All Chapters of REBORN TO BE A BILLIONAIRE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

44 Chapters

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ADRIAN’s POVThe Hargrove Financial Summit happened once a year and attendance was never optional for anyone serious about remaining relevant in this city’s elite circle. Old money, new money, political connections and corporate ambitions all gathered inside one building for an evening that looked like networking and functioned like warfare.I had attended every year for the past six years, but this year felt different, even before I walked in. Damien rode with me, he spent most of the drive scrolling through his phone with his usual relaxed indifference while I reviewed acquisition updates from the legal team. The last six weeks have been tough for Laurent Group, but the numbers had started to stabilize a bit after the Riverton damage, though still far from recovery, but enough to walk into tonight without looking wounded. Appearances mattered at these events more than actual figures.“Valencia rescheduled,” Damien said without looking up from his phone.“I know.” I replied.“This m

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SELENE’s POVLeonard was already awake when I arrived at his private residence at seven in the morning. That didn’t surprise me. In four years I had never once caught Leonard Arden unprepared for anything. He existed in a permanent state of readiness always. His housekeeper led me through the main corridor without a word. The residence was quieter than mine, and filled with the particular stillness of a space that had absorbed decades of careful thinking. Dark wood paneling, shelves lined with documents rather than decorative objects, everything functional and deliberate.Leonard sat at the long dining table with coffee and a newspaper, folded precisely in half. He looked up when I entered.“You could have called,” he said.“I preferred not to,” I replied as I walked toward the dining area.He studied my face briefly before gesturing toward the chair across from him, I sat down carefully.His housekeeper reappeared silently with a second cup of coffee and set it in front of me. Leon

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SELENE’s POVThe Beaumont Charity Luncheon was Celeste Laurent’s territory in every sense that mattered.She had chaired the event for three consecutive years, curated the guest list personally, and used it to cement the exact kind of social influence that old money families understood better than any business transaction. The luncheon wasn’t about raising funds. It was about who sat where who was invited, and perhaps more importantly, who wasn’t. I had received an invitation anyway.Clara had flagged it the moment it arrived, a black envelope with gold embossed lettering, hand-delivered to Arden Tower three days ago. There was no note inside, just the invitation itself, precise and impersonal.I had accepted it immediately. Though, not because I wanted to attend. But because declining would have looked like exactly what it was— avoidance. And Selene Arden doesn’t avoid anything.The venue was a restored heritage building in the older part of the city, the kind of architecture that e

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

SELENE’s POVDamien Laurent’s private office sat on the thirty-second floor of a building that didn’t carry the Laurent Group name publicly. That detail alone says it all, men with nothing to hide didn’t need separate addresses.I had kept him waiting until the following morning. Not long enough to seem avoidant but long enough to make clear that Selene Arden doesn’t rearranged her schedule for nobody, including a Laurent.His assistant met me at the elevator with a practiced smile and led me through a corridor that was noticeably different from Laurent Group headquarters. Darker wood, lower ceilings, art on the walls that looked chosen for meaning rather than impression. Everything about Damien Laurent seemed deliberate.He was standing when I entered, which seemed surprising to me. Standing was a different kind of signal, either respect or performance, and with Damien I suspected the line between both was permanently blurred.“Miss Arden.” He smiled, and it was exactly the smile I h

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AVA’s POVThere are people in your life whose absence changes the actual texture of the world. Not just the emotional landscape of it. The literal, physical, and everyday texture. The way a room sounds different without them, or the way a joke lands flat because the one person who would have laughed at exactly the right moment isn’t there anymore. The way you reach for your phone to tell them something and your thumb is already opening the conversation before your brain remembered they’re no more.Serena Vale was that person to me.She had been my best friend since high school days when I was fourteen years old. She lent me her last twenty dollars for a bus fare because I lost my money and then pretended she had forgotten about it. Serena was generous in ways she never announced, carrying people without making them feel carried.I had loved her like a sister all through our friendship. And I sometimes wonder whether I loved her well enough when it mattered most.*********************

