Page 38 of The Rival’s Obsession (The Black Ledger Billionaires #3)

T he houses here all match. White fences. Clean windows. Lawns so symmetrical they look AI-generated. But Corrine’s is a step above creepy-perfect. Her mailbox is so polished it probably has a skincare routine.

Jaxon leans over to whisper as we sneak through the lawns to her house. “Who even lives like this? Her lawn has stripes. Is she okay?”

“Focus, Jax.”

He grunts, pulling his black-hoodie tighter. “This is breaking and entering. You know that, right? I'm rich. I can’t go to prison. They’d put me in minimum security with no tech. I'd have to play board games with dentists who didn’t pay their taxes.”

“And yet you still got in my car when I told you to wear something dark,” I mutter, grabbing the small-black device he’d been fidgeting with since we left my apartment. “Tell me how this thing works.”

“Excuse you.” He snatches it back with an offended gasp. “One of us is the world’s youngest tech genius and the other can run a mile in six-inch stilettos. Watch and weep.”

He crouches by the keypad near Corrine’s front door, squinting at it with the concentration of a bomb-defusal scene in an action movie. The device clicks softly, then emits a quiet series of beeps—three short chimes.

Jaxon grins like he just hacked the Pentagon. “Boom. I’m amazing. The alarm’s down. Door’s unlocked. And by the way...” He steps back with a dramatic bow. “Security feed has been recording on a loop for the last hour.”

I don’t waste time and push the door open like I own the place.

The air inside smells faintly of pine cleaner and smugness. It’s cold—crisp in a way that screams no one lives here full-time. Too curated. Too untouched. Every pillow fluffed. Every picture frame perfectly aligned. It’s the kind of place that looks staged, like a model home frozen in time.

Jaxon steps in behind me. “How long do we have?” he whispers, eyes darting from room to room like he expects the walls to sprout hidden security cameras.

“You know you don’t have to whisper, right?” I roll my eyes and head straight for the kitchen. “I told Frankie to keep her at the office as long as she could. No promises.”

“Great,” he mutters. “Love a vague ticking clock. That always ends well.”

Corrine is hiding something. I absolutely know it. She’s been in everything too much, but at the same time in nothing. Too invisible for it to be a coincidence.

And we’re going to find out what it is—tonight.

“This woman alphabetized her vitamins.” Jax is staring into a cabinet, hands on his hips before he reaches in.

There is nothing here, so I head upstairs.

Jaxon follows reluctantly, like a man being led to his own murder.

“You know, when I said I was bored and wanted something to get into tonight, I meant like... Vegas. Or something fun like hacking the White House again and changing the President’s email.

Not felony trespassing in a Stepford-wife’s murder castle. ”

The number of times I’ve rolled my eyes while we’ve been in this house should be a new world record.

“You were the one who begged me to let you in on the action,” I remind him, walking into her bedroom. “This is the action.”

“This is how white women die in true-crime podcasts.”

“Then don’t get caught.”

Corrine’s bedroom is just as unsettling as the rest of the house. Not a single wrinkle in the sheets. Closet doors shut. Everything staged like it’s waiting for a real person to move in.

I open the closet and immediately regret not bringing gloves.

Not because I’m worried about fingerprints—Corrine’s too busy manipulating lives to dust for those—but because everything in here is pristine.

Like museum-exhibit pristine. Her shoes are lined up like soldiers.

Color-coded. Heel height descending from left to right.

This woman orgasms off control. “She is a fucking psychopath.”

I dig through the drawers inside the closet island, scanning for anything out of place. Hidden compartments. Documents. Keys.

Behind me, Jaxon leans in the doorway, arms crossed over his broad chest. “This is the most aggressively beige room I’ve ever seen.”

I don’t stop searching. “Check the nightstand drawers.”

“I’m not touching her nightstand. That’s how you find dildos or diaries, and neither is on my to-do list tonight.”

“Oh yeah, a diary would be good. Hop to it.”

“Fine.” He sighs and pads across the carpet. “But if something bites me, I’m running away.”

He pulls open the drawer and whistles. “No dildos. Thank God. Just a Bible and a gun.”

