Page 45 of One Night in Glasgow (The Scottish Billionaires #15)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

SEAN

The line of readers snaked through the aisles of the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, a humbling and gratifying sight.

I was in my element, in my public persona: Sean McCrae, the man with the answers, the guy who could help you unlock your best self.

I smiled, I signed, I offered words of encouragement.

It was a well-oiled machine, an easy performance.

But underneath the practiced charm, my mind was a churning mess of strategy and anxiety, every thought a homing missile pointed directly at Beth.

Danny was managing the line, a perfect mix of hype-man and friendly bouncer. “Alright, folks, just one book per person for personalization, but Mr. McCrae is happy to sign any others you have!” he announced, his voice booming with practiced enthusiasm.

I was signing a copy of The Architect of You for a young woman with bright, hopeful eyes when my phone, tucked screen-down on the table beside me, buzzed with a specific, discreet vibration I’d set just for this call. My heart gave a hard kick against my ribs. Fury!

I finished my signature with a flourish, handed the book back to the woman with a smile that felt a million miles away, and looked up at Danny.

“Hey, man,” I said, keeping my voice low as the next person stepped up. “I need five. My bladder is staging a rebellion.”

Danny, ever the pro, didn’t miss a beat.

“Folks, Mr. McCrae is going to take a brief five-minute break to stay hydrated! He’ll be right back to sign more books.

Feel free to browse the store!” He gave me a subtle nod, and I escaped through a side door into a back-of-house hallway that smelled of old paper and dust. I found an empty stockroom, closed the door, and answered the secure call.

“Talk to me,” I said, my voice all business.

“The dossier is ready,” Fury’s voice came through the line, sharp and devoid of any of his usual swagger. This was business. “It’s being encrypted and can be sent to your secure email as we speak. But I’ll give you the highlights now.”

“I’m listening.”

“My executive assistant, Jules, did a workup on Garrett Reeves’s professional history. He’s clean on paper. Good reviews, steady promotions. A rising star in the non-profit development world. No official complaints filed against him at Hillsdale or his previous two jobs. The guy is careful.”

A knot of frustration tightened in my gut. “So, nothing.”

“I didn’t say that,” Fury corrected, a dangerous calm in his tone. “I said he was clean on paper. My tech guy, Gianni, who’s more a magician than a hacker, took a different approach. He didn’t look at HR files; he looked at his life. ”

I leaned against a stack of boxes, my entire body tense with anticipation. “And?”

“And he found the motherlode,” Fury said.

“Gianni peeled back his digital life like an onion. Financials first. Found a recurring pattern of payments to a private account belonging to one Kyra Monroe, the gala committee head. Not just any payments. Payments that perfectly correspond with hotel bookings and first-class air travel receipts from his expense reports over the past two years. The trips he took ‘alone’ to Miami, to Chicago, to a cozy little ‘donor retreat’ in the Hamptons? Kyra was always in the same city, at the same time.”

My knuckles were white where I gripped my phone. “So they’re having an affair.” It wasn’t a question.

“A two-year affair, to be precise. Gianni got into their old email server. Found a treasure trove of… correspondence. Explicit doesn’t even begin to cover it.

These two weren’t just screwing; they were running the gala committee like their own personal slush fund, using foundation money for their romantic getaways. ”

The sheer audacity of it was breathtaking. But the next part was what I was really waiting for.

“And the balcony photo?” I asked, my voice low.

“That,” Fury said, and I could hear the grim satisfaction in his voice, “was the smoking gun. Gianni traced the digital source of the anonymous tip sent to the tabloid. It came from a burner email account, but the account was confirmed from a Gmail account. An account that was created from the same IP address as Kyra’s.

And the photo itself? The metadata shows it was taken on an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The same model Kyra registered with the foundation’s IT department. She sent it herself.”

The confirmation was a cold, hard stone in my gut. I had known it, felt it, but having the proof was something else entirely.

