The Billionaire Amongst Us

CHAPTER 9

It was a cold morning in the DeLancey's Family Estate room. Celesta sat curled at the edge of a high-backed chair, her silk sleeves clinging to her arms damp with tears.

Her face was pale and streaked with sorrow. The betrayal gnawed at her heart and streams of tears came running down her cheeks in succession.

"How could he do this to me?” she asked but to no one in particular. “I gave him everything."

“Don’t speak his name again,” Lady Colette snapped, cuddling her sister who was quaking through tears and heartbreak.

“That billion-dollar fool, if he is even worthy of the title, was never fit to stand beside you, let alone wed you.”

"I've always known that girl Evelyn to be a lover-snatcher. No girl who writes for a newspaper column can ever amount to any good." Lady Celesta spits amidst sobs.

Lady DeLancey sat stiffly by the mirror, her voice cold and cutting. “And to think that we just signed off our wealth for his control. How did we not know that he is a male w***e?”

Uncle Hadrian stood with arms folded and his expression, indifferent. Trust his stepdaughter with a task, and she will blow it up. His best option now is to paint Lord Harrison black to save her neck.

“No man of real breeding carries himself with such flamboyance. I knew it. I knew he was a man who couldn't resist anything woman.”

Lady Celesta went on a new voyage of tears.

"Oh..why me!"

From the doorway, the tall steel doors creaked open, but no one noticed. Kairo entered quietly, his eyes lowered, a cleaning cloth folded neatly in his hand.

With no acknowledgement, he began to pick up fallen cushions, setting things back in order, silently and dutifully.

“What a pretentious, scandalous, and foolish Nitwit” Lady DeLancey continued, venom lacing her every word.

“Imagine the disgrace after the engagement had gone public. We would be the laughing stock of society, mocked for letting a serpent into our family.”

“Evelyn herself is a disgrace,” Colette sneered. “How could she do such a thing?"

As the fire cracked, Celesta shook her head, eyes brimming. “You don’t understand. He made me feel seen. Like I mattered beyond. I would have given him everything."

Kairo, silent at the hearth now, adjusted the coals with a silver poker. His hands trembled faintly, not from fear but the strain of listening to them tear him apart word by word, unaware they stood inches from the man they damned.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Colette finally asked, her voice softer, more hesitant. “That no one truly knows who he is and where he came from? The only thing known about him is his casino.”

Kairo moved toward the desk, adjusting books and straightening ink pots. His expression remained blank. He had laid every stone with care, every glance, every gesture and every lie.

None suspected the man arranging letters and envelopes was the same devil they were spitting on. But one thing he had not planned for twisted in his chest —Celesta.

The way her body shook when she sobbed broke him. Unlike others that had been playing a role, she was innocent and real; and for a second, guilt curled around his heart.

“You should’ve told us, Celesta,” Lady DeLancey said, folding her arms. “Had we known sooner, this shame could’ve been avoided.”

Celesta lifted her head slowly, eyes red and voice thin. “Told you what? That I loved him? That I believed in him?” She stood now, trembling but upright. “You never trusted my judgment to begin with. None of you did.”

“And now we know why,” her mother snapped. “You let your heart cloud your sense.”

Uncle Hadrian scoffed. “That boy, Harrison, he played you like a violin. Nice sweet notes to your face, and a poison behind your back.”

Kairo shot Uncle Hadrian a gaze. He speaks too. The devil amongst the devils.

Kairo’s grip on the silver tray tightened for a moment. He blinked once and loosened it as the silver rattled quietly. Just in time, he turned to dodge a Teapot sailing towards his skull from Lady Colette.

"Get out... I say get out!" She snarled.

Kairo was made to move but a loud knock shattered the tension.

Hadrian moved first, flinging the door open. A guard whispered something urgently which made Delancey’s head snap around.

“What is it?” he barked.

The guard hesitated, then said, “A message from the solicitor. The safe in the west wing, someone’s broken in. The family records, the original estate papers... and some papers of interest, are missing.”

Everyone in the room, except Celesta, panicked.

Delancey turned pale. Lady DeLancey set her teacup down too hard, it clattered against the porcelain tray.

“Who would dare?” she began, but her voice wavered.

Lord Delancey straightened. “Check every room, every guest, every servant. I want the thief in handcuffs before nightfall.” The guard nodded and vanished.

And for the first time, Kairo felt proud of himself. He had the will, the truth buried in DeLancey’s forbidden library, the words that carried who owned what.

Then the front door burst open and Donald entered, breathless, his shoes muddy from a rushed return. In his hand was a stamped file.

“I found it,” he said, voice low but trembling. “You need to see this.”

Delancey snatched the file and tore it open and as he flipped through the pages, the blood drained from his face. He blinked twice with his mouth open, then closed again like he’d forgotten how to speak. Colette moved forward. “Father? What is it?”

Delancey turned the document toward the others, his hand shaking.

There it was: the name of the rightful heir. The original will. A letter in the State Attorney's hand.

Lord Harrison Wycliffe.

Son of Lord Dune Wycliffe.

Presumed dead.

Now living under the alias… Unknown.

“No,” Lady DeLancey whispered. “No, that’s impossible.”

Hadrian rose, slowly. “Could it be the houseboy…?”

“Was never a houseboy?” Celesta said faintly, realisation dawning in her tear-streaked eyes. “He was watching us the whole time.”

How sure are we of this?

Delancey threw the file across the table. “We’ve been scammed. Duped like fools under our roof!”

Colette backed away from the room, heart hammering. “Where is the undercover spy now?”

They turned toward the hallway. But before anyone could move, a woman stepped through, tall and veiled.

The family stood, frozen!