Page 75 of Brutal Reign

“No reason. Can’t a man be happy?”

“Not you,” she says, side-eyeing me suspiciously.

It’s been two nights since Hope let me fuck her with my gun. She’s been avoiding me since then by eating dinner earlier with Kin and staying in her room all night, but I know it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. I’ve noticed the way she looks at me when she thinks I’m not watching, like she’s fighting a war with herself and losing.

Dinara side-eyes me but keeps clacking away at the keyboard in front of her. Her workspace is a tech genius’s wet dream: six curved monitors forming a semicircle around her chair, each streaming data, code, and security feeds. Towers of custom-built PCs hum beneath the desk, their LED strips pulsing in sync. Cables snake everywhere, linking servers, backup drives, and what looks like enough computing power to hack into the Pentagon. Empty energy drink cans are stacked like a caffeinated fortress around her setup.

I grab one of her drinks and take a long swig. “God, how do you drink this shit? Ever heard of coffee?”

She frowns and swipes the can back from me. “Very funny. And leave my drinks alone. It’s how I stay up all night working on this stuff. And you’re lucky I do because I’ve found something juicy.”

My eyebrows rise. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”

Dinara spins back to her screens, cracking her knuckles. “After you asked me to dig deeper, I decided to look into everyone and everything in Hope’s orbit.” Her eyes flicker to mine. “It’s big. You might want to brace yourself.”

I slide into the chair beside her as she taps one of the screens filled with legal paperwork.

“What the hell am I looking at?”

“Hope’s trust fund. Lai King left her two hundred million US dollars.”

I whistle low and scan the documents. My eyebrows press together as one detail jumps out—she could only access the money after she turned twenty-five. Which she just did.

Dinara taps a few more keys and brings up a series of encrypted messages. “This is communication between Hope and Chen Wei, her father’s personal attorney and the man administering the trust. He’s like an uncle to her. She confided in him, trusted him.”

I frown. “Has the trust been transferred to her yet?”

“No. Apparently, there was some delay with the bank and she wasn’t able to get the money before her wedding to Simon.” The wedding that never happened because of me. Dinara leans back in her chair, arms crossed. “Simon didn’t know about her inheritance, and she didn’t want him to know.”

She pulls up a series of the messages between Hope and Chen, dated before her wedding.

My eyes scan the screen, catching phrases that make my jaw clench.

He threatened me. I had no choice..

I can’t go through with marrying him. He frightens me. I want no part of the Black Company or this world.

Please, I’m begging you. When can I get the money? I want to escape before the ceremony.

In another message, Hope describes how Simon monitors her movements, checks her phone, and isolates her.

He says it’s for my protection, but I feel like a prisoner.

Hope’s desperation makes my gut twist. My hands ache to wrap around Simon’s throat.

Dinara shakes her head. “Her plan was to get the money and disappear to New Zealand with Kin, somewhere she’d never be found by the Black Company and, no offense, by the Syndicate.”

I rake a hand through my hair. “I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“Because there is.” Dinara’s tone darkens. “Chen kept telling her there were procedural delays, documents that needed verification, and bank hold-ups. Said the money would be available right after the wedding, knowing full well that once married, her husband would have legal rights to her assets under marital law.”

A muscle in my jaw tenses. “That sounds very fucking suspicious.”

Dinara’s fingers dance across the keyboard, opening new windows. “I thought so too. So I started pulling at threads. The interesting thing is that, right around the time Hope started messaging him, Chen set up multiple offshore accounts under shell corporations. The kind of accounts people use to hide massive payouts.”

My blood runs cold as the implications sink in. “You think Chen’s working with Simon?”

“It makes sense.” She points to the trust fund documents. “Because if Hope had done her own research instead of trusting Chen, she would’ve discovered the timing was everything. Chen made sure she’d only get access after the wedding, when it would be too late. But if she got her hands on the money before the wedding…”