Page 23 of The Rival’s Obsession (The Black Ledger Billionaires #3)

W hen I open the door, I’m barefoot, braless, and already five seconds away from murder.

“If you don’t have cheesecake, you’re getting a stiletto to the eye.”

Jaxon Kane grins at me like he wants the threat to be real.

“Good thing I brought two,” he says, holding up a bag in one hand and a bottle of something French and expensive in the other. “Peace offering. For interrupting your sacred Saturday sloth time.”

I sigh dramatically and step aside. “Fine. Enter, peasant.”

He strolls in like he owns the place—tall, stupidly good-looking, and entirely too comfortable in his own skin.

His dark hair’s a little messy, like he just rolled out of a king-size bed with someone equally gorgeous.

His jaw’s freshly shaven, and the sleeves of his expensive Henley strain against arms that could throw me across the apartment if he felt like it.

Of course, he never would.

Because under all the money and muscle and menace, Jaxon Kane is one of the few men I trust implicitly.

Which says more about my judgment than it should.

I shut the door behind him and pad back toward the kitchen in my sleep shorts and oversized tee.

I eye the plain bag suspiciously. “This does not look like it’s from my bestie, Elena.”

“I took a pass at baking it myself!” he says, full of boyish pride.

The look of absolute and pure terror that must be on my face makes him bust out laughing. “I’m just kidding. Couldn’t carry it on my bike without fucking it up, and I knew that would be punishable by death.”

I let out a relieved sigh.

“You baking would’ve been the first sign of a psychotic break.”

He smirks and sets down the wine. “I outsource emotional manipulation. Like a sane person. And order takeout.”

Our friendship has always been like this—snark served with a side of genuine care, buried too deep to name.

He’s been a client of The Ledger for years.

Never one of mine, technically, but close enough to make me his handler on more than one occasion.

Somehow, we slipped into this thing we do now—late-night texts, check-ins, the occasional wine-fueled vent session on my couch.

And for reasons I’ve never fully understood... I feel responsible for him.

Like I’m beginning to feel for Grant and Dante.

It’s not just about business anymore. Not with them.

There’s something broken buried beneath those two—Grant Harrow and Dante Marchesi—and the cracks are starting to show. Not just in their company, but in them. Their partnership, their dynamic, whatever storm they’ve been circling for years... it’s escalating.

And for some reason, I can’t stop thinking they’re supposed to come out of it together. Not just as CEOs. But as something more. Something real. Something that looks a hell of a lot like love—if they’d stop fighting it long enough to see it.

I can’t explain it. But I feel it. In my gut. In the silence between their glances. In the ache they both try so hard to hide.

I want to fix it for them.

Just like I always want to fix things for him.

Jax leans against my granite countertop, watching me with a look that’s far too observant for a man who pretends to be bored with everything.

“Wine glasses?” he asks.

“In the cabinet above the microwave. Where they always are, Kane.”

“I like watching you get annoyed.”

He pulls down two glasses anyway and pours, like we do this every Saturday. Which, lately... we kind of do.

If there’s anything in this world that doesn’t need my protection, it’s Jaxon Kane.

He’s tall. Built like a weapon. Trains with Lucian Vale, which means he could break ribs in his sleep. Fights in underground rings like he needs the cash—which he absolutely does not—and walks through life like the rules are a suggestion he’s already declined.

He’s richer than God and twice as bored.

But here he is. In my kitchen. Bringing cheesecake. Getting ready to teach me how to be a hacker.

That may be a little dramatic. Some light online stalking, if anything.

“So, whose life are we ruining? Do we get to erase any identities today? Because that is one of my favorite things to do.”

“Jaxon Kane!” I scold like I’m a mother.

That thought gives me shivers down my spine.

Me. A mother. With actual living kids.

Gross.

Absolutely not in a million years.

“What?” He shrugs like he’s innocent. “I give them back.”

I look at him, deadpan.

“Most of the time.”

“I’m not hacking anyone.” I hop up on a barstool and flip open the box. The cheesecake is perfect, of course. Fluffy, creamy, a little tart. Elena, you are a goddess among immortals.

