2026-01-28 03:26:38Everything in Lombard’s brain shut down. Every cell. Every department. The lights went off floor by floor.
One hundred million.
“I — I…” God. He was stuttering now? Really? Twenty minutes ago he’d been threatened by cops over a parking fine and hadn’t blinked. “I just… I just have to stay with him?”
“Yeah, man. I’m really sorry for breaking into your schedule like this,” the voice said quickly. “But don’t worry — I got you someone. A woman. She’s twenty-seven. I already gave her your number.”
Lombard frowned.
He almost asked what a woman was supposed to do when all he needed was to sit with a kid for one night — but no. Pride. Composure. Whatever scraps of dignity the day had left in the bag.
“Okay,” he said, forcing his voice into something flippant.
“Thank you so much, Lomb. My son’s gonna be really happy to have you. I told you about him already.”
“Alright.”
Lombard hung up first. A man has to win something today.
Then he checked again.
Credit Alert: $100,000,000.
For one night of babysitting.
That was insane. Four years ago he wouldn’t have taken this interruption for double the money. Back then his schedule mattered. His time had weight. His calendar was a fortress.
Now? His calendar was a crime scene and his car was on a tow truck.
He shook his head, bitter, and flagged down a cab. His bag had gone with the car anyway. Funny how life packed itself up for you once it was done using you.
Back at the house, the boy was already waiting at the gate, practically vibrating.
His father had called him last minute — said he’d found an old friend to accompany him to the charity board donations. The nanny had been arranged weeks ago, but she’d left suddenly for an emergency.
“He’s a great man. My old friend since we were eighteen,” his father had said. “I haven’t heard from him in years, but that man has everything a successful person could want. Think of someone who turned down five Ivy League schools — even after they begged him with offers worth millions.”
Finn’s feet shuffled at the gate. This was big.
His dad’s mysterious friend. A legend. Someone he could casually name-drop at the charity board. Someone who screamed credibility.
Then a car stopped at the gate.
Finn’s excitement spiked—
Then stalled.
The car looked like a cab.
Wait. A cab?
Red flags went up immediately, but Finn talked himself down. Maybe it was temporary. Maybe the legend’s driver was parking the real car somewhere.
Then the door opened, and Lombard stepped out.
The shirt he wore had definitely lived through better days. Seen success. Lost it. Been washed too many times. Retired against its will and then dragged back into service.
Finn’s stomach dropped. Disappointment hit him fast and heavy, like a piano from a window.
“Good evening,” Finn said anyway, walking forward, forcing politeness like it owed him money. “Mr. Lombard?” Just to be sure. Praying to be wrong.
“And you must be Elliot’s son,” Lombard said, studying him. “You look exactly like him.”
“Y-yeah. I’m Finn.”
Awkward. All of it, awkward.
Every fantasy Finn had built in the last five minutes collapsed quietly into a ditch. There was no way this man — cab-delivered, dressed like a cautionary tale — had anything useful to offer. No clout. No stories. Definitely nothing Ivy League–worthy.
“So?” Lombard asked casually.
“Oh — right.” Finn laughed, too fast. “My dad must’ve told you. We’re going to a charity board donation.”
“Ooh. Right,” Lombard nodded. “He didn’t tell me that. Just said to stay with you tonight.”
Shit.
Finn swallowed hard. He would never forgive his father for this.
“I’m a senior,” he said quickly, scrambling. “So… this matters. I have to write about it in my essay. About how I care about kids with nothing. You know. From the money I made from my startup.”
He waited.
This was the moment. The moment where a real connected man would drop something — a name, a story, a lazy comment about how the Ivy League was easy if you knew the right doors.
Lombard said nothing.
Nothing at all.
The last shred of hope holding Finn together slipped quietly away.
“We might need to get you some clothes first,” Finn said, scrambling for control. “Maybe a suit. You’ll be introduced to the top elite on my board as my… uh, guardian.”
“Alright,” Lombard said calmly. “I’ll handle it. I’ll order something. It should be here in ten minutes.”
Finn blinked.
Ten minutes?
There was no way. He was already picturing it — cheap fabric, rushed tailoring, something embarrassing enough to reflect on him by association. His social funeral, delivered in ten minutes or less.
“I — excuse me,” Finn muttered, already turning away.
He went inside and dialed his father immediately.