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AVA’s POVThe official report called it an accident.Weather conditions. Visibility impaired by the storm. A tragic and isolated incident on a known high-risk stretch of the coastal bridge.I read that report four times in the first week. Then ten more times across the following month. Each time, it sat incorrectly with me, like a sentence in a book where one word has been altered and the meaning changed just enough to feel wrong without being immediately obvious.Nobody else seemed to notice. Or perhaps they noticed and decided not to look too closely.The city grieved briefly, the way cities grieved people they had never actually known. Serena Vale’s name faded from headlines within a fortnight and life continued its indifferent forward motion.But I couldn’t move forward. I kept returning to the details that didn’t fit.Serena was a careful driver. Cautious to the point where I teased her about it constantly, calling her a grandmother behind the wheel because she checked her mirror

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ADRIAN’S POVThe name appeared in my security team’s report at six forty-three in the morning.I was already at my desk by then, which had become usual lately. Sleep had grown difficult in the weeks since the Hargrove Summit. Though, I wasn’t lying awake staring at ceilings. It was more that I kept waking at four or five in the morning with the alertness of someone whose mind had continued working without them even knowing.I read the report twice before setting it down.AVA BENNETT RETURNED TO CITY APPROXIMATELY TWO WEEKS AGO. CURRENT ADDRESS: SHORT-TERM RENTAL, LOWER MERIDIAN DISTRICT. ACTIVITY: MULTIPLE VISITS TO CITY RECORDS OFFICE, WESTBRIDGE MUNICIPAL ARCHIVE, AND THE OFFICES OF A PRIVATE INVESTIGATIVE FIRM ON CALLOWAY STREET.I sat back slowly. Ava Bennett. The name had lived in a particular locked compartment of my mind for four years. Not because I had ever disliked Ava, she had always been direct and loyal in a way I found both irritating and quietly admirable. But becaus

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

SELENE’s POV The Meridian Art Fair happened once a year in the old gallery district, the kind of event that existed at the intersection of genuine culture and performative wealth. Artists whose work would sell for obscene amounts stood beside collectors who bought paintings the way other people bought furniture, for the statement rather than the feeling. I hadn’t planned to attend but Clara had flagged it three days ago as a networking opportunity. Two foreign collectors I had been trying to schedule were both confirmed attendees, and informal setting made certain conversations easier than boardrooms allowed. I had agreed without much thought and moved on to the next item on the schedule. Now, standing inside the main gallery hall with a glass of sparkling water in hand, I was beginning to wish I had sent representatives instead. Though, the conversations were concluded within the first forty minutes; terms were discussed, follow-up meetings scheduled…the particular pleasantrie

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

AVA’s POVI had never been an artist. I was someone who seek consolation in a creative gift that loss unlocked. I had no training, no natural inclination, or history whatsoever in sketchbooks or art classes. Before Serena died, the most artistic thing I had ever done was arrange a cheese board.The painting gift was unlocked six months after Serena’s accident. Six months of loss, grief and living in denial.On this particular day, I had been sitting at the table in the kitchen of my small apartment overseas at two in the morning, unable to sleep, which had become the usual shape of nights by then, and my hands had needed something to do than scrolling through old photographs or rereading the last messages of my conversation with Serena on the WhatsApp app for the hundredth time.I had found a set of cheap acrylics I bought in a corner shop three days earlier without knowing why I bought them. They had sat on the counter still in the bag until that night, I opened them. I didn’t plan

CHAPTER THIRTY

SELENE’s POVI almost missed her.It was the kind of almost that lived in the margin between a glance and a look — the difference between eyes passing over something and eyes landing on it. I had been walking toward the private entrance of Arden Tower after a lunch meeting that had run twenty minutes longer than scheduled, my mind already on the three o’clock call with the Tokyo partners, when something in my peripheral vision snagged.I kept walking, then I stopped abruptly.Across the street, half sheltered beneath the awning of a closed boutique, Ava Bennett stood looking at the building.She had a notebook open in her hand. And she wasn’t looking at the building the way a person looked at architecture or even the way a curious person looked at something that interested them. She was looking at it the way an investigator looked at a location.Her pen moved, she wrote something down. Then she looked back at the building and her gaze traveled slowly upward, floor by floor, the way it

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