Watched By The Billionaire

Chapter Six - The Meeting

Nora arrived early, the way she always did before a fight she wanted to win.

The café was the kind that didn't put its name on the awning — quiet, tucked off a side street, the sort of place that survived on people who valued privacy over foot traffic. Neutral ground, exactly like he'd promised. She'd worn the plainest clothes in her closet, hair pulled back, nothing that could be photographed and turned into a headline.

Adrian arrived at nine sharp, sunglasses and a plain jacket doing very little to make him look like an ordinary man having coffee.

"You're here," he said, sitting across from her.

"I was raised to be on time."

"Let's get into it, then."

"I deleted the public contractor records off the main server," he said, sliding a folder halfway across the table and stopping it there, like he wasn't ready to let it go yet.

"You're not protecting the contractors," she said. "You're figuring out who's replacing them."

Something flickered behind his sunglasses — approval, maybe, or just recognition that she'd caught up to him again.

"Why haven't you exposed what you already know about me?" he asked.

Deflection, same as always, except this time he watched her like the answer actually mattered to him.

"Because I don't have the whole story yet."

A pair of strangers approached for autographs before he could respond. He signed, unhurried, then murmured something to his assistant, and within a minute they'd been moved to a private corner where no one else could reach them.

"Have you found who benefits from the contracts," he asked once they were alone again, "and who they hurt?"

"Not yet."

"Check the site articles on the contractors. Your office has access you haven't used."

"Is there something else you're not telling me?"

"Nothing for now. You're exposed enough as it is."

She studied him over the rim of her cup. "You say that like you're keeping score of how much danger I'm allowed."

"I am."

"That's not your decision to make."

"No," he agreed, "but it's the one I keep making anyway."

She didn't have an answer for that, and the silence between them stretched a beat too long to be comfortable.

"Fine," she said finally. "I'll keep digging quietly, like you asked."

"Good. I was starting to think you'd never actually listen to me."

"Looks like we're a team now."

"I like the sound of that," he said, and for once it didn't sound like a line.

A waitress hovered near their table, unsure whether to interrupt. "Can I get you two anything else?"

"Just the check," Adrian said, without looking away from Nora. "We're finishing up."

Nora almost smiled at that — the ease of it, the assumption that she'd agree the conversation was over when he decided it was. Almost. She caught herself before it showed.

The ride home felt shorter than it should have. She got out a block early, unable to stop thinking about the man she'd seen watching her building days ago — and about the building beside it, the one with a unit that had changed hands three weeks back.

A concierge sat behind a desk stacked with delivery boxes, sorting mail like the world outside his window wasn't currently unraveling.

"Afternoon," she said. "I noticed a unit here was recently repurchased. Do you know by whom?"

He didn't even look up. "Conman Oil."

The name landed somewhere behind her ribs. She'd seen it once already — half-visible on a page inside Adrian's folder, back at the café, before he'd pulled it out of reach.

She thanked the concierge and crossed to her own building, already reaching for her keys before she'd finished the thought.

Her key didn't turn.

She tried again, jiggling it the way you do when you're hoping the problem is you and not the lock. It wasn't. The mechanism was new — she could feel it, cleaner, tighter, nothing like the old lock she'd used every day for two years.

Someone had changed it.

Which meant either the building had done unscheduled maintenance without telling her, or someone had let themselves into her apartment and made sure their own key would work the next time. She thought about calling the building manager. She thought about calling Adrian. She thought about calling no one at all and just standing there a while longer, as if staying still might undo it.

Down the hall, a door she didn't recognize the sound of clicked shut — soft, deliberate, gone before she could turn fast enough to see who it belonged to.

She stood there with her hand still on the door, staring at a lock that no longer belonged to her, and understood with a cold, settling certainty that whatever had been watching her from across the hall hadn't stopped.

It had just gotten closer.