Page 42 of The Rival’s Obsession (The Black Ledger Billionaires #3)

T he Harrow estate hasn’t changed. The lawn is still perfect, the hedges trimmed with surgical precision, and the porch lights cast the same golden glow they always have.

But as I pull up the drive and step out of the car, a heaviness settles over me—a weight that doesn’t come from the air or the sky but from memory.

Everything looks normal.

But it feels different.

Not loud or obvious. Just... off. As if the house is holding its breath. As if it knows what today is, too.

He opens the door before I knock.

“Grant,” he says, voice warm, familiar. “Glad you made it.”

I offer a nod in return, stepping inside. The door clicks shut behind me, and suddenly I’m sixteen again—lost in the echo of the day that split my life in two.

“You all right, son?”

His question is casual, but his eyes are already scanning me for the answer.

“I need to talk to you,” I say. “About Mom.”

The words hit like a small detonation. His expression stills. The practiced warmth fades into something fractured. Like it always does when someone mentions Mom.

“Of course,” he replies after a pause. “Come into the study.”

He turns, leading the way down the familiar corridor. We move in silence. Not awkward—but deliberate. Like neither of us wants to interrupt the ghosts still whispering through the halls.

The study is as it’s always been. Dimly lit. Lined with old books, framed accolades, and the soft crackle of a fire already burning in the hearth—even in the heat of June.

He moves to the liquor cart, lifting the decanter. The soft chime of crystal echoes, but I don’t follow him in yet.

I stop just past the doorway, my attention snagged by the stretch of wall to the right of the entrance—plain, unremarkable. I’ve passed it thousands of times. Never once looked at it. Never knew how significant it was. But tonight, it pulls at me.

Beyond it, I can make out the foyer. The curve of the staircase. The marble floor that glints beneath the chandelier. I know exactly where she turned and ran up the stairs for the last time.

I know the spot where she fell.

Where she looked at me before she took a final breath.

“Grant?”

My father’s voice pulls me back. He’s holding two glasses of whiskey, one extended toward me.

I turn to him, take it with a nod.

“Yeah.”

We sit in the wingback chairs that have faced each other for decades. As a boy, they made me feel small. Tonight, they feel like prisons.

I lift the glass to my lips and let the whiskey burn a trail down my throat. It’s not courage exactly, but it’s close enough.

My father settles into the chair across from me, the fire casting shadows that flicker along the edges of his face. He lifts his glass but doesn’t drink, watching me like he’s waiting for a storm to hit.

“What’s on your mind, son?”

What a fucking understatement.

I set my glass down, the sound sharp against the lacquered wood. My hand moves to the inside of my suit jacket, pulling free the short stack of photographs. They’re enlarged. Matte finish. Every detail crisp. Unforgiving.

I toss them onto the table between us. Watch as they fan out—sliding just far enough for him to see a flash of skin, a desk, a face he once knew far too intimately.

He frowns, reaching for them slowly, carefully setting his own drink aside as he pulls his reading glasses from his breast pocket. He slips them on with deliberate grace, like this is just another contract, just another negotiation.

“What are these?” he murmurs.

I don’t answer. Not directly.

“I’m sure you’ll recognize them.”

He picks up the first photo.

At first, he blinks like he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing. Then the color starts to drain from his face. A flicker of disbelief, followed by something that looks too much like fear—and worse—recognition.

I don’t let up.

“They tell quite the story, don’t they, Father?”

He exhales sharply through his nose. Grim now. His expression collapses inward as he sets the photo down with a trembling hand.

“Grant—”

“She was sixteen.”

The words cut out of me like a blade, low and venom-laced. My breath comes harder now, like the effort of keeping it all in has become too much.

“That first one?” I nod at the photo nearest to him. “That’s you. Laying Corrine out on your desk. Your head between the legs of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl.”

His mouth opens. Closes. Then?—

“You don’t understand, Grant?—”

“Oh, don’t I?” I lean forward, voice trembling, fury riding the edges of every syllable. “But you didn’t have enough? Mom was picking me up from school, and the next photo?—”

I stand suddenly, pointing behind me toward the study’s doorway. Toward the blank expanse of wall that will never be blank again.

“—that’s you. Right there. Your mouth on her breast. Your hand up her skirt.”