“Gianni also pulled deleted text messages from her cloud backup from that night,” Fury continued, his voice relentless.

“There’s a whole string between her and Garrett after the photo was leaked.

She’s panicking, accusing him of being obsessed with the ‘new girl.’ He’s trying to calm her down, telling her it was a calculated move to get you, Sean, out of the picture by making Beth look bad. ”

It was all there. A tangled, ugly web of jealousy, lies, and manipulation.

Kyra, feeling Garrett pull away towards Beth, had tried to sabotage her, to paint her as a home wrecker and get her fired.

And Garrett, the master manipulator, had tried to spin it as a “calculated move” to his angry, jealous lover.

“The full dossier is over 30 pages,” Fury said. “Emails, texts, financial records, photos. It’s a complete thermonuclear device. You now have everything you need to not just expose them, but to utterly destroy them, professionally and personally.”

“Thank you, Fury,” I said, my voice thick with a gratitude that went beyond words. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he replied, and I could hear the hard edge of family loyalty in his voice.

“This prick targeted someone who is with one of us. He made a stupid, stupid mistake. You just decide how you want to use this information to protect Beth. You call the shots. Let me know what you need from me.”

We ended the call, and I stood in the dusty silence of the stockroom, the weight of the information settling over me. I had the truth. I had the ammunition. Now I had to figure out how to use it without causing another explosion in Beth’s already fragile world.

That evening, I stood outside a sleek, ridiculously exclusive-looking restaurant in SoHo, my tie feeling unusually tight. Fury had insisted on dinner, and he’d been adamant: “Bring Beth. It’s time we meet the woman who has you tying your life into knots. Sienna is dying of curiosity.”

I was nervous. Not just for me, but for Beth. Meeting any family can be daunting; meeting the McCrae-Carideo-Gracen clan was like being introduced to a pack of charming, fiercely loyal, and incredibly perceptive wolves. And Fury and Sienna were the alphas.

Beth, however, looked breathtaking. She wore a simple, elegant black dress that clung to her curves, her fiery hair piled on top of her head in a messy, sophisticated knot. She looked nervous too, her hand clutching mine tightly as we walked inside.

“What if they hate me?” she whispered as the ma?tre d’ led us towards a secluded corner booth.

“They won’t,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Just be yourself, and they’ll love you.”

Fury was already there, rising as we approached.

He looked exactly the same as always: like someone just stepping off the cover of a magazine without even trying, carrying himself with that easy, unshakable confidence that practically entered a room before he did.

He greeted me with a firm, brotherly hug before turning his intense, dark brown eyes on Beth.

“And… you must be Beth,” he said, his voice a smooth, charming baritone.

He took her hand, but instead of shaking it, he brought it to his lips, a move that was so old-school gallant it could have been cheesy, but on him, it just worked.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet the woman who managed to get my cousin to abandon all logic and fly across the country. ”

I saw a faint blush rise on Beth’s cheeks, but she didn’t miss a beat. “Well,” she said, her Scottish lilt full of wry humor as she gracefully retrieved her hand, “I hear it doesn’t take much to get a McCrae, or Gracen man to abandon logic.”

A slow, appreciative grin spread across Fury’s face. He shot me a look over Beth’s head that clearly said, “Okay, I get it now.”

“This is my wife, Sienna,” Fury said to Beth, gesturing to the woman beside him.

I’d met Sienna before, of course, but tonight, she was…

radiant. Luminous. Her emerald-green eyes, sharp and intelligent as ever, sparkled.

She wore a daring, emerald-green silk top that draped elegantly over her frame.

And as she stood to greet us, I noticed the subtle, unmistakable curve of her belly.

“Sienna,” I said, my voice filled with a surprise and joy that was completely genuine. “You’re… wow. Congratulations.”

She smiled, a brilliant, confident smile, and placed a hand on her stomach. “We were going to wait to tell the whole family, but you’ve got a good eye, Sean.”

Fury’s chest puffed out with a pride that was almost comical. “I’m going to be a dad,” he said, as if announcing he’d just discovered a new continent.

