The Billionaire They Never Saw Coming

Chapter 2

Marcus was waiting outside of Ethan's apartment as he arrived, laptop bag already slung over his shoulder as though he'd taken no care to sit down before the phone call.

"You didn't answer," Marcus said.

"I was walking."

"For two hours?"

"I had quite a lot to walk about." Ethan unlocked the door and was not surprised to find Marcus following inside, a fact that said more than any words could to him. Marcus did not come uninvited rather to assist for trivial matters.

He set the laptop on the kitchen counter, flipping the screen around so that Ethan could see what was on it. A spreadsheet, with a series of account numbers, most of which were meaningless to anyone who had not spent twelve years memorizing the shape of a lone ghost.

"Caymans account, registered to a shell named Northbridge Capital Partners." Marcus tapped the spot on the screen. "Northbridge appears to show up three times in Blackridge Holdings' new filings, first having gone through two other shells. But here is where the real story lies."

He pulled up another document on the laptop, this one aged in its format, as though it had been in use in a different decade.

"The same account, with routing information. This comes from the liquidation records of your father's corporation. Twelve years ago."

Ethan did not respond for a moment, having spent more time than he cared to remember staring at those liquidation records. He was familiar with each and every one. He hadn't expected this one, however, because it had been buried three shells deep, waiting to be unearthed by a patient enough person.

"Are you sure."

"I checked it four times before calling you up." Marcus's voice was tuned down and has lost its usual edge. "Ethan, whoever runs Blackridge Holdings was already running this account at the time your father lost everything. This is not a coincidence, this is the same hand."

Ethan closed the laptop slowly, feeling as if he had just been given a falsehood to take away from him in his fast movements.

"Victor Blackwood," he said.

"Chairman of Blackridge Holdings. No one has ever found anything to pin to his record. He is careful, patient." Marcus watched him. "And is the same man trying to force Isabella Laurent to sell Veyron."

The name landed in a space where he did not expect to hear it, in the tone of her telling him something that would take a life to realize. He thought of her against that wall, her blazer still in place before her voice had had time to shake, offering him money as though money was the only currency people trusted to want from them.

"She asked me to marry her, Fake engagement. Her family is forcing one to save the company politically. She wanted a stand-in." Ethan ruffled at a spot on his jaw. "I said no."

"You said no to the woman fighting the same enemy who crushed your father." Marcus said it slowly, as if he was checking to confirm his hearing to himself. "Ethan. You have been pretending to be no one for three years, so that you could investigate this in private. She just handed you a reason to be inside the building."

"I don't need a reason to be inside the building. I own half the debt Blackridge is using to tighten the screws on her."

"Does she know that?"

"No."

"Do you want her to know that?"

Ethan did not respond to that one, he did not have an answer yet and Marcus had known him long enough to not push past his silence.

He found her two days later, not really by anxiety but because Veyron's building was three blocks from a filing he needed to see for Aurelius, and he told himself that was the entire reason that his feet had taken him to pass her building's entrance at an exact hour that her time, which he had absolutely not memorized, usually put her at lunch.

She was out on the steps, arguing with someone else on the phone in the manner reserved for trying very hard not to raise her voice. She hung up before he came to her.

"You," she said. Not disfavored. Just surprised.

"Me."

"Did you come to tell me no again? I heard that the first time."I came to ask a question."

She crossed her arms and waited, and there was something different in her expression this time, something tired behind the presence of that she was not quite managing to smooth over.

"How bad is it," Ethan said. "The financing."

Her jaw tightened, for a moment he thought she would sidestep and tell him that it was fine, that it was not her place, and how she wanted him to mind his business the way she had the last time she was outside the restaurant with the man twice her size before him. Instead, she exhaled and something dropped half an inch in her shoulders.

"Bad enough that if I don't secure a partner by the end of the quarter, the board votes to accept Blackridge's offer regardless of whether I want it or not." She stated it plainly, as a fact she had already made her own decisions, even as her hands crossed tight over her chest said otherwise. "My father thinks that marrying me off will solve it. Buys goodwill with the appropriate families, makes the board feel safe again. Because apparently the fastest way to reassure a room full of men is to hand them a woman."

"And the engagement."

"Would slow it down. Give me room to breathe, room to actually fix this instead of getting auctioned off to fix it for me." She looked at him, something sharper coming into her eyes. "Why do you care?"

Ethan thought of several answers. And he answered honestly

"Because I believe that whoever is forcing your hand, and whoever ruined my father might be the same person."

That got her full attention, she went very still, the kind of still that meant that she was recalculating everything that she had thought to know of the conversation.

"Your father."

"Long story. I'll tell you the parts that matter, if you still want the deal."

"You said no."

"I'm allowed to change my mind."

She studied him for a long moment, the wind dragging a strand of hair loose from wherever she had pinned it, and it told him that she was thinking too hard to notice.

"There are conditions," he said, before she could respond.

"Of course there are."

" Nobody finds out this isn't real. Not your board, not your family, not your friends. And no one finds out anything but what I choose to share with you. I'm not interested in being a headline."

"You say that like you think you're interesting enough to become one."

"I'd rather not find that out."

Something almost like amusement crosses her face, before catching it and putting it away. "Fine. Those are an acceptable deal." She held out her hand, businesslike, as if they were drawing their conclusions on a contract of both not wanting to spend a lifetime together. "Then, I suppose you are my fiancé, Mr. Ethan."

He shook it, her grip firm and without hesitation in her fingers, and he told himself the fact that he noted this would mean nothing.

"There is a dinner Friday," she said, already pulling on her phone, already moving into the logistics as she needed to build momentum to keep from thinking too much on what she had just agreed to. "My family will be there. Adrian will be there. If you are going to do this, you will need to survive that first."

"I've survived worse dinners."

"You've not met my cousin."

She said it lightly, but something underneath it was not, as Ethan put it aside for later the way he put everything aside.

His phone buzzed as she turned back towards inside the door. A text from Marcus, three words that send the temperature in his chest dipping several degrees as he finished reading them.

Victor knows your name.