Page 33 of Forbidden Billionaire (Titans #7)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Xavier

The boardroom smells of stale coffee and desperation, the air thick with the weight of a deal gone sour. The Lockhart acquisition—my albatross—hangs over us like a guillotine.

The forensic accountant, a wiry man named Kessler with glasses that keep sliding down his nose, stands at the head of the table, his laptop casting a cold glow across the polished mahogany.

Walt sits to my right, his jaw tight, fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the armrest. The rest of the board fidgets, their eyes darting between Kessler’s screen and me, waiting for the axe to fall.

I insisted Walt be here. He needs to see this, to feel the sting of his own missteps.

He’s not a bad man—just a stubborn one, hell-bent on inflating the family legacy, even if it means bulldozing reason.

His loyalty to Blackwell Enterprises is ironclad, but his judgment?

That’s been clouded by ambition, and I’m not innocent of the same sin.

Kessler clears his throat, pushing his glasses up. “The financials are worse than we anticipated.” His voice is clipped, precise, like he’s dissecting a corpse. “Lockhart’s cash flow issues weren’t just overstated assets or vendor deferrals. We’ve uncovered deliberate misdirection.”

My gut twists, but I keep my face stone-cold.

Seraphina’s voice echoes in my head, her warning from that Saturday morning when she’d sat across from me, her eyes bruised with exhaustion but fierce with conviction.

“The numbers don’t add up, Xavier.” I should’ve listened.

Instead I let Walt and Reynolds blind me, let my pride and paranoia torch the one person who’d been trying to save me.

“Go on.” My voice is dangerous with the need to make someone pay.

Kessler clicks to a new slide, a spreadsheet dense with red flags. “We traced a series of payments—disguised as consulting fees—totaling over two million dollars. They were funneled through a shell company in the Caymans to an account linked to Elliot Reynolds.”

The room goes still, the silence so heavy it could crush bone. Walt’s fingers freeze mid-drum, his face paling. “Reynolds?” He gasps, disbelief warring with dread.

Kessler nods. “The payments started fifteen months ago, coinciding with the initial Lockhart negotiations. The shell company, Triton Ventures, is a front. We’ve got bank records, wire confirmations, and emails between Reynolds and an unlisted contact at Lockhart.

He was inflating their financials to push the deal through. ”

I lean forward, my knuckles white against the table.

“As you suspected, Mr. Blackwell, the due diligence reports Reynolds submitted were…curated. They omitted key liabilities and overstated asset performance. The board relied on his analysis.”

Walt’s face reddens, a vein pulsing at his temple. “You’re saying we were fed lies?”

“You were fed what Reynolds wanted you to see.” Kessler nods. “And he was well compensated for it.”

The room erupts in murmurs, board members shifting uncomfortably, their confidence in the deal crumbling like ash. My mind flashes to Seraphina, her meticulous spreadsheets, her voice steady as she laid out the truth.

She’d seen it, called it, and I’d thrown her out like garbage.

Walt turns to me, his eyes wild. “I pushed for this deal, Xavier. I thought—” He stops, swallowing hard, his hands balling into fists. “I thought Reynolds was solid. I thought he was protecting the company.”

“You thought wrong.” My words are snapped. I’m wrong to direct my anger solely at him. I am even more at fault than he is.

Walt flinches, and I see the guilt carve lines into his face. He’s not a villain, just a man who bet on the wrong horse, and now we’re all paying the price.

Kessler flips to another slide, this one a timeline of Reynolds’s transactions. “He’s gone. Left for Mexico, as Ms. Fallon’s company reported. You’ll want to work with your legal department to freeze what assets you can, but he’s likely untouchable.”

The board’s murmurs grow louder, a mix of panic and outrage.

I don’t care about their noise. My mind is spinning, replaying every moment I failed her.

Her trembling lips, her broken plea— “You have to believe me.” I didn’t.

I let Walt’s suspicions and Reynolds’s lies cloud my judgment, let them tear her from me.

Walt scrubs a hand down his face, his voice haunted.

“I fucked up, Xavier. I should’ve listened to her.

To you.” His eyes meet mine, heavy with regret.

“I was so sure she was the leak, the traitor. I saw those emails, the report, and I—” He shakes his head, the weight of his mistake crushing him.

“I wanted to protect the family name. Instead I helped sink us.”

I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say.

His self-flagellation mirrors my own, a bitter echo of the guilt gnawing at my chest. We’re both complicit, both architects of this disaster.