The first bite is perfection, and I close my eyes, letting it carry away the weight of the world for just a moment.

“I just need to know how to look up someone’s history. Like birth records, doctors’ visits, schools, neighbors, maybe. Who nannied them—if you’re feeling generous.”

He laughs softly, already helping himself to my laptop. “Jesus, Eve. You want me to teach you how to read someone’s soul, too?”

I shrug. “If you’ve got time.”

“You know I can’t say no to you.”

I arch a brow. “Because I’m cute?”

“Because I’m scared you’ll stab me in my sleep.”

Fair.

“You got a name?” he asks, eyes already flicking across his screen.

I do.

“Grant Harrow.”

The moment I say it, Jaxon’s fingers pause mid-keystroke, and that particular gleam sparks in his eyes—the one that means trouble is about to be fun.

“Well, well,” he drawls, already opening new tabs. “Now that’s a name. Harrow money goes back generations. Rumor has it the original patriarch was part of some underground secret society. You know—skull rings, blood oaths, sacrificing firstborns at midnight. Old-money weirdness.”

I roll my eyes. “Save the tinfoil hat for someone who believes the moon landing was staged. I’m not here for conspiracy theories. I’m looking for the break.”

Jaxon tilts his head. “Break?”

“The fracture,” I clarify, leaning forward and pulling the cheesecake closer like it’s fuel. “Something happened to him. Something formative. Dante’s a flame. He lashes out, burns hot, doesn’t know how to hold back. But Grant—he’s quiet. Controlled. He compartmentalizes like a machine.”

“So?”

“So, machines don’t build themselves that well unless they’ve been broken first.”

Jaxon makes a low, thoughtful sound, like he’s enjoying watching my brain spin. “Where do you want to start?”

“The beginning.”

T he cursor blinks like it’s daring me to keep going.

Grant Harrow, age sixteen.

It should’ve been the year everything accelerated—early college credits, prestigious internships, interviews about legacy and leadership. Crafted sound bites over champagne flutes and monogrammed cufflinks. The fast track to becoming everything the Harrow name demanded.

Instead, there’s a void. A silent rupture in the record.

That’s where it starts.

One obituary.

Sylvia Harrow, beloved wife of William Harrow, passed suddenly at home. Survived by her husband and son.

But Jaxon was able to find digitized police reports.

Cause of death: blunt-force trauma sustained during a fall over the second-story railing.

“That sounds sketchy AF.” Jax scans the files with me, both of us invested in the history now.

Aside from this, there are no headlines. No scandal. No follow-up interviews. Just a cold fact buried beneath a list of charitable donations made in her honor and a closed-casket funeral held four days later.

But it’s the location that catches me.

The Harrow family home.

Inside the home.

The kind of fall that can shatter the skull and break the neck—clean, instant, fatal.

I pull up the archived floor plan of the estate—something from a decades-old architecture feature. The house is sprawling. Cold. Symmetrical in that old-money way that prizes aesthetics over warmth. The grand staircase cuts through the center of the foyer like a spine.

“If Grant’s father was here,” I point to the study, “and she fell here...”

“There is no way the dad could have done it.”

He reported he had been holed up in his study for hours. Phone records and surveillance logs back him up—timelines neatly arranged, like a spreadsheet prepared for grief.

“Unless someone is lying.” I tap my fingernail on my tooth, thinking.

Every single detail hinges on Grant’s word.

It’s Grant who called emergency services.

Grant who told the responding officer his father was in the study when it happened.

Grant who testified—privately—that he came out of his room to see her at the bottom of the stairs.

Just in time to see her.

But not stop her.

Not catch her.

Not save her.

My fingers hover over the keyboard. Something feels... off. Too rehearsed. Too precise.

Jaxon reads the report beside me, brows low. “You said you were looking for the break.”

“This is it.”

Because even though the father’s name was cleared, even though the case never made it past the inquiry stage—the timelines don’t make sense.

Not unless you account for something else.