He flinches, and I fucking hate him for it.

The tears come before I can stop them, burning down my face in silence. I can’t even wipe them away. My voice is shaking, gutted, nearly unrecognizable.

“She saw you.”

He rises now, slow but insistent.

“Son, there’s more to this—there’s a lot more you don’t know.”

But I’m already standing. Already unraveling.

“Oh, I know it all.” My voice cracks, louder now. “I know it all and I wish I could cut it out of my mind forever.”

The words rip through the room, spit flying from my lips as my chest heaves with the weight of it. Of years spent trying to make sense of something that never had any.

“I thought she was upset with me.” My voice breaks. A sound I don’t even recognize. “But she wasn’t. She saw you.”

“She walked in. Saw everything.”

“That’s why she ran upstairs. That’s why she opened my door already crying. She didn’t say anything, but I knew something was wrong. I thought it was me.”

“This whole time, I thought I killed her.” I let that truth hang between us—shame and sorrow curdling into rage.

“But she saw you,” I whisper. “She fucking saw you.”

I reach for the glass, and throw it.

The glass explodes against the back wall of the fireplace, shards catching the light as they scatter into flame. The whiskey hisses, sizzling as it hits the embers.

A fitting sound, I think, for the truth I’m about to lay at his feet.

“Corrine stayed home from school that day,” I say, my voice low. Controlled.

“You two had a lot of fun, didn’t you? So much fun that you didn’t hear Mom or me come home. Didn’t hear her heels on the floor. You didn’t hear her open your study door.”

He says nothing.

His fingers twitch around the rim of his glass.

“But you heard her gasp,” I continue, pacing slowly now. “You heard the shock in your wife’s voice as she walked in on you. Her husband. Molesting the orphan girl she brought into our home to foster.”

He opens his mouth to speak, but I cut him off before he can even form a word.

“And instead of going after her—your wife—you were a selfish bastard. You yelled at Corrine to go to her room, and you ran straight to the security system. Straight to the cameras so you could erase what you did.”

My fists are clenched at my sides, nails biting into my palms.

“But Corrine didn’t go to her room. She waited at the top of the stairs. Hid around the corner. And when Mom came running back—shattered, sobbing—Corrine pushed her.”

My throat tightens. A tear slips free.

“She pushed her.”

I swallow hard, trying to hold the rest in, but the grief surges up anyway, hot and sharp.

My breath hitches.

My vision blurs.

“I thought she was upset with me,” I say quietly.

“I thought I’d done something wrong.”

He shifts in his chair, pain etched into the lines of his face.

“Son…”

I glance at the fire, at the dying embers flickering through smoke.

“She was so obsessed with you… so twisted from what you did to her, that she thought if Mom was gone, you’d finally be hers.”

He looks stricken, pale and trembling. But I don’t let up.

“She was my age,” I hiss. “She was your friend’s daughter. How the fuck could you?”

“She was confused,” he murmurs. “Grant… Corrine was very confused at that time?—”

“No,” I snap. “She wasn’t. She was already a killer before she ever set foot in this house.”

He stares at me, bewildered.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” I laugh, but it’s hollow.

Jagged.

“She killed her parents just to come live here. With you.”

He flinches. The truth cuts.

“She pursued me,” he mutters, jaw clenched. “She seduced me. I told her no—again and again?—”

“Don’t you dare,” I growl, stepping closer. “Don’t you dare put this on her. She was a child, and she was broken because you broke her. You groomed her for years. You preyed on her.”

“I read her diaries.” I lean over him now, shaking. My voice a menacing whisper.

The fear in his eyes makes me want to kill him. Because now he realizes, I know his other secret. How sick he really is.

“When did it start, Dad? She spent so many nights in this house when we were little. How young was she when you first went into her room?”

His mouth opens, but no sound comes.

He slumps back into the chair, hands over his face, and begins to sob.

I kneel beside him—not in comfort, but to see his shame up close.

“You molested her,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “You twisted her mind until she thought the abuse meant love. Then you discarded her—because she got too old.”

“No,” he says hoarsely. “No?—”

“Don’t lie,” I snap. “I have the evidence. Pictures. Diaries. She stopped coming over when we were thirteen. But she never let go. You has already made sure of that.”