“Dad,” he hissed the moment the call connected. “How could you do this to me? Is that man even your friend? Tell me the truth. Right now.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 310
For the next several hours, Lombard and Barrett went over the plan and over it again, the whole Cataract team funneling in every scrap of intel they had until the shape of the thing was solid. The bones of it were simple, which was the only kind of plan Lombard trusted. The patriarch wanted a confession delivered to Lombard’s living face — that was the one appetite the old man could not talk himself out of, the vanity that had kept Lombard breathing when a smarter enemy would have had him shot in his sleep weeks ago. So the plan would feed that appetite. Lombard would let himself be taken. Quietly, without a struggle, exactly the way a broken man goes. Because the whole arrangement the trio had built their empire on ran on one belief — that grief makes men fold, that a Lombard with his Clara taken would crawl into his shell and stay there. He would give them precisely that man. He would walk into the room they prepared, wearing the defeat they’d ordered off a menu. And every step
Chapter 309
Vivienne genuinely believed she was orchestrating a beautiful reunion.Lombard’s instructions had been vague and urgent, so she’d improvised with her whole heart. She’d called Julian first — told her, half-whispering like it was a delicious secret, that Drake had come by earlier in a state, saying things about not being good enough for her, and that if Julian wanted to catch him while his guard was down and his heart was open, she should come now, this exact morning, before he talked himself back into hiding. It was the kind of story that questioned no logic: it explained why Drake was already there, it flattered Julian’s role as the one who could reach him, and it was urgent enough to override the strangeness of the hour. Julian had been in a car within fifteen minutes.Then Vivienne had called Drake — and, knowing exactly the condition the man was in, she had not led with anything dumb. She’d told him Julian had turned up at her door in tears, frightened after everything at her pa
Chapter 308
Toby had been forced to call her guardian — her uncle — because she could not bring herself to fully trust anyone from the Cataract team. They weren’t people you trusted on sight. And in a night like this one, the devil you knew felt safer than the angel you didn’t.Not that she knew, for certain, that her uncle wasn’t quietly aligned with her grandfather. She didn’t. But he was the one risk she was actually able to take right now, so she took it — and now the two of them were here, at what Barrett kept calling Lombard’s house.“Sir,” Barrett called as he stepped inside — and that, too, was something Toby found herself turning over: that this enormous man knew Lombard’s home well enough to walk into it freely, panel codes and all.“I’m in the bedroom,” Lombard called back, his voice still laced thick with sleep.“I’ve got company. Toby, of the C&R Consortium, and her uncle. You want me to bring them in?”“No, silly. I’ll come out.” A groan, the sound of a man leaving a bed he’d only j
Chapter 307
Back in the car, the rest of the Belmont family had just gotten a clear look at the other man climbing out of Barrett’s vehicle behind Toby — and their blood turned to water.They recognized him immediately. The heir of the C&R Consortium. The same man Riley had tried to lock up and, in a fit of her own temper, tried to kill some days ago — the man she’d assumed was still safely contained, without ever confirming it. And the moment he clocked that Riley was standing free in the open air, casually threatening a member of the Cataract team, it was going to become a disaster for all of them.Riley, of course, had absolutely no idea of any of this. She was still at the gate, still building her charge, still operating under the belief that this was a morning about Mireya and an apology and a doorbell.The C&R heir stepped fully out of the car, saw Riley, and stopped short — genuinely shocked. Wasn’t this the same person who was supposed to be locked away? Who had, in his own home, come at
Chapter 306
It was only five in the morning, but not a single member of the Belmont family had slept a wink.The first problem was that they’d spent half the night trying to pin down Lombard’s location. The other half had gone to drilling Mireya on exactly what she would say — because it was decided now that nearly the whole family would be going with her to deliver the apology.But the biggest problem was the tracking itself. All those hours spent trying to fix Lombard’s position on a screen, and they simply could not hold it. It was the first time any of them had encountered a person who could be somewhere one minute and, the next, be gone off the map entirely — as if he stepped out of the world between refreshes. And there was no point going after a man you couldn’t find. If they couldn’t figure out where he was, there was no operation to run.Then, thirty minutes ago, a new location surfaced. And it had held — no movement for the better part of an hour.Which told them everything they needed.
Chapter 305
“Get my phone. Find out who those bastards are,” Lombard snapped under his breath, threading the car through a corner that had not been designed for this speed.Drake grabbed the phone, took pictures out the back window between bursts, and fired them off to the number Lombard barked at him. In less than two seconds, a name came back in the chat.Drake’s eyes widened.“Who the fuck is it?” Lombard demanded, zigzagging through another sharp turn.“Hearse,” Drake read out. “It says — it’s Hearse.”Lombard slowly brought the car to a halt.“Why the fuck did you stop?!” Drake exploded. “Continue driving!”“He just announced his presence to us,” Lombard said, almost thoughtful. “It’s the dance you do before you take your prey. You have to make a show of it first.”“This is no time for poetic talks!” Drake snapped, trying to shake the man out of whatever trance he’d dropped into.And at the corner of his eye, he watched it happen: the car that had been raining bullets simply drove past them.
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