THE BILLIONAIRE WHO SHUT DOWN THE CITY

CHAPTER 5: Simone

Hughie found Simone on day four. It was not because he had been actively looking for her, nor because he had employed any of his grandmother's considerable resources to hunt her down. 

It was simply because she came to him.

She was waiting outside Loretta’s estate in Cascade Heights when Hughie arrived for his morning strategy meeting with Beaumont. 

She sat alone in a modest, unmarked sedan parked just beneath the shadow of the property's perimeter oaks. No Adam. No Dinsel Group security detail. As Hughie pulled his truck onto the gravel driveway, she stepped out of the vehicle. 

She looked like a woman who had not slept a single hour in four days, which was entirely accurate. 

She also looked like a woman who had practiced exactly what she was going to say a thousand times in the mirror, and had already completely abandoned the script. 

That was also accurate.

Hughie killed his engine. He stepped out of the truck, his heavy work boots crunching against the gravel, and walked directly past her toward the front steps of the stone colonial without stopping.

"Hughie," she called out, her voice cracked, thin, and desperate.

He didn't pause. He unlocked the front door and walked inside.

 Inside the foyer, Loretta stood by the large bay window, watching the exchange with an unreadable look on her weathered face.

 She said absolutely nothing to her grandson. She merely turned and walked toward the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

Hughie came back outside five minutes later. He did not do it because he had forgiven her, nor because he possessed some latent desire to hear her out or receive closure.

 He did it because he was a builder, the kind of man who finishes a job, who sweeps up the debris, who ensures a structure is completely settled. 

This was not finished yet.

He stepped onto the front porch, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, and looked down at her. 

The morning light was unforgiving, catching the dark, hollow circles beneath Simone's eyes. She looked small against the backdrop of the massive stone house.

What she told him over the next few minutes was not an excuse. It was a cold, mechanical sequence of events.

She explained how Adam Dinsel had approached her months ago. 

She explained how Adam had laid out Hughie's entire professional future on a table, showing her with chilling clarity that Cade Construction's designs were going to be taken with or without her cooperation. 

Adam had told her that the system was rigged, that the old guard always won, and that the only real question remaining was whether she wanted to be standing in the smoking wreckage with Hughie or somewhere safe, secure, and taken care of.

 Then, Adam told her he loved her.

She had believed him. She had believed the billionaire because she wanted to, because she was terrified of the crushing poverty Hughie had been fighting so hard to escape, and because she couldn't see a way out. Two of those things were human.

 One of them was pure, unadulterated cowardice. Standing on the driveway, looking into Hughie's dead, unblinking eyes, Simone finally knew it.

Hughie listened to the entire confession without a single interruption. His face remained a mask of carved stone, the slumped, defeated posture from his Decatur apartment entirely replaced by a terrifyingly calm stillness.

When she finally finished speaking, her chest heaving as she wiped away a stray tear, Hughie asked only one question.

"How long before the Castalian contract did you give him the external drives?"

Simone swallowed hard, her voice barely a whisper. "Three weeks."

The answer hit Hughie with the force of a physical blow, though he didn't let it show. Three weeks.

 That meant Adam had held the site-specific blueprints for twenty-one days before the official contract decision was ever announced. The late, emergency submission directly to the CEO's office hadn't been opportunistic or sudden.

 It was completely staged. The entire sequence had been meticulously choreographed by Adam Dinsel, including the precise timing of Simone’s sudden abandonment designed specifically to maximize the psychological damage to Hughie.

 She had been the weapon and the wound simultaneously. Adam wanted to destroy Hughie's mind at the exact moment he stole his future.

Hughie nodded slowly.

 The clarity of the plot was beautiful in its cruelty. He looked at her, his expression devoid of hatred, devoid of love, devoid of everything except cold utility.

"Does he know you came here?" Hughie asked.

Simone shook her head quickly. "No. He thinks I'm at a spa in Savannah. He doesn't know where your grandmother lives."

Hughie looked at her for a long, quiet moment. 

The wind rustled the oak trees above them. 

"Go back to him," he said flatly. "Don't tell him you came here. Don't tell him anything."

Simone stared up at him, her eyes widening with a sudden, desperate confusion. "Hughie…"

But he was already turning around, walking back inside the house and closing the heavy oak door behind him, cutting off her voice entirely.

Loretta was waiting in the kitchen. The rich, dark aroma of fresh coffee filled the space, a sharp contrast to the cold calculation humming through the house.

 She had heard every single word through the open window.

She set a steaming ceramic cup in front of Hughie as he sat down at the breakfast bar. She didn't offer sympathy. She didn't offer anger.

"You're going to use her," Loretta said. It was not a question.

 It was a statement of fact, delivered with the quiet approval of a general observing a soldier who had finally learned how to fight.

Hughie wrapped both of his hands around the warm cup, staring down into the black liquid. His jaw tightened. "She gave him my work, Grandma. The absolute least she can do now is give me his."

Loretta stepped back, studying him for a long, deliberate moment. 

She looked at the sharp line of his shoulders, the intensity in his eyes, the absolute lack of hesitation in his voice.

"The man I'm looking at right now," Loretta said softly, her voice carrying a weight that spanned forty years of grief and waiting, "your father would have recognized him."

Hughie looked up, his eyes locking with his grandmother's. "Is that a good thin

g or a bad thing?"

Loretta smiled a tiny, dangerous smile. "I'll tell you when it's over.”