The Billionaire I Was Meant To Hate

Chapter 15: Insurance

POV: Aria

My father recognized the name.

I watched it happen in real time, sitting across from him at the same desk where, two weeks earlier, the lights had

gone out mid-sentence and taken the truth with them. I set the page in front of him and said nothing, the way Sophie

had taught me — let the evidence do the asking.

His face went the color of old paper.

"Where did you find this?"

"Bennett Technologies. This morning. Someone was already there looking for it when we arrived."

He didn't answer right away. My mother, standing in the doorway with a dish towel still in her hands, went very still.

"Richard," she said quietly. "Tell her."

My father looked up at her, something passing between them that had clearly been sitting unspoken in this house

for five years, and whatever silent argument they had, my mother won it.

"That name," my father said, "belonged to a man who used to work quiet jobs for people who needed things done

without their own fingerprints on it. I only met him twice. I was never supposed to know his real name at all — he went

by something else, back then. A nickname. But your mother saw something in his file once, on my desk, before I could

put it away."

"What kind of jobs?"

"The kind that make problems disappear." My father's hands, folded on the desk, had started to tremble slightly.

"Malcolm brought him in. I only found out after the deal had already fallen apart, when it was too late to matter. He

called him 'insurance' — someone who made sure that no matter which direction the collapse fell, no fingerprints

would ever point back at the people who arranged it."

The word landed exactly the way Marcus had said it two days earlier, and the room seemed to tilt slightly around it.

"Is he still—" I started.

"I don't know." My father's voice had gone hollow. "I never saw him again after everything collapsed. I assumed

whatever he'd been paid to do, he'd done, and moved on to whoever paid for him next."

"Dad." I kept my voice steady, even though nothing in me felt steady at all. "Someone's still making these calls. Someone

still knows exactly where I am, what I'm looking at, and how to make it disappear before I can use it. If this man is still

working, he's the one doing it now”. I watched real fear settle into him — the kind I hadn’t seen since the company feel

apart.

"Then you need to stop," he said. "Now. Tonight. Whatever you think you're close to finding, it isn't worth what this man

is capable of."

"I can't stop."

"Aria—"

"I won't." I reached across the desk and took his hand, the way I used to when I was small enough to believe he could fix

anything. "You spent five years disappearing into a version of yourself that let this win. I'm not going to do the same

thing. Not when we're this close."

My phone buzzed before he could answer.

Unknown number. Same disposable line as before.

I answered it on speaker, so my parents could hear.

"You went to the old building," the voice said, flat and unhurried. "That was a mistake."

"Who are you?"

A pause, long enough that I thought the call had ended.

"Someone who's been very patient with you, Miss Bennett. That patience is running out."

Another pause. "Ask Marcus Blackwood where his father is tonight. Ask him very soon."

The line went dead.

I looked up at my parents, my pulse roaring in my ears, and dialed Marcus's number with hands that had finally,

completely, stopped being steady.

He didn't pick up.