The Billionaire I Was Meant To Hate

Chapter 14: The sixth Name

POV: Aria

We didn't stay in the building long after that. Damian called it in as a break-in at a vacant property, gave a version of

events careful enough to be true without being complete, and by nine that morning the three of us were back in his

office with the folder open on the desk between us like something that might still bite.

Sophie arrived twenty minutes later, out of breath, having dropped everything the moment I texted her.

"Okay," she said, sliding into the chair beside me and pulling the page toward her without waiting for an invitation. "Let

me see this mystery name that apparently justified a home invasion."

"An office invasion," Marcus said.

"Same energy." She studied the circled name for a long moment, mouthing it once like she was testing the shape of it.

"This isn't a name I recognize from anything we've pulled so far. No LLC filings, no notary logs, nothing in Halcyon's

paperwork."

"Which means what?" Damian asked.

"Which means either this is a dead end, or it's someone who was careful enough to stay off every piece of paper we've

found until now." Sophie looked up. "I want to run it against old employment records. If this person worked for either

company five years ago, there'll be a W-2 somewhere, a badge log, something. People don't erase themselves

completely. They just get good at not showing up in the obvious places."

"I can pull Blackwood's old HR archive," Damian said. "It'll take a day."

"I'll work the Bennett side," I said. "My father might actually recognize the name, even if none of the paperwork does."

Marcus had gone quiet through most of this, staring at the folder like it had personally wronged him. "There's

something I should say."

We all looked at him.

"My father's going to know I was in that building this morning. If his contact was the one who ran, he'll have already

heard my name from someone before I even get home." His jaw tightened. "I don't know what he does when he's

cornered. I've never seen it happen before."

"Then you don't go home," Damian said, immediate and certain in a way that surprised me. "Not until we know more."

"Damian, he's still my father—"

"He's also apparently been laundering money to bury evidence for five years, and you just spent the morning helping

the people trying to expose it." Damian's voice softened, just slightly. "I'm not telling you to hate him. I'm telling you I

don't know what he's capable of anymore, and neither do you, and until we do, I'd rather you be somewhere safe than

somewhere sentimental."

Marcus didn't argue. That, more than anything else that morning, told me how frightened he actually was.

---

By evening, the office had mostly cleared out, and it was just Damian and me again, the same way it had been most

nights for the past several weeks — except this time neither of us reached for the files right away.

"You went up those stairs," he said, without looking at me. "After I told you not to."

"Marcus was already moving. I wasn't going to let him go up there alone."

"You could have been hurt."

"So could you, running in the second you heard my voice." I studied him. "You don't get to be upset that I took a risk

when you took the exact same one twenty seconds later."

He didn't have an answer for that, which was, I was starting to learn, usually the moment right before he said

something honest.

"I keep doing the math on how many ways this could have gone wrong today," he said finally. "And every version I run

ends with you in that building instead of me, and I don't — " He stopped himself, jaw working. "I don't know what to do

with how much that scares me."

The office was quiet except for the hum of the city outside the windows, and for a long moment neither of us

moved.

"I'm still here," I said softly.

"I know." He finally looked at me, something unguarded in his expression that I hadn't seen from him before — not the

careful control he wore like armor in every boardroom, just him. "I keep telling myself this is about the case. That

whatever I'm feeling is just adrenaline, or relief, or five years of guilt finally having somewhere to go."

"Is that what you think it is?"

"No," he admitted, quiet enough that I almost missed it. "It stopped being that a while ago."

I didn't move away when he reached for my hand this time, and neither of us pretended it was about a check-in

protocol.

We didn't do anything about it. Not that night. There was too much unfinished between us — a sixth name we

didn't have, a dangerous man who now knew his son had turned against him, a version of the truth still buried

somewhere neither of us had found yet.

But something had shifted, quietly, in the space between careful and honest, and both of us knew it wasn't shifting

back.