer connected to Redwater Holdings, she said it happened twice."Twice?" I asked before I could control myself.Petra looked at me in amazement, at the stranger suddenly meddling in her talk. Then, she nodded in affirmation."First time was standard. It was registered and filed correctly." Petra said. "Second time was three weeks later. Someone wanted the original registration amended. The address was changed on the principal correspondence record." She frowned slightly at the memory. "Which was unusual because you don’t amend correspondence addresses on a company registration without a reason. The company was

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

SELENE'S POVWe stood around the corner from number forty-seven while Ava told me what she had seen.She was precise about all the details,the frosted window with the low light behind it, the keypad entry system too new for the building's age, the camera angle, the unmarked vans in the loading bay next door. She said it in a particular sequential order of someone who had learned that detail mattered more than interpretation and that the two things needed to stay separate until you had enough of the first to justify the second.I said nothing and only listened until she finished."The vans seems to concern me more than the building," I said."Why?""Because Gerald Fitch visited a storage unit in the east dock district three nights ago at the early hours of the morning," I said. "It was a unit connected to Redwater Holdings." I continued. "If he was moving documentation out of that unit, those vans are the most likely means of transport."Ava looked at the corner of the building we we

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

SELENE’S POV"We need to move," I said. "If Fitch is inside that building and Ruth Callway just handed whatever we’re yet to discover to the van driver, they're close to completing whatever they came here to do. Once those vans leave, whatever documentation they're carrying becomes significantly harder to recover.""So, what do we do?" Ava asked.I looked at the corner one more time. Then I pulled out my phone and called Adrian.He answered before the first ring completed."I need you back on Stead Street," I said. "Number forty-seven. And I need Floyd Quake's team in position around the loading bay next door within ten minutes.""What happened?""We found Ruth Callway."The line went silent."Which Ruth Callway?" he asked. Then, he picked.“Ruth Callway, my former housekeeper?”"Exactly." I confirmed. "And I believe the person who told Damien's driver which road Serena would be on the night of the accident."The silence that followed lasted considerably longer than the ones before it

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

ADRIAN’S POVAva closed the notebook and looked at the building across the street."The envelope Ruth Callway handed to the van driver. I described it as an envelope but I was looking at it from a far distance through a dry cleaner's window." She paused. "It could have been a drive or hard case for a storage device." She looked at me directly. "If Damien is moving physical documentation, that's one problem. If he's moving digital records, the footprint is different and the timeline for making those records unrecoverable is considerably shorter."The distinction mattered enormously and I had not been thinking about it clearly enough.Physical documentation; files, paper records, printed transaction histories, could be destroyed but the process takes time and could leave traces. Shredding equipment, incineration, secure disposal. Each method had its own signature.Digital records were different. A drive could be formatted, encrypted beyond recovery or transmitted to an offshore server

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

SELENE'S POVThe ground floor was a single open room.Bare walls, concrete floor, and the smell of a space used for function rather than occupation.Dust and electronics and the faint chemical smell of equipment that had been running for hours. A folding table along the far wall held two laptops, both open and active, their screens casting the only light in the room beyond the early morning sunlight filtering through the frosted window.And at the table, her back to us, sat Ruth Callway.She looked older than the last time I saw her, of course, that was my days of being a devoted wife of Adrian Laurent. She looked smaller somehow, or perhaps that was simply the difference between a woman who worked in a large house where she managed the estate’s housekeep and a woman hunched over a laptop in a room she clearly hadn't expected to be interrupted in.She heard us the moment the door opened and turned.I watched her face move through several things in rapid succession: alarm, recognition

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

SELENE'S POV"Why are you here this morning?" I asked.Ruth turned to me. The question seemed to adjust her, pulling her back from the specific notice of the conversation with Adrian and Ava into a more demanding practical."Mr. Fitch called me four days ago," she began with shaky voice. "He told me the situation had become complicated. That there were people investigating the accident, and have now gotten close to the original documentation." She looked at the laptops. "He asked me to transfer specific files to a remote server and then wipe the local copies.” Her gaze moved from the laptop to her hands. “He pleaded that that was the last request he would ever ask of me.""And you agreed," I said solemnly."I don’t think I had a choice.""You had a choice four years ago," Ava said quietly. "And you made it then."Ruth didn't respond to that. She kept staring between her hand and the floor.The progress bar reached eighty-four percent.At this point, I was losing my patience. I dialed

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

SELENE’S POVThe date range covered thirty-one months. Beginning four years and seven months ago.Seven months before the accident.I read the first exchange.FITCH: The inheritance matter has become complicated. The heir has been located. She’s married into the Laurent family, I don’t think that’s by coincidence, given what we know about how things like these arrange themselves.ARDEN: I'm aware. I've been tracking the genealogical line for some time. The timing of the marriage is unfortunate.FITCH: For whom.ARDEN: For everyone potentially. Including the people currently managing the assets.I kept my face completely still.Seven months before the accident, Leonard had known. He had known I was Serena Vale, the heir whose existence threatened the assets he had been diverting for eleven years. And he had been in correspondence with Gerald Fitch, the man who would later close the accident investigation and coordinate its operational side about the complication my existence represente

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

SELENE'S POVMy eyes fluttered open to the beep of machines and faint smile of antiseptics.That alone was enough for me to pull that I was lying on a hospital bed.I turned my head slowly, a sharp pain on my neck restricted the movement immediately. That was when it dawned on me that I had a cervical collar on my neck.Then, the door to the ward opened quietly and Ava was right there at the door way. I wanted to scream her name and watch her rush to my side. I want to unburden myself onto her, the burdens of betrayal and pain I couldn’t hold anymore. But sadly, I couldn’t do any of these. “Miss Selene. You’re finally awake,” she said as she walked into the ward. “We were scared this may be severe, we had to call for emergency services the moment Adrian saw you lying by the corner of the building on Stead street. Thank God he didn’t come out later than he did.”My brain started recapping as she said those words.Yes. We had been on Stead street together. Myself, Ava, and Adrian. I r

CHAPTER SIXTY

AVA'S POVI had imagined this moment so many times in the last four years that I had eventually stopped imagining it. Not because I had given up but because the versions I constructed in my head kept coming like it belonged to a different kind of story but the question that emerged from all of these still lingers in mind.*What if Serena was alive?*This was the exact question that had always motivated and kept me going. Even when it looks like I’m always at dead ends.And now I couldn’t keep my eyes off this woman named Selene. In the first place, she had said a word that relates to Serena the first time I saw her at the art gallery. Then, she suddenly became interested in Serena’s case, bagging her decision with a reason I didn’t fully believe.A thought suddenly formed in my head. *What if this woman is actually my friend? What if she is Serena and had only been pretending?” I shook out the thought. No, it can’t be. If Serena is not dead, if she’s truly alive and back into thid a

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