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Page 43 of One Night in Glasgow (The Scottish Billionaires #15)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SEAN

The days after our reconciliation was a fragile truce with the world.

Beth had left my hotel early to get ready for work, leaving behind the ghost of her scent on my pillows and a renewed, if cautious, sense of hope in my chest. We were back on the same page, a united front.

But as I sat at the small desk in my suite, a black coffee growing cold beside me, my mind wasn’t on our passionate reunion.

It was on the game board Beth had unknowingly laid out for me.

She’d been so proud, so relieved. After her disastrous and humiliating confrontation with Tyler Mathews, and then her tense showdown with Kyra, the picture on the social media site, Ms. Henderson hadn’t fired her.

Instead, she’d been given a real assignment, a promotion of sorts.

Beth saw it as a victory, a sign that her assertiveness had been rewarded, that she was finally being taken seriously.

She believed she had handled Garrett, put him in his professional place, and that her new role was the result .

I saw something entirely different.

I’m a student of human behavior. My entire career is built on understanding motivations, on seeing the patterns people fall into.

And what Beth described wasn’t a victory; it was a strategic masterclass in manipulation, and she was the pawn.

I leaned back in my chair, the pieces clicking into place with a chilling clarity.

Garrett, the charming office predator, had tried the direct approach and failed.

He’d hit on her, and she’d shut him down.

He’d tried to dangle a shortcut to a better position, but he got caught lying. So, he’d pivoted.

He couldn’t control her with simple charm, so his only option was still to control her with her own ambition.

First of all, he had to make sure she wasn’t fired.

I believe when Ms. Henderson had spoken to Garrett for his side of the story, Garrett spun everything in Beth’s favor, to assure Ms. Henderson kept Beth on the foundation.

She would lose her visa otherwise, and go back to Scotland.

He also persuaded Ms. Henderson to offer Beth a promotion.

No, it wasn’t a promotion, a leash. By securing her with a “real” project, he could “accidentally” let it slip into a conversation, that he was the one putting in a good word for her.

Garrett was positioning himself as her sole benefactor.

Every bit of progress she made would feel like a gift from him, putting her further in his debt.

The anonymous flowers and chocolates weren’t just creepy gestures from a secret admirer; they were the opening moves in a campaign of psychological warfare, designed to unsettle her and make her question who she could trust.

And it was working. She thought she had outplayed him.

In reality, she had just been moved to a different square on his board.

My gut screamed that this guy was dangerous, not just because he was a creep, but because he was intelligent.

Patient. He was playing the long game, and Beth, in her eagerness to prove herself, was walking right into his trap.

I thought of Olivia, of how she too had been manipulated and isolated by people she thought she could handle, and a cold dread washed through me.

I couldn’t just stand by and watch history repeat itself.

I couldn’t just warn Beth, either; I didn’t have a smoking gun yet, and she was proud, determined to handle this herself.

Telling her she was being played would sound just like her parents telling her she was incapable.

It would push her right back into his orbit.

No. I couldn’t be the voice of warning. I needed to be the source of facts. I needed irrefutable proof of who and what Garrett Reeves really was.

I pulled out my phone and dialed the one person I knew could get that proof.

Fury answered on the first ring. “You hit that wall sooner than I thought. What’s the situation?”

“I found her,” I said, getting straight to the point. “She’s safe, but there’s a problem. A big one. A guy named Garrett Reeves at the foundation where she’s working.”

I laid it all out for him, keeping it as objective as I could.

I told him about the anonymous gifts, the overly familiar behavior, and the way Garrett seemed to be isolating Beth professionally while pretending to be her champion.

“She thinks she’s handled him,” I explained, “but I recognize the pattern. It’s a classic manipulation, and I’m worried about where it’s heading.

This guy is a snake, and I have a feeling he’s the one who leaked that photo from the gala. ”

“A snake in the non-profit world,” Fury mused, a dangerous edge to his voice. “My favorite kind. Let me get this straight. This prick is circling a woman you’re with and making her feel unsafe? ”

“That’s the long and short of it,” I confirmed.

“Not acceptable,” Fury stated, his voice now cold as ice. “Family protects each other. Period. What do you need?”

“I need to know who he is,” I said. “Everything. His history at that foundation, any complaints, his financial situation. And if he has a connection to Kyra, the gala committee head. Most importantly, I need to know if he has any ties to the tabloids, if he was the source of that leak.”