Beth looked from me to them, her own surprise evident. “Oh my goodness, congratulations to you both! That’s wonderful news.”

Sienna’s gaze settled on Beth, and I saw that sharp, perceptive intelligence at work. It was an assessment, a sizing up. “So,” Sienna said, her voice a low, husky purr as we all sat down. “You’re the one causing all this trouble. ”

It wasn’t an accusation; it was a statement of fact, a challenge.

Beth met her gaze without flinching. “I seem to have a talent for it,” she replied, a hint of her own fire in her eyes. “But I’m told the company I keep has been a contributing factor.”

Sienna laughed, a rich, throaty sound. “I like her,” she announced to Fury, who just grinned.

The tension in the booth dissipated, replaced by an easy, flowing conversation. Fury slid a heavy manila envelope across the table towards me. “The dossier,” he said quietly. “Everything we talked about.”

I took it, the weight of it feeling significant in my hands. Beth’s eyes flickered from the envelope to my face, a question in them.

“It’s the full background report on Garrett and Kyra,” I explained to her softly. “We have everything, Beth. Proof of their affair, of them embezzling from the foundation. And definitive proof that Kyra was the one who leaked the photo of you and Garrett to the press.”

I watched as a wave of emotions washed over her face: shock, validation, and then a quiet, simmering anger.

“That bitch,” she whispered, her voice shaking slightly.

“She’s more than that,” Sienna interjected, leaning forward. “She’s sloppy. And she’s desperate. That makes her predictable. You now have all the power, Beth. The question is, what are you going to do with it?”

Sienna’s directness was startling, but I saw Beth straighten up, her own resolve hardening. “I’m not sure yet,” Beth said, her voice stronger now. “But I’m not going to be their victim. Not anymore. ”

Sienna nodded, a look of respect in her emerald eyes. “Good.”

The rest of dinner was a masterclass in the McCrae-Gracen family dynamic.

Fury and I fell into our old rhythm, a mix of brotherly insults and genuine affection.

Sienna and Beth were two sides of the same coin: fiercely independent, intelligent women who had learned to navigate a world that often tried to underestimate them.

I watched Beth hold her own, her wit sharp, her humor dry, and I felt an intense pride.

As we left the restaurant, Fury pulled me aside while Sienna and Beth walked ahead, their voices a low, conspiratorial murmur in the cool night air.

“She’s a fighter,” Fury said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I totally get why you did it.” He fixed me with a serious look. “Just don’t fuck it up, Sean. She’s been through enough. She deserves a guy who will have her back, no matter what.”

“I know,” I said, my gaze finding Beth as she laughed at something Sienna had said. “That’s the plan.”

I caught up to them just as they paused under a streetlight. Sienna had linked her arm through Beth’s, and they were laughing, heads close together like old friends sharing a secret.

"So, when Fury finally told me he was bringing you to dinner," Sienna was saying, her emerald eyes sparkling with warmth, "I admit I was skeptical. Any woman who could get Sean to throw his entire life into chaos had to be either a saint or a spectacular kind of trouble."

Beth smiled, a genuine, unguarded expression that made my chest ache. "I'm still not sure which one I am," she admitted.

"Oh, I am," Sienna said, giving Beth's arm a gentle squeeze. "You're one of us." Her expression turned sincere, her voice dropping slightly. "Welcome to the family, Beth. It's loud and it's complicated, but we have each other's backs. Always."

I watched as Beth’s eyes welled up with a film of tears, but this time, they weren't tears of pain or frustration. They were tears of relief. The look on her face was one of someone who had been wandering in the cold and had finally been invited inside to the fire.

I came to her side and took her free hand, lacing my fingers through hers. She looked at me, her eyes shining, and squeezed my hand tightly.

Fury joined us, sliding his arm around Sienna's waist. And for a moment, the four of us just stood there on the SoHo street, a small, unshakable fortress against the rest of the world.