The Billionaire I Was Meant To Hate

Chapter 12: The Old Building

POV: Aria

Bennett Technologies had stood empty for five years, sold off in pieces to whichever buyer would take it after the

collapse, and I hadn't set foot inside it since the week they changed the locks and took my father's name off the door.

Walking in at seven in the morning, alone, felt like walking into a photograph of my own life.

Marcus was already there, waiting near what used to be the reception desk, hands in his pockets, none of the easy

charm from our first meeting anywhere on his face. He looked like a man who hadn't slept.

"You came," he said.

"You didn't give me much of a choice." I kept my distance, phone in hand, thumb resting near the screen the way

Damian had shown me the night before — one tap, and a message would go straight to him with my location. "Talk."

"My father's name is Malcolm." He said it fast, like ripping off a bandage. "Malcolm Blackwood.

Nathaniel's younger brother. Damian's uncle."

I'd suspected as much since the initials, but hearing it confirmed out loud still landed harder than I expected. "And

Halcyon Advisory Group?"

"His. I found the paperwork three nights ago." Marcus pulled a folded page from his jacket, hands not quite steady. "This

is a copy of a bank authorization form. Two point eight million dollars, moved eleven days before your father's company

filed for reorganization. One signature belongs to my father. The other belongs to Nathaniel Blackwood."

I took the page and read it twice, my own hands no steadier than his. "Your father and

Damian's father did this together."

"I think so. I don't know how much, or why, or whose idea it actually was." His voice cracked slightly on the last part. "I

grew up thinking my father was just a quiet man who preferred staying out of the spotlight while his brother ran the

company. I never once thought—"

"That he helped destroy a family."

Marcus flinched, but didn't argue the point. "No. I didn't."

I studied him for a long moment, weighing every instinct I had left after five weeks of learning not to trust my first

read on anyone connected to that name. "Why bring this to me instead of the authorities? Instead of Damian?"

"Because I don't have proof of what happened after the money moved. I don't know who altered the contract, whose

idea it was to frame Damian for it, or who's been trying to stop you and Aria from finding any of this for the last month."

He met my eyes. "And because if I hand this to Damian first, and my father finds out I went to his side before I came to

you, I don't know what he'll do. I've never seen him scared before. He's been scared for weeks."

Something about the word — scared, not angry — sat wrong in a way I couldn't immediately place. "Scared of

what?"

"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out." He glanced toward the boarded windows, the empty shell of a building

that used to hold my father's whole life. "There's something else. Something I only found last night."

"What?"

He hesitated, and in that hesitation I heard something new — less like a man protecting a secret and more like a man

about to hand me one he wasn't ready to be holding alone.

"My father made a call two nights ago. I only caught the end of it, but I heard him say a name I didn't recognize —

someone he called 'our insurance,' like it was a person, not a policy." Marcus's jaw tightened. "Aria, I don't think my

father acted alone either. I think there's someone else in this, someone neither of us has found yet, and I think whoever

it is has been the one making the calls that actually scared you."

My phone buzzed in my hand — the fifteen-minute check-in, right on schedule.

I didn't get the chance to answer it.

Somewhere above us, on the floor that used to hold my father's office, a door opened that shouldn't have opened

at all.