That gets my attention. “Really?”

“No.”

“Ugh, Jax!”

“You think she’s hiding a body in here?” he asks, reaching into the drawer and shifting a few things before closing it.

Next is an armchair by the window. He slides it about an inch to the left.

Rounding the bed, Jax tilts the table lamp’s shade ever so slightly, then joins me in the closet.

“What are you doing?” I ask, watching him open a drawer that is lined with the most perfectly folded and organized socks I’ve ever seen in my life.

He picks one up, turns it the opposite direction, and closes the drawer again.

“This’ll drive her nuts.” He takes two pairs of shoes next to each other and switches their places. “You know Charles Manson had his freaks do this. Break into people’s houses and do nothing but move their shit juuuuuust a little.”

Jaxon spends a good bit of time rearranging her jewelry drawers while I pause and take in the space, looking around for the one thing that doesn’t belong here.

It’s like everything is so perfect on purpose—to distract from something. I just need to figure out what.

“Who knew one woman needed so many beige trench coats.” Jax shakes his head as he removes a shirt from a hanger and flips it inside out before returning it.

When he reaches up to place the hanger back in its place, that’s when I see it.

One thing that doesn’t belong in this curated beige nightmare.

A brown—not pristine—box.

Slightly darker than everything else here, yellowed from time. A little worn on the edges. A smudge on the lid. Imperfect.

Bingo.

“Jax! Get that down for me.”

He squints. “Oh, so this is why you really wanted me to come along. Taking advantage of my height?”

“Yes, now gimme.”

He rolls his eyes but plucks it down effortlessly and hands it to me like he’s presenting a cursed artifact. “Behold. The Box of Doom.”

It’s an old shoebox. The cardboard is soft in places, like it’s been opened and closed a hundred times. Something about it immediately prickles under my skin.

I lift the lid and my heart drops.

Inside—dozens, maybe hundreds—of newspaper clippings. Stacks and stacks of carefully folded articles.

All about Grant Harrow.

Social pages. Forbes writeups. Society wedding coverage. Gala photo recaps. If there was a piece of media with the Harrow name on it, Corrine has it in this box.

He’s younger in most of the ones toward the front. Late teens to early twenties. Always in a suit. Always with that practiced Harrow smile.

My stomach tightens.

They begin after his mother died. The age. The fact most of them have photos of only Grant and his father.

I pull one out and snap a picture with my phone. Another. And another. I tuck each one back where I found it, keeping them in order just in case there’s a method to her madness.

The newer ones seem to be toward the back. I want to know what happened all those years ago, so I stay toward the front.

“Eve...” Jaxon’s voice is tight. “This is giving serial-killer scrapbook. I’m officially creeped out.”

But I don’t answer. I’m already flipping through more of the stack, scanning each article like it’s a clue. A map. A confession. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for yet—but I’ll know it when I see it.

Why keep all of this?

What does it mean?

I dig deeper, pulling out a dense stack of folded pages, and something clinks at the bottom of the box.

Two busted USB drives.

They both look like they’ve been crushed. On accident or on purpose, I can’t tell.

I cradle them in my palm, staring down like they might whisper something.

“Hey,” I call softly, holding them up. “World’s youngest tech genius. Can you do anything with these?”

Jaxon walks over, squints at them in my hand, and snorts. “I can’t resurrect the dead.”

“Weakling.”

“I can try to recover data. But not here. I need tools. And time. And ideally, no psycho socialite showing up to murder me with her disinfectant wipes.”

His phone pings and we both look at it.

“Shit,” Jaxon mutters, eyes glued to his phone. “She’s pulling in.”

He’s in full-on panic mode now—darting looks around the room like he’s expecting to find a telepad to beam him out of suburbia and into a nice, safe server farm somewhere.

I stay crouched, flipping through the last stack of clippings because I’ve only got seconds left on the clock. We can’t leave here without getting the answer.

“Eve—Eve!” Jaxon whispers, voice shrill. “This is not a drill. She’s coming in. Like, inside the house. We need to go!”

“Two seconds,” I hiss back, snatching the last few clippings and jamming them into my pocket. I’ll sort them later. Or never. Who knows if we’re surviving the next five minutes?

