Chapter 4
1080 Words
The Line I Shouldn’t Have Crossed.
Justin’s Pov
The moment Lynette’s eyes lifted from the screen and met mine, something in my chest snapped.
Because she wasn’t supposed to see any of this. Not yet. Not like this.
Her breath hitched. “Sir… what is this?”
Sir? As if formality could protect her.
I shut the door quietly, deliberately. The soft click rang through the room.
“We have a problem now,” I said.
Her fingers trembled around the edge of my desk. She looked like she was ready to run. And maybe she should. Because nothing about what I’d done was defensible.
But she didn’t know why I’d done it and she didn’t know what I’d discovered.
Yet.
She stepped back as I moved toward her, her voice small, fragile but steady. “Are you… are you stalking me?”
God.
If only she knew how badly I didn’t want this version of me to exist.
“No,” I said sharply. “But I had to watch you.”
Her eyes widened, hurt overtaking fear. “You had to?”
I dragged a hand through my hair. “Sit down.”
“No.” Her chin lifted an inch. Brave girl. “Not until you explain why you’ve been following me.”
I exhaled hard, jaw tight. “Three weeks ago,” I said, “a photo of us which was fake, circulated. Someone sent it to HR. Someone wanted it to look like we were leaving a club together.”
Her face paled. “The scandal.”
“Yes. The scandal.”
And the first c***k in the empire I’d spent a decade building.
I stepped closer to her. She didn’t move away this time. “I thought you leaked it.”
Her eyes snapped to mine, pain blooming across her expression like a bruise. “You thought I did something like that? To you?”
I held her gaze. “I didn’t know you then.”
“I’ve worked for you for almost a year, Sir.”
“And in that year, half the department tried to sabotage me, leak information, curry favor with my uncle, or undermine every deal I touched.” My voice sharpened. “Forgive me for being cautious.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “So you decided to surveil me.”
“I decided to find out the truth.”
A beat.
“And I did.”
She stiffened. “What truth?”
“That you were innocent.”
Her breath caught. For a moment, she didn’t move at all, as if that single sentence had rewired her whole world.
I didn’t tell her the next part.
How every time I had tried to disprove her innocence, I found something that only confirmed it.
How the deeper I dug into her life, the more I discovered things I shouldn’t have known—family debts she quietly paid, the long hours she worked without complaint, the way she never accepted credit for successful projects, how she gave her mother her entire bonus last Christmas and pretended she didn’t need it.
She was everything people in my world were not.
Good, steady, honest.
And completely unprepared for the kind of people who were now watching her.
She finally whispered, “Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Because I couldn’t afford to be wrong,” I said. “And because whoever framed that photo didn’t stop there.”
Her brows creased. “What do you mean?”
I walked past her, tapping a few keys on my laptop. A different folder opened, one she hadn’t seen yet.
Inside were screenshots, reports, payment trails.
“You were followed, Lynette,” I said. “Long before I had you followed for the investigation. Someone’s been watching you from the outside.”
She stared at the screen, then at me, emotions chasing one another across her face.
“Why me?” she whispered.
“I don’t know yet.” But I intended to.
I reached for the back of the chair, bracing myself. “The man in the conference room today? He wasn’t from the merger team.”
She blinked. “The one taking photos?”
“Yes.”
Her voice shook. “Sir… what is happening?”
A question I had been trying to answer for weeks.
“I thought the rumor was just a minor PR hit,” I said. “But when someone sent HR a second anonymous tip last week, including your home address, it became clear it wasn’t random.”
Her breath shuddered. “Someone wants to link me to you.”
“No.” I met her gaze. “Someone wants to destroy me and they think going through you is the fastest way.”
Her face drained of color.
I hated that I’d dragged her into this and I hadn’t stopped it sooner.
She whispered, “Your uncle… does he know?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Henry knows everything. That’s the problem.”
Her eyes widened slightly.
The air between us shifted, thickened. The city lights burned behind her like a halo and for one impossible second, I let myself look at her.
At the woman I’d mistakenly believed was my enemy.
At the woman who might now be in more danger than either of us expected.
Her voice was barely audible. “Sir… what do we do now?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then my phone buzzed.
It was accorded alert from my security team.
My stomach turned to stone.
“No,” I muttered, grabbing it.
The message on the screen was short and fatal.
TARGET ACQUIRED.
SENT TO PRESS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
It was a file attachment with photo.
I opened it and every drop of blood in my body froze.
It was me and Lynette in my hotel room. She was standing inches from me with my face partly shadowed.
And the angle—God. The angle looked intimate.
Like it was a kiss.
Her face paled when she saw my expression. “What is it?”
I looked up slowly, the weight of the coming disaster crashing down on both of us.
“Lynette,” I said, voice dropping to a low whisper. “We’re already too late.”
The door handle suddenly twisted from the outside.
Then—Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Mr. Stonebridge!” a voice shouted. “Open the door. Now.”
- Writer
