All Chapters of MY RUDE NEIGHBOUR IS MY BILLIONAIRE BOSS : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

"He's already there," Adrian said, staring at the officer's radio like it had personally betrayed him. "Which means whatever he's planning, he built it assuming she'd come regardless of what we decided in this room.""Then we go in faster than he expects," I said, standing, adrenaline burning cleaner now that the decision had effectively already been made for us. "Not on his timeline. Ours."The drive to the harbor took eleven minutes, Adrian's hand locked around mine in the back of an unmarked police vehicle, three other cars trailing at a careful distance, lights off, radios set to a frequency Julian couldn't monitor. Nobody spoke. The city blurred past dark and indifferent outside the windows, streetlights sliding across the glass in long, silent streaks, and I spent every second running through every version of what waited for us at the other end of this drive. Somewhere behind Adrian's carefully controlled expression, I could see the same fear I was carrying, and something abou

The room was exactly as Julian had left it.Hale walked me up four flights with his hand on my elbow, polite as a headwaiter. Room 4B's door stood open. Inside was the new furniture, the mirror, the radiator under the window with the burner phone gone from its ledge. On the glass, the message was still there, in lipstick that wasn't mine.*I'll be watching, Ann.*Julian Vance sat in the single armchair like a man waiting for a tea tray. Oatmeal cardigan, silver glasses, a paperback folded open on his knee. Someone's favorite uncle."Ms. Sterling." He stood. "Forgive the drive. Detective Hale insisted on the scenic route.""You're a coward," I said."I'm a patient man. It's different." He gestured at the bed. "Sit.""I'll stand.""As you like." He turned a laptop toward me. A boardroom filled the screen: long glass table, leather chairs, Harlan Pierce at the head with his reading glasses pushed up into white hair. Beside him, empty, a chair with a nameplate. *A. VANCE.*"It's a quarter

The hum climbed.It came out of the walls first, then the floor, then the thin cream radiator Hale had just gutted. A low electrical purr, like a cat the size of a building waking up.Hale stopped with my arm still in his fist. "What did you do?""Nothing. I was sitting here.""Don't lie to me, Ms. Sterling.""I'm a terrible liar. Ask my last three interviewers."A dusty little grille above the door clicked. Then, from every dead speaker on the floor, a dozen of them, a hundred, came a single burst of static.And a voice."Ann."It wasn't thin this time. It was everywhere. It poured down the stairwell and under the doors, soft and level and furious.Hale went still. "Vance.""Detective." Adrian sounded almost pleasant. "I'd love to chat, but I only have a minute, and it isn't for you."Hale yanked me toward the door. "Kill the feed.""Can't. You cut the relay. The hub's running on its own now." A beat of dry humor. "Thank you for that, by the way. It was the last lock I needed.""What

We walked into the boardroom at 7:28, two minutes early, which is the only thing I'll ever give Adrian Vance credit for.I was wearing yesterday's jeans, a roof's worth of gravel, and a Cole Dynamics windbreaker Priya had thrown at me in the elevator. Adrian had fixed his tie. He hadn't fixed his face.Twelve people sat at the long glass table. Harlan Pierce, white hair and reading glasses, presided at the head. At his right sat a woman in a grey suit with a leather folio: Eleanor Whitcomb, trustee of Margaret Vance's estate. Thirty-one percent, in a blazer."Mr. Vance." Pierce didn't stand. "You're cutting it fine.""I was detained.""By what?""By a kidnapping." The room went quiet in the way expensive rooms do."Allow me to continue," Adrian said, taking his place. He didn't sit. He rested one hand on the back of his chair, like a man who'd decided to own it by choice. "I'd like to enter three items before the vote.""The motion is on the floor—""Then it can wait four minutes." He

Three months later, I still hadn't quit. I'd served my ninety days. I'd even written the resignation letter, one line long: The reason is you. Adrian had read it twice, folded it into a paper boat, and sailed it into the office aquarium."That's evidence," I said."That's art.""It's a resignation.""Then you'll need to submit it in triplicate. Clause fourteen, subsection C." He didn't look up from his screen. "I've recently added a subsection C." I was still furious. Mostly. In small, delicious doses.It started with the coffee. On the first morning back, a cup appeared on my desk, made exactly how I took it, with a sticky note in blocky handwriting: Buy a real mug. Yours has a crack in the handle.I stared at it for a full minute. Then I took the note, wrote: “Buy a real apology” underneath, and left it on his chair.The next morning there was a mug. Heavy, white, hand-glazed. Inside it, folded small, an apology on a letterhead. Four pages. Typed. Bullet-pointed."You're a lunatic,"