Married to the Wrong Billionaire

Chapter 6

My hand stayed completely still over the fruit bowl for three full seconds.

Then I put the apple back. Exactly where it had been. Exactly the same position, the same angle, the stem pointing the same direction. I straightened up and walked back to the window seat with the same unhurried movement of someone who had just checked if there was a ripe pear and found there wasn't.

My heart was doing something loud and fast that I hoped didn't show on my face.

Victor already knew. He'd known since this afternoon that the wrong woman had walked through the wrong door and signed the papers. And now he knew that Caiden and I had spent the last hour talking about my father's file and Vivienne's case and Ji-yeon's connection to the legal firm that had destroyed our family.

He knew all of it.

Which meant the timeline had just compressed from days to hours.

I picked up my phone. Opened the message thread with the unknown sender. Typed: *How long has it been there.*

The reply came fast. *Since the apartment was set up. Before you arrived.*

So every conversation. Every word. Everything Caiden had ever said in this kitchen for however long Ji-yeon had been placing devices in his home — all of it had been going somewhere Victor controlled.

I typed: *Is this the only one.*

A pause. Then: *No.*

I sat with that. Looked around the living room with new eyes, the eyes of someone who had just learned that a space they'd thought was private was not private at all. The bookshelf. The lamp. The clean architectural lines of an apartment designed to look uncluttered.

Hiding places everywhere.

I needed to get Caiden out of this apartment before he said anything else. And I needed to do it without saying out loud what I'd found, because saying it out loud would tell Victor that we knew.

I walked down the hall. Knocked on his door.

He opened it in thirty seconds, jacket off, the working version of him, a phone in his hand. He looked at me with a question in his expression.

I held up my phone screen. Typed quickly, turned it toward him: *Don't say anything. Fruit bowl. Kitchen. There's a device. Assume the whole apartment. We need to leave.*

I watched his face process it. The controlled expression didn't c***k — but something underneath it went very cold, very focused, the way a room changed temperature when a window opened in winter.

He looked at me for two seconds. Nodded once.

He picked up his jacket. His keys. Looked at his phone and typed something, showed me the screen: *Marcus. Now.*

I nodded.

We left the apartment without speaking. Took the stairs instead of the elevator because elevators had cameras and cameras had feeds and feeds went somewhere. Twelve flights down in silence, our footsteps absorbed by the concrete stairwell, the city audible as a low constant hum through the walls.

---

Marcus Black lived twenty minutes away in a building that was the deliberate opposite of Silverline Tower — old, slightly worn at the edges, a lobby with a sofa that had been there long enough to develop a personality. He buzzed us up without questions, which told me Caiden's message had contained enough information to skip the part where Marcus asked why they were showing up unannounced at ten thirty on a Tuesday.

He opened the door in a sweater that had seen better decades and looked at us both with the sharp, unhurried eyes of a man who had been waiting for something like this for a while.

"Finally," he said, and stepped back to let us in.

The apartment was warm and slightly chaotic in the way of spaces that were genuinely lived in — books on every surface, two different projects apparently in progress on the dining table, a cat occupying the best chair with the authority of someone who had never been asked to justify their presence. Dana appeared from the kitchen doorway with two mugs and set them on the coffee table without being asked, which told me Marcus had called her the moment he got Caiden's message.

"Sit," Marcus said. Not unkind. Just efficient. "Tell me what's happening."

Caiden sat. I sat. He looked at his brother and said, without preamble: "The historical assets division. The questions you've been asking for two years. You were right."

Marcus was quiet for three seconds. "I know I was right," he said. "I've known I was right. The interesting part is that you're here telling me that."

"There's a file in the Singapore storage unit," Caiden said. "With a name on it — Daniel Cole. He was a consultant who left the company eleven years ago under circumstances our father described as a legacy matter." He paused. "The circumstances were not a legacy matter."

"What were they," Marcus said.

"Victor built a false legal case against him," I said. Both men looked at me. "Forged documents, paid witnesses, a debt claim that was constructed retroactively to look like financial misconduct. It was designed to silence him and it worked." I held Marcus's gaze. "Daniel Cole was my father."

