Page 22 of The Rival’s Obsession (The Black Ledger Billionaires #3)

T he Harrow estate is a monument to appearances.

The stone facade rises like it was carved from pride itself—sharp lines, manicured hedges, iron gates that whisper wealth without having to shout. Everything about it is curated. Perfect. And emotionally sterile.

Even the breeze feels rehearsed.

As I step out of the car, the staff is already in place. Gates open. Door ajar. The housekeeper, Elaine, greets me with the same warm smile she’s worn for as long as I’ve been alive. But it never reaches her eyes—not when she looks at me.

Not anymore.

“Welcome home, Mr. Harrow,” she says gently, like I’m a guest. Like I don’t still carry the ghosts of this place in my skin.

I nod, offering a polite smile, and walk through the grand foyer where the scent of fresh polish tries—and fails—to mask the memory of lilies.

My mother’s favorite. There were so many filling the house after she died.

Now, for sixteen years there’s only one vase.

Always with a full bouquet. Always white.

My father is in the study—where he always is at this hour. The door is open, fire lit even though it’s warm outside. He’s a man of habits. Routine. Control.

I suppose that’s where I get it.

“Grant.” His face lights up as I enter, all warmth and pride and subtle worry, perfectly wrapped in the image of the loving patriarch. “You made good time.”

I nod, letting him pull me into a brief hug. It’s real, but it’s rehearsed, too. My father loves me—I don’t doubt that. But he’s also spent the last decade and a half loving me around the edges of a wound neither of us speaks about.

We settle into two leather armchairs facing the fireplace. He pours drinks from the decanter between us, just like always. His movements are steady. Practiced. It should comfort me.

It doesn’t.

The study hasn’t changed. Books line the shelves in neat, intentional rows.

Family portraits hang on the walls, a gallery of curated legacy—wedding photos, posed holiday shots, a painting of my mother in her favorite blue silk gown.

She looks serene. Regal. Down to the fine detail of the solitaire necklace around her neck.

My chest tightens.

Not just from the memory of her—but from yesterday.

From what happened at the country club. What I let happen.

What I wanted to happen.

Dante on his knees. His mouth around my cock. My groans echoing off marble and mirrors and polished wood like a fucking confession. Like I wanted the world to hear it.

Anyone could’ve walked in.

Anyone.

The Marchesi heir sucking off the Harrow legacy—like some sick fantasy pulled from the forbidden corners of our history. I should’ve stopped him. Should’ve shoved him away the second he dropped to his knees and looked up at me like he knew I wouldn’t.

Because I didn’t.

And fuck, it felt so good I almost forgot we were in public. That the door wasn’t even locked. That if anyone recognized us?—

It wouldn’t be just a scandal.

It would be the collapse of everything our families have built.

And still…

Still, it wasn’t enough.

Because I wanted more. I want more.

And that alone makes me pissed.

My father shifts in his chair, the firelight dancing across the lines of his face. He’s aged in the way people do when grief becomes a long-term tenant—still strong, still composed, but hollowed out in places no one else can see.

He doesn’t bring up what happened to her. He never does.

Like always, he’ll talk business soon.

It’s how he survived it—burying himself in the firm after my mother died. Throwing himself into meetings and acquisitions and early grooming speeches, as if fast-tracking my inheritance would make us forget the blood on the marble.

I was only sixteen. Too young to drink but not, apparently, too young to sit in boardrooms and learn the architecture of empire.

And I didn’t complain because it kept him focused. Kept him from asking too many questions.

Even now, I can hear the sound of his scream. That guttural, broken sound when he found her.

She was lying in the foyer. Blood soaking into her yellow cardigan. Her eyes wide open and unseeing.

And I?—

I was standing at the top of the landing, staring down at them.

At her.

At him.

At the aftermath of what I did.

He never asked me what I’d been doing just before. Why I was there, and breathless.

Maybe he couldn’t bear to know.

Or maybe he already did and chose to pretend.

He did his best. That’s the truth. He didn’t fall apart. He just… diverted. Built walls. Gave speeches. Took me to networking dinners and introduced me as a man long before I was one.