“She thought she belonged to you,” I go on. “She believed that if she waited long enough, you’d come for her. And when you didn’t—when you tried to push her away—she spiraled.”

“She killed her parents knowing Mom would take her in. That’s how calculated she was. That’s how obsessed. And how long did it take, huh?” I stand.

“How long until you were back in her bed?”

His voice is wrecked when he shouts back, still sobbing.

“She pursued me!” He jabs a finger into his chest. “I told her no! I told her no! She kept pushing, and I gave in. Is that what you want to hear? That I’m weak? That I—gave in?”

“It was a mistake.”

I stare at him like I’ve never seen him before.

“A mistake is forgetting an anniversary,” I say. “Burning dinner.”

I look at the portrait of my mother over the fireplace, her smile soft and steady. My voice drops.

“You molested a girl for years. You warped her. Drove her to madness. And people died because of it. Mom died. Your wife. My mother.”

I stare up at her, eyes burning.

“And I never noticed it before… the necklace Corrine always wears. The one she fidgets with when she lies.” I laugh again, this time lower. Bitter.

“It was Mom’s. She ripped it from mom’s neck as she pushed her over the railing.”

I look back at him slowly, my voice shaking.

“And while you were pretending to weep?—”

“I did weep!” he shouts, standing. “I mourned her!”

I stare at him like the words are filth.

“You’re a monster,” I yell back. “You’re not capable of such things.”

I stare at him. At the pathetic, crumpled man hunched in the leather chair like he’s the victim here. Like the weight of his sins is something he was burdened with—not something he chose.

“You mourned her?” My voice is hoarse. Raw. “You mourned the woman you let die so you could cover your filthy little secret?”

He doesn’t answer. Just shakes his head, fingers clawing into his scalp like he can dig the truth out and make it disappear.

“I was scared.”

“You were a coward.”

He sobs again, but I’ve gone numb. There’s nothing left inside me but ash and acid.

“You don’t get to cry,” I whisper. “Not after what you’ve done. Not after what you drove her to. You broke two girls. One is dead. The other’s a murderer. And you? You get to sit here and cry?”

He collapses forward, arms resting on his knees, chest heaving.

I take one final look at him. The monster. The man I called Father and I want to vomit. I want to burn this place to the ground and the ghosts that live here.

I can’t breathe.

The walls feel like they’re closing in, dragging me back into memories I’ve spent years trying to forget.

I step away, moving toward the tall windows that line the far end of the study.

I need space. Air. Proof that there’s still a world outside this house.

That not everything is rotting behind its polished veneer.

Through the glass, the estate grounds stretch out beneath the gray afternoon sky—manicured hedges, marble statues, the gravel path I used to race down on my bike. It looks the same. But nothing is.

“I had her arrested,” I say, my voice low, steady.

Behind me, I hear him inhale sharply.

“Corrine’s in custody. She’s talking.” I pause, not turning around. “I’ve turned everything over to the police. They’re on their way.”

Another breath. This one staggered. Wet with grief or fear—or both.

“I just wanted to see your face,” I add. “Look into your eyes while you tried to deny it. While you tried to pretend you were still a man.”

I let the silence sit between us like a corpse.

Then I walk away.

Every step through the halls of Harrow Estate feels like shedding a skin I’ve worn too long. The air feels stagnant and stale, as if even the house knows something’s changed. That the rot has finally been exposed.

By the time I reach the front door, my heart has slowed. My lungs fill easier. The air tastes different. Cleaner.

Outside, the wind lifts the edge of my coat, and in the distance, I hear the sirens. Wailing through the stillness, growing louder by the second.

With one foot in the car, one hand on the hood and the other holding the door, I watch. Wind blows the leaves, and a bird flies past as if nothing is happening here.

As if this isn’t a house of horror.

Just as I’m about to slide into my car, a crack slices into the setting evening. An unmistakable flash shoots out of the study window and is gone just as quickly as it came. The boom of a gunshot echos into nothing.

The leather seat complains as I sit. The shutting of the car door is a far louder click than I’ve ever heard. Then nothing. Silence as I start the engine and drive away.

As I leave Harrow Estate in the rearview, I don’t check the mirror because there’s nothing left to see.

Not for me.

Not anymore.