Marcus looked at me for a long moment. Then at Caiden. Then back at me. Something moved across his face that was more complex than surprise — the expression of a man assembling pieces he'd had separately for years. "The wrong door," he said slowly. "This morning."

"Yes," I said.

"And you're telling me it wasn't wrong."

"I'm telling you I'm not sure yet."

He almost smiled. The Marcus version of a smile — brief, real, the expression of a man who found a situation serious and interesting in equal measure and didn't feel the need to pretend otherwise. "Dana," he said, without looking away from us. "Cancel tomorrow morning."

"Already did," Dana said from the kitchen.

He turned back to us. "The apartment. You came here instead of talking there."

"Ji-yeon set up the apartment," Caiden said. "There's a device in the kitchen. Possibly more."

Marcus was quiet for a moment. "Ji-yeon has been with you four years," he said carefully. Not a defense — a fact being examined. "She came recommended by the board's administrative committee." He paused. "Which at the time was chaired by—"

"Our father," Caiden said. Flat. Certain. "Yes."

The fire in the corner of Marcus's living room made the sound fires made, a small settling, and the cat shifted in the chair without opening its eyes, and outside the window the city went about its business in the usual indifferent way.

"The Singapore records," Marcus said. "What do you need."

"Direct access. Not through the legal team and not through anyone connected to the historical assets division." Caiden looked at his brother. "You have a contact in the Singapore office. You mentioned it two years ago when you were asking questions I told you to stop asking."

"Raymond Loh," Marcus said immediately. "He's been with the company since the beginning. He knew our grandfather. He's been uncomfortable with the historical assets arrangement for years but he's sixty-three and he has a family and he's been careful about how he expresses that discomfort." He paused. "He'll talk to me. He won't talk to you — you're too close to Victor."

"Then you go," Caiden said.

"When."

"Tomorrow."

Marcus looked at him steadily. "This is going to break the family," he said. Not as a warning. As a fact being acknowledged. "If Victor did what you're saying — if the evidence is what this woman's research suggests — it doesn't end quietly. It ends publicly. It ends in ways that affect the company, the family name, everything you've spent four years building."

Caiden held his brother's gaze. "I know."

"And you're doing it anyway."

"He destroyed her father," Caiden said. Simply. Like that was the complete answer. Like it required nothing else attached to it.

Marcus looked at me. I looked back. Something passed between us in that look — not warmth exactly, more like recognition. The recognition of someone who had spent a long time watching his brother from a slight distance and had just seen something new.

"Alright," Marcus said. "Tomorrow. Raymond Loh. Singapore." He picked up his own mug. "Now tell me about the third person. The one sending messages from an unknown number." He looked at me. "Because Caiden didn't mention that part and it's the part I'm most interested in."

I looked at Caiden. He gave me the smallest nod.

"Someone who knew about Vivienne's plan before it happened," I said. "Someone who knows about the Singapore file, about Ji-yeon's connection to the legal firm, about Victor moving faster than we expected." I paused. "Someone who has been feeding me information in pieces. Carefully. Like they're managing what I know and when I know it."

"Managing you toward something," Marcus said.

"Yes."

"Toward what."

"That's what I haven't figured out yet."

Marcus was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "Someone with that level of access to Victor's operation — to Ji-yeon's history, to the Singapore file, to the timing of today's introduction — that's not an outsider." He looked at me. "That's someone inside the family."

The fire settled again. The cat opened one eye, evaluated the room, and closed it again.

I thought about the messages. The precise timing. The specific information. The way each piece had been given to produce a particular reaction. I thought about who had known about today's introduction from the beginning. Who had arranged it. Who had wanted Caiden settled and married and connected to exactly the right kind of person at exactly this moment in the company's history.

I thought about a woman in her late seventies with a heart condition and dark eyes that assessed everything in the first five seconds.

"Marcus," I said carefully. "How much does your grandmother actually know about what your father has been doing."

The room went very quiet.

Marcus set his mug down. Looked at Caiden. Something passed between the brothers — old and layered, the specific communication of people who had been reading each other across rooms for thirty years.

"That," Marcus said slowly, "is a very good question."

My phone buzzed on the cushion beside me. Unknown sender.

One message.

*You're asking the right question. Keep going.*