But Seraphina’s face—her fierce defiance—burns behind my lids, a constant reminder of what I’ve carelessly discarded.

The meeting drags on, Kessler outlining the next steps: legal action, financial restructuring, damage control. The board scrambles to salvage what’s left, but I’m barely listening.

My empire’s bleeding, but all I can think of is her. Her soft gasps, the way she’d look at me like I could be more than the predator king. The way she’d believed in me.

When the room finally clears, I’m alone with the wreckage. The skyline glitters through the glass, mocking me with its indifference. I sink into my chair, the weight of my mistakes heavier than the city itself.

My mind spins back to that night at the Braes, after my discussion with Cullen Cresthaven.

Lane Marchand had slid onto the barstool to let me know he was sniffing around the Lockhart deal, and he’d mentioned Seraphina. “Smart hire. Quiet. Clever. Loyal, from everything I’ve heard.”

His words were a taunt, but I was too furious with hearing her name come out of his mouth; I hadn’t registered what he said.

He knew his recruiter had reached out—and that she’d turned down the request for an interview.

I snatch up my phone and dial IT, my voice a growl. “Get Desai up here. Now.”

Fifteen minutes later, Raj Desai, head of IT, stands in my office, his tie slightly askew, his expression wary. “You wanted to see me, Mr. Blackwell?”

“The emails. The ones from Seraphina to Marchand and that recruiter. I need you to dig into them.”

He shifts, uneasy. “We’ve already?—”

“Do it again,” I snap. “She was always having issues with her password. Kept getting locked out. Why?”

Desai hesitates, then pulls out his tablet, tapping quickly. “Her account was flagged for unusual activity multiple times. We reset her password a couple of times recently. I thought it was user error, but…” He trails off, his fingers flying over the screen. “There’s something here.”

My pulse spikes. “What?”

He turns the tablet toward me, pointing to a log of email activity.

“The emails to Marchand and the recruiter? Sure, they were sent from her account—but look at the headers.” He zooms in, highlighting a string of metadata.

“The IP address doesn’t match our network.

They were sent from an external server, spoofed to look like her work email.

And the reply to the recruiter, saying she wanted the interview?

It’s in her Trash folder, marked as undeliverable. ”

I lean forward, my heart pounding. “Undeliverable?”

“Yeah. The email address she supposedly replied to—Alyssa Monroe’s—has a tiny discrepancy. A period in the domain name that shouldn’t be there. It bounced back. She never sent it. Someone else did.”

My blood runs cold. “And the email to Marchand?”

“Same deal. Spoofed. Sent from an external server, not her machine. Whoever did this knew her account was vulnerable—probably because of the password resets. They hacked her, sent the emails, and made it look like she was colluding.”

I grip the edge of my desk, the wood biting into my palms. “Reynolds.”

Desai nods, his face grim. “He had access to the email system. Not impossible that he could’ve pulled it off without leaving a trail. Especially if someone told him how to do it.”

The pieces snap into place, a brutal mosaic of betrayal—not hers, but mine. She’d been set up, framed to look like the traitor, and I’d swallowed it whole. Walt’s paranoia, Reynolds’s lies, my own fucking ego—they’d built a cage around her, and I’d locked the door.

“How the fuck did I miss this?” My voice is a low growl, more to myself than Desai.

He shifts uncomfortably. “It was sophisticated. Hidden in plain sight. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”

I wave him out, my mind reeling. The door clicks shut, and I’m alone again, the silence suffocating. I see her face—pale, shattered, her voice breaking as she begged me to believe her. “I sent the truth.” She had. She’d always been the truth, the only one in this snake pit who’d never lied to me.

And I’d thrown her away.

My chest aches, an exposed, painful wound. I’d let my pride, my fear, my need to control everything blind me to her loyalty. To her love. Because that’s what it was—love. The way she’d looked at me, fought for me, given herself to me. And I’d repaid her with betrayal.

I stand, pacing the office, the skyline blurring through the glass.

I have to fix this. I have to find her. But how?

She’s gone. According to Celeste, her apartment is empty.

Tasha, the property acquisitions expert, notified us that we can cancel the lease if we’d like.

There’d be a penalty, but it’s less expensive than having it sit there vacant.

Seraphina’s out there, jobless, wounded, because of me.

Blackwell is crumbling, but it’s nothing compared to the ruin in my chest. I need her back—not just as my assistant, not just as my lover, but as my everything. My wife, my partner, my truth.

But first, I have to beg for her forgiveness. And I have no fucking idea where to start or what to do