From downstairs, the unmistakable click of the front door unlocking.

Followed by the sharp clack-clack of stilettos on marble floors.

And then her voice, floating up like a ghost from hell:

“I swear I set my alarm this morning.”

Jaxon is pacing now, crouched like a squirrel about to explode. “We’re dead. This is it. I’m too pretty to die behind bars. They’ll eat me first, Eve.” He whispers.

“Shut up and help me,” I snap, motioning wildly.

He sets the shoebox back into its spot—exactly how it was before. For once, I’m grateful for his obsession with symmetry.

Her heels are getting louder. Then I hear her on the stairs, coming up.

I meet Jaxon’s eyes, then glance to the balcony doors.

He follows my gaze as I point and push his shoulder.

He mouths: No freaking way.

I nod. Stern frustration twists my features into a deranged look of anger as we try to make no noise at all.

We move fast—quiet as ghosts, even though my pulse is anything but silent. Jaxon sneaks open the balcony door just as we hear Corrine reach the landing at the top of the stairs.

She’s not in a hurry, so at least she doesn’t suspect anything is amiss yet.

The balcony doors swing shut behind us with a soft snick —a sound so small, so careful... and yet, to me, it may as well be a gunshot.

I flinch, instinctively ducking, then wave my arms like a frantic air-traffic controller.

Go. Go. GO.

Jaxon wastes no time. He swings one leg over the wrought-iron railing and starts climbing down, moving fast but careful, his limbs gangly but precise. He's clearly seen too many spy movies and is living his best 007 fantasy.

I throw a leg over the edge, then the other. My palms—slick with sweat—grip the railing.

Thank God we wore black.

My heart’s jackhammering against my ribs, but adrenaline sharpens everything—makes the shadows clearer, the air colder, the consequences louder.

I drop down below the line of the railing, my shoe in the first foothold of the trellis, when the dark around us becomes slightly brighter.

Corrine moves the curtain.

The golden light from her bedroom spills across the balcony, stretching out like a spotlight hunting its next victim.

Jaxon is climbing down the trellis and freezes when he hears my panicked shhh .

I drop my head below the railing just as she opens the balcony door and steps out.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

My body is trembling. Muscles burning. I don't breathe. I don’t blink.

Corrine pauses.

Looking and listening into the night surrounding her.

I can feel her presence—so close beside me I swear I can smell her perfume in the air. I press closer to the house, praying the darkness cloaks us, that the trellis doesn’t creak, that my damn heartbeat doesn’t echo loud enough to betray us both.

She takes one slow step forward, then stops.

A long moment passes before she finally turns and steps back inside.

The door clicks shut behind her.

Still, I don’t move. I don’t trust her not to still be watching.

After an eternity, the curtains drop back into place. Darkness deepens around us once more, and I hear the distant sound of running water.

A shower.

I look down. Jaxon’s eyes are wide as saucers, still clinging to the trellis like it’s his emotional support structure.

Go.

I mouth—with all the authority of a SWAT commander.

We scramble down as quickly as we can. I land next to Jax with a hard thud in the grass. He doesn’t wait—grabs my wrist, pulling me along, and we bolt across the lawn, slipping through the gate and around the side of the house like we were never there at all.

By the time we dive into the car and slam the doors shut, we’re both panting, half laughing, half horrified.

Jaxon buckles up without a word, then finally exhales a long, dramatic sigh.

“Next time,” he says, “we break into an Amazon datacenter or something normal.”

I grin, still catching my breath. “This was the most fun I’ve ever had.”

He turns to stare at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “You need therapy.”

“Probably,” I say, shifting into drive. “But after we figure out what’s on those USBs.”

His face falls as he pats his pockets. I feel the color drain from mine.

“I think I left them in the bedroom.”

“Jaxon Kane, I will kill you if you are being serious.”

“Dang! Calm down, Murder, She Wrote. ” He pulls them from his pocket. “They’re right here.”

I press the gas and pull away from Corrine Ashwood’s nightmare house, the shadows swallowing us whole.

“Sometimes I hate you.”