The Trillionaire Driver.

Chapter 3 – The Name That Doesn’t Exist

Deborah’s phone buzzed the moment Chris stepped out of sight, Her hands were still trembling when she answered.

“Ms. Lewis,” said her father’s assistant, voice tight. “There’s something you need to know.”

“About what?”

“About the account irregularities you mentioned last week. We ran an internal audit, one of the shell companies your uncle used traces back to an entity named Alphonso Holdings.”

Deborah’s blood ran cold. “That can’t be right.”

“It’s listed in multiple government registries, but here’s the strange part, no director, no shareholders, no public data. Just the name.”

She swallowed. “Send me everything.”

“Already did. But, Ms. Lewis… your father said to stay out of it. He sounded serious.”

The call ended, She opened her laptop on the café table, ignoring the waiter clearing nearby dishes. The email was there, attachments, encrypted PDFs, layers of corporate paperwork. She scrolled through fast.

Then she stopped, A photo buried in the files, security footage from a closed-door finance meeting three months ago. The man at the head of the table was blurred by the camera’s glare. But even blurred, she recognized the posture. The stillness.

Chris, Her pulse spiked. “No way.”

She looked out the window, half-expecting him to still be standing there. He was gone.

She pushed out of the café and called her driver. Nothing. The car that brought her was gone too.

A text pinged, Unknown Number: You shouldn’t dig too deep. Some truths have shareholders.

Her stomach turned. “What the hell…”

She typed back fast, Who is this?, No reply.

She stood on the sidewalk, heart hammering, realizing something, if Chris really was who her father feared, he’d just let her see enough to make her chase him, and she hated that it was working.

Later that evening, Her apartment was dark except for the glow of her laptop. She’d spent hours trying to trace the name Alphonso Holdings, every route dead-ended, government firewalls, blank registries, erased data.

At 11:42 p.m., the screen flickered. A chat box appeared, no prompt, no login. Just a message.

Chris A: Still awake?, Her fingers froze. “What, how did you”

If you’re going to investigate me, at least use a secure network, She typed furiously, What do you want from me?

The reply came fast, I told you, breakfast.

She stared, breath shallow, stop joking. Who are you really?, a pause, then, Someone who just protected your father’s company from collapsing, what?. Your uncle tried to move 200 million through an offshore account tonight. It’s frozen now,

How could you possibly know that?, because I froze it. She slammed the laptop shut, the sound echoing through her quiet apartment, Her phone buzzed again, a final text.

You wanted the truth, Deborah. Now it’s watching you back.

Deborah didn’t sleep that night. Every creak in the apartment sounded like a whisper from her laptop. She lay still until dawn began to wash the city in grey, By 6:00 a.m., she’d already made up her mind.

If Chris Alphonso thought he could play her, he was wrong, she slipped on a dark trench coat, tied her hair back, and called in a favor, Her friend Nadia, an investigative journalist with a flair for digital espionage, picked up on the second ring.

“You’re up early,” Nadia said, voice raspy from sleep.

“I need a trace on someone.”

“Name?”

“Chris Alphonso.”

A pause. “Spell that.”

Deborah did, Nadia whistled low. “That’s a ghost file.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it exists, but it doesn’t. You get what I’m saying? There’s a name, a network, even a private equity shell, but every government log that mentions it’s been manually redacted.”

“Redacted by who?”

“By someone who outranks the people who do the redacting.”

Deborah felt her pulse thrum. “So he’s powerful?”

“Powerful? Honey, whoever he is, he’s either government-level clearance or something scarier.”

Deborah glanced out the window, down at the street below, where a familiar dark sedan idled across from her building.

“I need to find out where he goes,” she said.

“Careful,” Nadia warned. “If he’s the kind of man who deletes his own name, he won’t appreciate being followed.”

“That’s the point.”

7:12 a.m. – The Tail Begins :

The sedan pulled away. Deborah followed a minute later in her own car, keeping two blocks behind.

Chris’s car didn’t take the usual route to any of his supposed “companies.” Instead, it weaved through the financial district, then slipped into a private tunnel leading toward the old part of the city, where corporate towers gave way to historical estates.

“Where the hell are you going?” she whispered.

He stopped in front of an unmarked gate, Security guards stepped aside without a word. No IDs, no scanners, They knew him.

Deborah parked a block away and watched from behind tinted glass. Chris walked through the gates, surrounded by silence and precision.

A black drone buzzed faintly overhead, scanning the area. She ducked instinctively, When she looked up again, the gates were closed. She grabbed her phone, hit record, zoomed in—and froze.

A crest gleamed faintly on the iron gate, a stylized A intersecting a geometric crown. The same symbol from the Alphonso Holdings documents.

Her heart pounded. “Got you.”

She hit send, forwarding the clip to Nadia, but before she could start the engine, her phone buzzed. Unknown Number: You’re early today.

Her grip tightened around the phone, Chris? Tail me again, and you’ll learn things even I can’t protect you from.

Her breath caught. She looked up, nothing but the empty street, and then, faintly, from her rearview mirror, his reflection, standing half a block behind her car, expression unreadable. He lifted his coffee cup, as if in a toast, She blinked, and he was gone.