REJECTED, THEN THEY FOUND OUT I WAS A BILLIONAIRE

CHAPTER NINE: THE FRIEND WHO BECAME AN ENEMY

Richard's voice became a whisper. "Where is my father?"

Before Grant could respond, the office door slammed open. The assistant rushed inside, his tie loosened and his shirt clinging to him with sweat, looking nothing like the composed young man who had led Richard through the corridor at Blackwell and Grant just hours earlier.

"Mr. Grant!"

Grant turned. "What happened?"

"Someone is downstairs."

"Security?"

The assistant shook his head. "No." His breathing was heavy. "They shut down the building's cameras."

Grant's face hardened. "How many?"

"We don't know."

Richard looked toward the door. "Are they the same men?"

The assistant swallowed. "Some of them."

Grant immediately reached for the file on the desk. "We're leaving."

Richard didn't move. "Not until you tell me where my father is."

Grant grabbed the file. "Richard, we have to go."

"Where is he?"

"Alive."

Richard froze. The word struck him harder than anything else that morning. "Alive?"

Grant nodded. "Your father is alive."

Richard stared at him. All his life, he'd believed Alexander Black had died when he was six. All his life, he'd thought he had been abandoned by death. Now, within a single morning, he'd discovered that his father might be alive, his mother might be alive, and the life he'd believed was real had been built on lies.

He thought of every birthday he'd spent alone with his mother, telling himself it didn't matter, that some fathers just weren't around to see. He thought of the secondhand suit he'd worn to his mother's funeral because it was the only one he owned, and how he'd stood at the graveside wishing, just once, that his father had lived long enough to be there beside him. All of it, apparently, had been unnecessary. His father hadn't been unable to be there. He had simply chosen not to be.

"Where is he?"

Grant looked toward the door. "I don't know."

Richard's face fell.

"But you know someone who does."

Grant was quiet for a moment, long enough that Richard wondered if he intended to answer at all. Whatever calculation was happening behind his eyes, it looked like the same one from the parking garage, the same weighing of how much truth was safe to hand over versus how much would only make things worse.

Richard stepped closer. "Who?"

Grant's eyes met his. "The man in the photograph."

Richard's mind immediately returned to the image from the parking garage. Alexander Black. A younger Elias Grant. And the stranger standing between them.

"Who is he?"

Grant's expression hardened. "Victor Kane."

The name seemed to carry weight even inside the small room.

Richard frowned. "Who is Victor Kane?"

Grant looked toward the hallway. "Your father's closest friend." A pause. "Then he became his greatest enemy."

"What happened between them?"

"Kane was the one who found the buyers. The investors. The people who turned Blackwell Holdings from a construction company into an empire." Grant's jaw tightened. "He was also the one who decided, somewhere along the way, that he deserved a bigger share of it than your father was willing to give him."

"So he tried to take the company."

"He tried to take everything. The company. The money. Eventually, from what I understood, even your mother's loyalty. Your father found out days before he disappeared." Grant's eyes darkened. "I always assumed that was why he vanished. To keep the two of you out of Kane's reach."

Richard tried to picture the man from the photograph, the stranger standing between his father and a younger Grant, but the image in his memory was too brief, too blurred by shock, to hold any real detail. All he could recall was the impression of someone unremarkable. Ordinary enough to stand beside a man like Alexander Black and not be noticed.

"What does he look like now?" Richard asked. "Would I recognize him if I saw him?"

Grant considered the question longer than Richard expected. "I honestly don't know. It's been over twenty years. People change." He glanced toward the door, listening for the crash that had shaken the floor below them a moment earlier. "But if Kane is the one behind all of this, he'll make sure you recognize him eventually. Men like him don't stay hidden once they decide it's time to be seen."

"You keep talking about him like you admire him," Richard said. It wasn't quite an accusation, but it came close.

Grant's jaw tightened. "I worked beside him for six years. Admiration and fear aren't always different things, Richard. Sometimes the men who frighten you the most are the ones you respected first." He looked away, toward the window, toward the city beyond it that had no idea what was happening thirty stories above the street. "Kane was brilliant. That was never in question. It was what he did with the brilliance that mattered."

"And what did he do with it?"

"He convinced himself he'd earned things your father never agreed to give him. And when your father refused, Kane decided that agreement was optional." Grant's voice had gone flat, the way people spoke about things they'd rehearsed too many times in their own heads to still feel sharp saying it out loud. "That's the short version. There's a longer one, but this isn't the moment for it."

"When is the moment for it?"

"When we're somewhere he can't hear us."

A loud crash echoed somewhere below them. The assistant flinched. Grant grabbed Richard's arm.

"Move."

They rushed through the back door. Richard followed, still trying to process everything. His father was alive. His mother might be alive. And somewhere out there was a man named Victor Kane who apparently knew the truth, and who had been willing to take everything from a man who once called him a friend.

Behind them, the crashing continued, closer now, and Richard didn't look back to see what had caused it. He had a feeling he already knew.