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CHAPTER FIFTY : Not A Prisoner
publish date:
2026-07-12 00:30:12
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The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY TWO : The Other One
LEON’S POVI pulled the car over.Not carefully. The tyres found the kerb and I stopped and sat there with both hands on the wheel and the engine running and the name Justin had said sitting in the car with us like something that had taken up physical space.Carter.My father.Kate was looking at me. I could feel it without turning my head.“Leon,” she said quietly.“Give me a second.”She gave me the second.I thought about the marina. Carter sitting on the cabin floor with blood on his chin, glaring up at Natalie like a man who’d been wronged. The way he’d waved Bryan off when Bryan tried to help him up. The way he’d answered my call from the paramedic tent, jaw supposedly hurt, voice perfectly clear and controlled.I thought about the boat. The way Natalie had looked when we walked in. Not panicked. Not cornered. Almost expectant, like she’d known we were coming and had arranged the scene accordingly.Carter on the floor.Carter who had gone to that boat alone.Carter who had calle
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY ONE : Glass
KATE’S POVI hit the floor before I understood what had happened.Leon was already down, already moving, one arm across me, pushing me toward the island in the middle of the kitchen. Glass everywhere. The cold night air coming through the broken window in a rush, curtain lifting, something dark on the kitchen tiles that my brain took a second to identify.A brick.Just a brick. Wrapped in paper, held together with a rubber band.I stared at it from the floor while my heart did something violent in my chest.Leon was already on his feet, moving toward the window low and fast, staying below the line of it, pressing himself against the wall beside the frame and looking out at an angle. I watched him scan the grounds, his jaw set, his breathing controlled in a way mine absolutely was not.“Stay down,” he said.I stayed down.Thirty seconds passed. Maybe forty. Leon didn’t move from the wall.Then he crossed to the brick and picked it up, pulled the paper free, smoothed it against the coun
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIFTY : Not A Prisoner
LEON’S POVI took the phone off speaker.“Say that again,” I said.“He’s not being held,” Bryan said. “My contact watched him for twenty minutes. He’s moving around freely. Talking to Allison. Nobody’s guarding him, nobody’s restraining him.” A pause. “He walked out of that press conference and went straight there, Leon. He knew exactly where he was going.”I set the phone down on the table.Kate was already there before I could say anything. Reading my face, putting it together, the way she did things quickly and without needing them handed to her step by step.“He’s with them voluntarily,” she said.“Yes.”She sat back in her chair. Something moved through her expression, not quite betrayal, more like the specific exhaustion of someone who had extended a version of grace toward a person and was now watching that grace get used against them.Oliver hadn’t been grabbed outside that press conference.He’d walked away from it on his own two feet and gone directly to the people who had f
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY NINE : What Leon Hid
KATE’S POVI stepped back from the phone.Not far. Just enough to put a breath of space between me and that screen and the words on it and the way Leon’s face had gone when I’d read them.He hadn’t denied it.That was the part I kept coming back to. He hadn’t said it immediately the way innocent people said things immediately, the automatic no that came before thought. He’d just stood there holding the phone and looking at me with an expression I didn’t have a name for yet.“Leon.”“Kate—”“Don’t manage this.” I said it quietly. No heat behind it. I was too tired for heat. “Whatever it is, just say it.”He set the phone face down on the table.That small action, phone face down, told me more than anything he’d said in the last ten minutes. It was what he did when he needed to remove something from the equation so he could think clearly. I’d watched him do it enough times to understand the language of it.He pulled out a chair and sat down.First time all night he’d sat down somewhere
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT : Your Move
LEON’S POVI read the note twice.Then I set it down on the cushion exactly where I’d found it because some instinct said don’t disturb anything, this is a crime scene now whether anyone has called it that yet or not.The sitting room looked wrong in the specific way rooms looked wrong when something had happened in them recently. Not ransacked. Not violent, at least not visibly. Just off. A glass broken near the chair. Stefena’s bag still on the side table, which meant she hadn’t left voluntarily, nobody left their bag, not even in a hurry, not if they had a choice about it.Justin was gone too.“Check the house,” I said to Kate.She was already moving, out of the sitting room and down the corridor, calling Justin’s name. I heard her take the stairs, heard her voice moving through the rooms above me, and I stood in the sitting room and looked at that empty chair and felt something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a very long time.Helpless.Just for a moment. Then I pushed it back
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN : Three Days Ago
KATE’S POVThree days ago.I did the math without meaning to. Three days ago was before the dinner where she’d dropped that photograph of me and Oliver on the table. Before any of us knew Carter had found anything. Before the press conference, before Martha’s name made headlines, before any of it had cracked open in front of the cameras.Stefena had authorised a security firm before everything became public.Leon had gone completely still beside me, phone pressed to his ear, and I watched something move behind his eyes that I’d only seen once before. The night his composure had actually broken in that car, after the dinner, after the photograph.“Send me everything you have on that authorisation,” he said. His voice didn’t shake. It just went flat. “Every detail.”He hung up.For a second neither of us said anything. The marina had gone quiet again, just water against the dock and the distant hum of the city beyond it. Luciana’s sister was sitting on a bench a few feet away, wrapped i
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FIVE : Forced Proximity
KATEThe cathedral bells bellowed ceremoniously.The wedding was finally over. Then came the marriage. The actual marriage.Mrs Romano's smile was ice as she held up my bulk wedding dress, just for the cameras of course, so I could slide into the white limousine. I let out a deep breath I didn't
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER FOUR : Into The Lion's Den
KATEMrs Romano’s eyes met mine.And just like that, I knew I wasn’t welcome.The verdict didn’t need words.It was in the way her gaze lingered a second too long. In the slight tightening of her lips. In the silence that followed.I lowered my eyes and took my seat.The dining table was too long.
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER THREE : The Unexpected Bride
KATE“With cooperation comes reward.”The man’s voice was calm, very calm.My father leaned forward like he was being offered the world.“And everything we discussed… still stands?”The man gave a small nod.“Of course.”My stomach turned. Everything we discussed?I stepped into the room.“What is
The Billionaire Next door (Who I Hate) CHAPTER TWO : Scandal Hits The Romanos
KATEIt was everywhere.You couldn’t escape it.“ROMANO HEIR LINKED TO DRUG SCANDAL.”The headline stared back at me from my phone screen for the fifth time that morning.I exhaled slowly and locked it, but it didn’t help.Voices carried the same story anyway.“Did you hear about Natalie Smith?”“T
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