Because based on the layout of the house, the study is nearly forty feet from the top of the staircase. William Harrow would’ve had to sprint—full speed, without a single soul seeing him—to get out of sight before Grant found her.

He didn’t.

He couldn’t.

And someone wanted to make sure the report made that very clear.

But the glaring omission slams into me like a second impact.

Grant clears his father.

Not once—not in the witness report, not in the follow-up interviews, not in the press—does he ever mention where he was before the fall.

There’s no detail. No location. No denial.

Just a single statement:

“I heard her fall. I saw her on the first floor. I called for my father. He came from the study seconds later.”

I stare at the words, reading them again and again.

Grant never says what he was doing or what room he was in.

He never says he didn’t touch her.

It’s not an omission that screams guilt.

It’s the kind of silence that only happens when someone knows the truth wouldn’t make sense out loud.

Something happened in that house.

I don’t say it out loud, but the words are practically tattooed on my tongue now.

Jaxon scrolls beside me, leaning his chair back just far enough to tempt gravity. “There’s more here. You want me to keep digging?”

I nod slowly, eyes still locked on the cold, clean report from sixteen years ago. “Yeah. But this time, try the name Ashwood .”

He quirks a brow. “Is that your new bestie who wears a full face of Chanel to brunch and looks like she’s planning your funeral behind her mimosa?”

“That would be the one,” I mutter. “Corrine Ashwood. She’s been leeching onto Grant since childhood. If there was ever a moment he was vulnerable—this was it.”

Jaxon types the name in, pausing only to sip his wine like this is a casual Tuesday.

“She irritates you,” he says dryly.

“She slithers.” I stab my fork into the last bite of cheesecake. “There’s a difference.”

But as the search results populate... there’s nothing.

No mention of the Ashwoods connected to the Harrow family during that year. No press. No records. Not even a passing quote about a neighbor or family friend stepping in during the funeral.

It’s like they weren’t there at all.

“Convenient,” I murmur. “She’s tied to Grant’s entire life, but nowhere to be found during the single most traumatic moment of it?”

He clicks into another archived database, this one more obscure, and hums. “Huh. Okay, this is juicy.”

I glance over. “Please don’t say juicy while we’re digging into dead people’s secrets.”

“A year before Sylvia Harrow’s death,” he goes on, ignoring me, “there was a murder-suicide on the same street. Looks like one of the neighbors.”

But I’m not listening anymore, because my thoughts are already turning to someone else.

Dante.

Where the hell was he?

He and Grant were inseparable back then. Practically glued at the hip by age ten. There’s no way he wasn’t around. Not with how close their families were.

“Pull up Dante’s name,” I say suddenly.

Jaxon gives me a look. “First names now? You sound like a woman ready to spiral.”

“Shut up and do it.”

He opens a new tab, searching Dante Marchesi and filtering for the same narrow window of time.

For a moment, there’s nothing.

And then—tucked in the corner of a blurry, badly archived Page Six –style socialite blog—he finds it.

“Here,” he says, highlighting the line. “Right there.”

“Marchesi Heir Transfers to UK Boarding School”

That’s it.

No fanfare. No scandal. Just a one-paragraph blurb wedged between an engagement announcement and a charity gala recap.

Dante Marchesi, previously enrolled at The Dalton School in Manhattan, has transferred to St. Audric’s, an elite boarding school in the UK. The young heir will prepare to begin his studies with the fall semester.

Posted: one day after Evelyn Harrow’s death.

My stomach dips.

A mother dies under suspicious circumstances.

Grant gives the alibi.

Dante disappears overnight.

And Corrine is completely invisible.

Jaxon whistles low. “That’s a lot of smoke for there not to be a fire.”

But I already know. I feel it in my bones.

This wasn’t just the trauma that shaped Grant.

This was the moment that broke something.

Whatever happened in that house didn’t just kill Sylvia Harrow.

It fractured the boy she left behind.

And the silence they’ve buried it under is starting to rot.

I push the laptop away, grabbing my notebook off the counter. Flip it open to a clean page and click my pen once.

Two names.

Grant.

Dante.

And below them, one question in bold strokes:

What happened in that house?