I paused. “And Fury? It has to be completely discreet. Beth can never know I made this call.”

“Consider it done,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.

“I have people for this. They’re ghosts.

Garrett Reeves won’t even know he’s being looked at until it’s too late.

I’ll handle it personally.” The confidence in his voice was absolute, a powerful reassurance.

“I’ll have a preliminary dossier for you within forty-eight hours. ”

The knot of tension in my shoulders finally began to ease. I'd been trying to carry this weight myself, but bringing Fury in meant I was no longer on defense. We were finally going on the attack. It changed everything.

“Thanks, man,” I said, my voice thick with gratitude. “I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me a damn thing,” he said, the protective fire in his voice unmistakable. “This is what we do. You just focus on Beth. Keep her safe. I’ll handle the snake.”

After ending the call with Fury, I felt a sliver of control return.

The hunt for information was on, handled by someone I trusted implicitly.

But as I sat staring at my laptop, I saw that another front in this war demanded my attention.

An email had come through from my legal team with the subject line: “Official Termination Notice: Audiobook Contract.”

My jaw clenched. Danny had warned me, but seeing the cold, corporate language laying out the “breach of the morality clause” felt like a fresh insult.

It wasn’t just about the money, though it was a significant, multi-year contract.

It was about the principle. They were using a vague, subjective clause to drop me because a series of tabloid-fueled scandals had made their risk management department nervous.

They were punishing me for the crime of having a complicated, public-facing life.

The old Sean, the one from a few weeks ago, might have let Danny handle it, might have accepted it as the cost of doing business, the price of the chaos that came with Beth.

But I wasn’t that man anymore. My fight to protect Beth, to untangle the web Garrett was weaving, had ignited something else in me: a refusal to be passively managed or defined by others.

If I was going to fight for her integrity, I sure as hell was going to fight for my own.

I pulled up the contract on my laptop, my eyes scanning the dense legal jargon of the morality clause.

It was intentionally ambiguous, designed to give the publisher an out for almost any reason.

“…actions that may bring the author or the publisher into public disrepute, contempt, or ridicule…” It was a coward’s clause, a way to justify a purely financial decision based on PR optics.

I picked up the phone and dialed my lawyer in California, a sharp, take-no-prisoners lawyer named Marcus Thorne.

“Sean,” he answered, his voice already weary. “I read the termination notice. Danny filled me in. It’s a tough one. That morality clause is a bitch.”

“It’s also bullshit, and you know it,” I said, my tone leaving no room for argument. “This isn’t about morality; it’s about brand anxiety. I want to fight it, Marcus. I want to appeal the termination. ”

I could almost hear him sigh through the phone. “Sean, that’s a long, expensive, and very public battle. Are you sure you want to open that can of worms right now? Their pockets are deeper than yours.”

“I’m sure,” I said, my voice cold and hard.

“Here’s the angle. First, this isn’t a criminal matter.

This is my private life being sensationalized by tabloids.

There’s a strong argument to be made that this doesn’t meet the legal threshold for ‘public disrepute.’ Second, I want you to start compiling a list of every other author, actor, and public figure they have under contract who has had a public affair, a messy divorce, or a DUI in the last five years.

I want to see how this ‘morality clause’ has been applied to them.

My guess? It hasn’t. This is a selective application of a vague clause, and it stinks of a double standard. ”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, and then I heard a low chuckle. It was the sound of a lawyer smelling blood in the water.

“A selective application argument,” Marcus said, a new energy in his voice. “I like it. It’s aggressive. It’s risky. They’ll try to drag every skeleton out of your closet.”

“Let them try,” I said. “My life is already all over the internet. What more can they find?” I thought of Beth, of the vicious headlines aimed at her.

“And Marcus? I want to make it clear in our initial appeal that the nature of the press coverage has been egregiously biased and misogynistic, specifically targeting Ms. MacLeod. I want to put them on the defensive for aligning their brand with that kind of gutter journalism.”

“Now you’re playing hardball,” Marcus said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. “Okay, Sean. You want to fight, we’ll fight. I’ll start drafting the appeal and have my team begin the discovery process on their other talent contracts. This is going to get ugly.”

“I know,” I said. “Let’s give them a war.”

I hung up the phone, a grim satisfaction settling over me. The path forward was a minefield, but it was a war I had no intention of losing.