Bound to the Billionaire's Revenge

Chapter 13

Secrets Unveiled

The folder was buried in the way guilty things always are at the very back of a locked cabinet in the secure file room, behind five years of dust, forgotten binders, and mislabeled tax records that hadn’t been touched since the last CFO quit in a scandal. The air smelled of metal, paper, and disuse. It was the kind of place where secrets went to die.

Ava only found it because the auditor had insisted politely, but firmly on seeing the original 2019 wire logs for a routine compliance check. And because she was the only one small enough to crawl under the bottom shelf when the drawer jammed halfway, refusing to budge no matter how many times the accountant kicked it.

Her hair snagged on a rusted bolt, dust coated her palms, and her blouse snagged on a splinter. She muttered a curse and reached blindly into the darkness, fingers brushing cardboard. She tugged the manila folder free with a grunt and backed out, coughing from the dust cloud.

She blew off the dust.

And froze.

INTERNAL RECONCILIATION CONFIDENTIAL

Account: Blackwell Holdings Master

Date: 07/22/2019

Amount: $3,000,000.00

Memo: Restoration of diverted funds L.B. personal trust

Her pulse roared in her ears. The room seemed to tilt, her vision tunneling in on the black ink, the damning clarity of the numbers.

Her name wasn’t on the memo, but it didn’t have to be.

She flipped to the second page, hands trembling. A scanned personal check. Lucian Blackwell’s signature sharp, unmistakable signed from his private trust. Dated the day after she fled to Costa Rica. The embezzlement loss had been covered before the ink on the police report had dried. Before the rumors had even finished spreading.

He had never been ruined.

Not even for a single hour.

Ava sank onto the cold linoleum floor. Her knees hit the tile hard enough to bruise, but she didn’t feel it. She didn’t feel anything except the slow, rising boil of betrayal climbing her throat like fire.

He paid it back.

He fixed everything.

But he let her believe she’d destroyed him.

Ava stood so slowly it felt like surfacing from underwater. She couldn’t hear anything not the hum of the fluorescent lights, not the clicking of keyboards from the office outside, not even her own breathing. The folder felt heavy in her hands, too heavy, like holding the weapon that had murdered the last three years of her life.

She didn’t walk to the private elevator. She marched. Her heels struck the marble floor like gunshots, each step fueled by rage that tasted like grief, betrayal, heartbreak, and something uglier hope dying.

Lucian was on a call when she slammed the folder onto his desk hard enough to send neatly stacked papers skittering across the polished mahogany. His tone was icy and controlled until he saw her face then he cut the call mid-sentence and shut his laptop with a soft click that felt louder than any shout.

You paid it back, she said. Her voice shook, but the words were knives. “The day after I left. You covered the three million yourself.”

Lucian didn’t blink. Didn’t speak. Didn’t pretend. He simply leaned back, expression unreadable but unbearably calm.

Yes.

The single word detonated in the air between them.

You lied to me. Her hands trembled. Every time you call it a debt. Every time you made me beg. Every time you, her voice cracked. Every time you touched me like I owed you interest. You lied.

I never lied about how much you hurt me, he said quietly. Only about the money.

Ava laughed harshly, sharp, broken. You tricked me into coming back. Into signing that contract. Into thinking I’d destroyed you.

Lucian stood slowly, rounding the desk with the sort of controlled grace that once made her dizzy with want. He stopped a breath away, close enough for the heat of him to ghost over her skin, but he didn’t touch her.

You did destroy me, he said. Three million was pocket change. I would have handed you the check myself and kissed you goodbye if you’d asked. But you didn’t ask. You took it. You disappeared. You left me broken in ways money could never measure.

His voice cracked just once before the mask slid back into place.

Ava swallowed hard. So you built an entire prison out of revenge. Congratulations. You won.

I didn’t want to win. His chest rose and fell sharply. I wanted you back. Any way I could have you. Even if it meant being the villain in your story.

She blinked through tears and refused to let fall. You could have told me the truth.

Would you have stayed? he demanded. Or would you have run the moment your father needed another bailout? I needed you tied to me, Ava. I needed to know you couldn’t vanish at dawn again.

That’s not love, she whispered. That’s ownership.

Lucian’s jaw tightened. Maybe. But it’s the only kind I knew how to give.

Silence settled heavy, suffocating, final.

Ava looked down. Papers lay scattered like shrapnel around them. The proof of his deception lay open on the desk between them like a corpse. Then she looked up at the man she once loved under Hamptons stars, the same man who had turned that love into chains.

You didn’t just trick me, she said softly. You tricked us both into believing this. whatever this is could ever be enough.

She turned.

His hand shot out, catching her wrist. Not tight. Not controlling. Just pleading.

Ava

She looked at his hand on her skin. Then into his eyes.

Fear.

Raw. Naked. Terrifying.

I love you, Lucian said, the confession shredded from him like something painful. I never stopped. That part was never a lie.

Ava’s throat closed. She pulled free.

Love doesn’t keep score, Lucian.

She walked out.

Behind her, the folder lay open, the check stub staring up like an accusation.

And for the first time since she’d come back, Ava wondered if the debt had ever been hers to pay or if they’d both been drowning in interest neither of them could afford.