He was a father in mourning, and I became a son in performance.

And now here we are—sixteen years later, still playing the same roles.

He clears his throat across from me. “I wanted to talk about the Vegas situation.”

There it is. The turn. The safe ground. The clean ledger.

I nod, keeping my expression smooth even as my stomach twists.

Yesterday, I let the only person who’s ever really seen me—who’s ever gotten close to the rot—pull pleasure out of me in a public bathroom like it was a birthright. And I let him.

No—I wanted him to.

And still… it wasn’t enough.

Because no matter how far he goes, how deep he takes me?—

He hasn’t seen all of it yet.

Not the worst part.

Not the part my father screamed over.

The part I watched from the stairs, heart pounding and hands still shaking from what came before.

And if Dante ever finds out?—

If anyone ever does?—

They’ll never look at me the same again.

They’ll finally see what she saw in her last breath.

And I don’t know if I’ll survive that.

I knew he’d bring it up eventually.

The CEO title—dangling like a blade over my head, one wrong move away from slipping out of reach forever.

My father’s voice is calm when he mentions it. Not accusing. Not panicked. Just measured concern, like everything else he does.

“There’s… been talk,” he says, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “Board members get nervous when they smell blood. Especially when it comes from the top.”

“I know,” I say, already slipping into the answer I rehearsed on the drive over. “Dante and I are working things out. We’ve brought in a specialized consultant—someone with crisis-negotiation experience. It’s… helping. Honestly. We’re in a better place than we’ve been in a long time.”

I can’t tell if I’m lying or not. Maybe both things are true.

My father nods once, not quite convinced, but not probing either.

“Good. Because this firm doesn’t survive divided leadership.

And you know as well as I do—the Marchesi-Harrow legacy isn’t just a name.

It’s a promise. A future we’ve built brick by brick.

You let that fall, and it won’t just be your name that cracks. ”

It’s not a threat, but it lands like one.

I nod and take another slow sip of my drink. The scotch burns less than it should. Or maybe I’ve just burned too much already to notice.

“Your mother always said you’d wear the crown one day,” he adds after a long pause, eyes flicking to her portrait above the fireplace. “She knew you had it in you. The discipline. The vision.”

He doesn’t say the darkness.

“I miss her,” I say quietly, because I should. Because I do. Because there’s guilt crawling up the back of my throat, and I need to press it down with something real.

His jaw tightens. Just a fraction. But I notice.

“We all do,” he says. His voice is steady—almost too clean. “She was… delicate. But strong. The kind of woman who saw the best in people, even when they didn’t deserve it. The kind who trusted instinct. Sometimes too much.”

My gaze lifts to his face, but he’s looking away now. At the fire. At nothing.

The air thickens, lingering on that last sentence— sometimes too much —and I can’t tell if he’s aware of how loaded it sounds. If it was deliberate. If it was directed.

If he suspects, or if I’m just projecting.

I shift forward, glass balanced between my knees, elbows resting on them like the weight of what I’m holding might collapse me otherwise.

There’s a moment. A crack where I could say it.

I could tell him the truth. Or part of it. Or at least enough to explain why I haven’t slept a full night in sixteen years without waking in a cold sweat, my hands clenched and aching.

He’s right here.

And for all his coldness, for all the distance he drowned us both in after she died—he did try. He was grieving. So was I.

And maybe he deserves to know.

Maybe I need someone else to carry it.

“Dad…” The word stutters out before I know I’ve said it.

His eyes come to mine. Calm. Curious. Open.

For once, I see the father I knew before the funeral. Before the boardrooms and the legacy and the weight of her name.

My chest tightens. My jaw locks.

Say it.

Tell him.

“I’m… trying,” I say instead, swallowing down everything else. “To fix things. To make it right.”

He nods again, the moment closing like a door that was never fully open to begin with.

“I know you are,” he says gently. “Just remember who you are, Grant. And what you were born into.”

I do.

Every goddamn day.

I was born into legacy.

And I might’ve killed it with my own two hands.