The Heir's Midnight Deal

CHAPTER 9: SOMETHING LEFT BEHIND

 

Callan had left only one thing behind in room 114.

It actually hadn't been a mistake, he was much smarter than that. It was a burner phone. The browser history was that of a terrified young scholarship student who had spent his final weeks on campus desperately researching the Voss family succession laws.

He had hidden it four days ago, tucking it deep behind the loose floorboard beneath his old bed, acting on a quiet warning from Felix that Matthew Bening was still leaking information to Benjamin Starr.

Since Starr had been whispering directly into Dorian Chase’s ear for the past two weeks, Callan knew it was only a matter of time before someone came hunting for a smoking gun.

At the end of the dark corridor of Meridian Hall, Felix stared at his secondary tablet, his fingers trembling slightly as he adjusted the remote camera feed. He caught the precise second Matthew Bening slipped out of room 114. Matthew’s face was pale and desperate, his knuckles white as he clutched the burner phone to his chest like a stolen lifeline.

Felix exhaled a breath he felt like he’d been holding for years. He tapped the screen, sending the timestamp to Callan at 11:47 p.m. Eleven minutes inside. He took the bait. It’s done.

Sitting in the massive, shadow-drenched library of the Voss estate, Callan watched the message pop up. He didn't blink and barely even reacted. He immediately forwarded the ping to Anna with a single, ruthless command: Proceed.

Across the wide mahogany table, Seren was worried about the case file.  Three separate pages of handwritten notes were scattered around her laptop,  and a fourth cup of coffee sat abandoned nearby. She was so consumed by the data that she hadn't even noticed the grandfather clock in the corner tolling past midnight.

"Matthew took the bait," Callan said, his voice cutting through the silence of the library.

Seren stopped typing and she slowly spun her chair around to face him. Her dark eyes were filled with exhaustion, yet they burned with an intense intelligence and alertness. "How long until Chase realizes it’s a decoy?"

"Depends on his arrogance," Callan said, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. "If he’s greedy and wants a quick kill, a day. If he’s as cautious as my grandmother claims, maybe three."

"And what exactly are we doing with those three days?" She asked.

Callan turned around, his eyes glowing dark with excitement. "We're going to breach his apartment."

Seren stood up so fast her chair scraped harshly against the hardwood. "The physical file Vivienne saw?" She asked sharply, her heart thumping.

He nodded slowly, "If we can lay our hands on those pages, we will completely own his assets. We’ll know the exact architecture of every move he’s spent four years planning against my family and we can finally take him down."

Seren crossed the room, and stood right in front of him, "How do you plan to break into a high-rise fortress on the thirty-second floor of Chase Tower? It’s a corporate building, Callan. There are guards, biometric scans, and localized feeds."

"Rue is going to override the security protocols remotely from the basement. Winthrop is managing the perimeter. I will be inside his private vault for less than six minutes." he replied too calmly for a billionaire about to burgle another's office.

"And if something breaks?" she challenged, her voice trembling slightly, not with fear, but with a raw, protective fury that caught him completely off guard.

"If the override fails and the alarms trip, what is your play? You're a twenty-year-old heir caught in the private residence of your family's bitterest enemy at one in the morning. They will completely eat you alive then bury you."

"Then I play the fool," he said, offering a faint, humorless smile that she didn't find funny. "I play the spoiled, arrogant kid who got drunk, took the wrong private elevator, and wandered onto the wrong executive floor. My grandmother's lawyers will have me out by dawn."

Seren let out a short,laugh that actually sounded genuine. She stared at him and shook her head with fascination. She didn't see a detached billionaire playing a game. She saw a man who had looked into the depths of his own ruin and decided he was willing to jump if it meant taking his enemies down with him.

"Take me with you," she whispered.

Callan’s jaw set into stone and the humor left the room when he frowned at her. "Absolutely not. You are the one person I cannot afford to lose."

"I am faster at reading financial anomalies than you will ever be," she countered, stepping closer until her chest nearly touched his jacket. "You said six minutes. With me inside that room, it becomes four. You know how to bypass the physical safes, but I know the exact legal and corporate signatures to look for. If he has a trap buried in those files, I will spot the counterfeit before you even unclip the folder."

"Seren, this isn't an investigation anymore. This is a felony we will be committing. If we are caught together, my family name might protect me, but your stepfather will have a legal right to know exactly where you are. Your alias will evaporate." He insisted.

"I have been studying the precise ways men like Dorian Chase commit their crimes since I was sixteen years old," she said, her voice oozing with so much hatred.

"I watched Gerald Dane slowly choke the life out of my mother’s estate while she was too sick to fight back. I know what a paper trail looks like when it's meant to murder someone's future. I know the scent of it., so let me do this."

She turned back to the table and closed her laptop with a sharp, echoing snap that sounded like a gunshot in the library.

Callan looked at her and couldn't find the little nerd he'd seen when he'd first knocked on her door. He reached out, his fingers wrapping around her wrist—not to restrain her, but to anchor them both to the choice they were making. Her pulse was racing, wild and hot against his skin, but she hit her nervousness pretry well.

"Four minutes," he said, looking right into her eyes. "If we hit four minutes and one second and we don't have it, I am dragging you out by force."

"Four minutes," she agreed, her gaze locked onto his like a vow. "We either take his crown tonight, or we burn the whole tower down around him."