Chapter 1 - The Fifty-Million-Dollar LieKhloe stared at Roman Casso.
For several seconds, the rain beating against the restaurant windows was the only sound she could hear.
Then she looked down at the thirty pages in his hands.
“What do you mean he borrowed money from you?”
Roman did not answer immediately.
He carried the document toward a private table near the back of the restaurant, beneath a wall of dark walnut shelving filled with bottles that probably cost more than Khloe’s first car.
He placed the prenup flat beneath the light.
“Sit.”
Khloe remained standing.
“I’m fine.”
Roman glanced toward her bleeding foot.
“You’re standing barefoot on broken skin, your wrist is turning purple, and the man outside just tried to drag you back to an engagement party.”
His gaze returned to her face.
“You are many things at the moment, Miss Harrison. Fine isn’t one of them.”
Khloe looked toward the locked front door.
Derek was no longer there.
That frightened her more than seeing him.
Roman seemed to notice.
“He left.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Vincent would have told me if he hadn’t.”
Khloe swallowed.
She sat.
A waiter silently appeared with a first-aid kit and a pair of clean towels. Roman nodded once, and the man disappeared again.
Khloe wrapped one towel around her foot.
Roman turned the prenup back to page twenty-eight.
“Pierce Holdings LLC borrowed fifty million dollars from Casso Capital Partners seventy-three days ago.”
Khloe felt the room tilt.
“Casso Capital?”
“My private lending company.”
“You mean your company gave Derek fifty million dollars?”
“Yes.”
“To invest in Harrison Logistics?”
“No.”
That single word tightened something in her chest.
Roman tapped the document.
“Pierce Holdings represented that the money would finance the acquisition of controlling interests in several distressed transportation assets.”
“Harrison Logistics.”
“It wasn’t named in the loan agreement.”
“Then how do you know?”
Roman pointed toward a Delaware registration number printed beneath Pierce Holdings LLC.
“This entity owns another company called Northstar Acquisition Group.”
Khloe recognized the name.
She had seen it once.
On an invoice.
Three weeks after her father died.
Her hands went cold.
“What does Northstar do?”
“Officially? Corporate restructuring.”
“And unofficially?”
Roman leaned back.
“Whatever Derek Pierce tells it to do.”
Khloe stared at him.
Roman continued.
“Six weeks ago, Northstar began purchasing Harrison Logistics debt from three regional lenders.”
“What?”
“They bought the debt at a discount.”
She shook her head.
“Derek told me the banks were extending our loans.”
“They weren’t.”
Roman slid the document toward her.
“He has been buying your company’s obligations using money he borrowed from me.”
Khloe slowly understood.
“If he owns the debt…”
“He can force restructuring.”
“And if I sign away my voting shares…”
“He controls the equity too.”
The truth landed with horrifying clarity.
Derek had not been saving Harrison Logistics.
He had been surrounding it.
Debt from one side.
Voting control from the other.
And Khloe had been sleeping beside him while he did it.
She looked toward page twenty-eight.
“One dollar.”
Roman said nothing.
“He was going to take fifty-one percent of my father’s company for one dollar.”
“Apparently.”
Khloe laughed once.
It came out broken.
“My father built Harrison Logistics for thirty-two years.”
She remembered being eight years old and sitting beside Michael Harrison in the cab of a delivery truck because her babysitter had canceled.
She remembered him pointing toward the company logo.
HARRISON LOGISTICS.
Blue letters.
Silver compass.
He had told her, “A company isn’t buildings and trucks, sweetheart. It’s promises. People trust you to deliver what you said you would.”
Three hundred guests were currently standing in a gallery celebrating her engagement to the man who had spent months dismantling those promises.
Khloe looked at Roman.
“Why did you lend him the money?”
Roman’s jaw tightened slightly.
“A fair question.”
“I’d like an answer.”
“Our investigators reviewed Pierce Holdings. The company had sufficient guarantees, Derek had an excellent professional reputation, and the loan was secured by assets outside Harrison Logistics.”
“That’s it?”
“No.”
Roman paused.
“He also had something more valuable.”
“What?”
“Information.”
Khloe frowned.
Roman folded his hands.
“He claimed Harrison Logistics was about to collapse and that a controlling block of voting shares would soon become available at a distressed price.”
Khloe felt nauseated.
“He told you that before tonight?”
“Before your engagement was announced.”
The humiliation was almost unbearable.
Every dinner.
Every gentle touch.
Every time Derek had told her not to worry about the company.
Every time Aubrey had said Khloe should simply be grateful someone competent was willing to clean up their father’s mess.
All of it had happened while Derek was planning the acquisition.
Khloe looked at Roman.
“And you were going to let him?”
Roman’s expression hardened.
“I lend money, Miss Harrison. I don’t approve fraud.”
“But you knew he wanted my company.”
“I knew he wanted a distressed transportation business. I did not know that business belonged to his fiancée.”
She studied him.
People whispered about Roman Casso.
They said judges returned his phone calls.
Bankers changed meetings for him.
Union officials spoke his name carefully.
Khloe had even heard her father mention him once.
Never angrily.
Just carefully.
Roman Casso is a man you never underestimate.
Now he was sitting three feet away, holding the document that could destroy Derek.
That did not mean Khloe trusted him.
“Suppose I believe you,” she said. “What happens now?”
Roman glanced at the door.
“Derek will attempt to control the story.”
“He already has three hundred witnesses.”
“Three hundred witnesses who saw his fiancée run away from her own engagement party barefoot.”
Khloe closed her eyes.
Roman continued.
“By morning, his version will be everywhere.”
“What version?”
“That grief has made you unstable. That you misunderstood an ordinary marital agreement. That you have been emotionally fragile since your father’s death.”
Her eyes opened.
Aubrey had used almost those exact words before.
“You sound very sure.”
“Because men like Derek rarely improvise when control is threatened.”
Khloe’s phone suddenly vibrated inside the small satin pocket sewn into her gown.
Forty-seven missed calls.
Twenty-three messages.
Most were from Derek.
The newest appeared while she watched.
You are making a serious mistake.
Another arrived.
Roman Casso is not your friend. Ask yourself why he happened to be next door.
Khloe looked up.
Roman read her expression.
“What did he say?”
“That you’re not my friend.”
Roman almost smiled.
“For once, Derek and I agree.”
Khloe blinked.
Roman leaned forward.
“You should not trust me because I gave you a towel and locked a door.”
His voice lowered.
“You should verify everything I tell you.”
Something about those words struck her.
Her father had said something similar.
Trust people.
Verify paper.
Khloe stared at Roman.
“What do you want?”
“The truth.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“Men like you don’t involve themselves in fifty-million-dollar problems because you want the truth.”
Roman watched her for a moment.
Then he reached inside his jacket.
Khloe instinctively stiffened.
He removed his phone instead.
After several taps, he turned the screen toward her.
A photograph appeared.
Michael Harrison.
Her father.
The picture had been taken inside this restaurant.
He was seated at the same table where Khloe sat now.
Across from Roman.
Khloe’s heart stopped.
“When was that?”
“Eight months ago.”
Two months before Michael died.
“What was my father doing here?”
Roman’s expression changed.
Not softened.
But something close.
“He came to warn me.”
“About what?”
Roman swiped to another photograph.
This one showed a single sheet of paper.
A list of names.
Khloe recognized Derek Pierce immediately.
Beneath Derek’s name was another.
Aubrey Harrison.
Her stepsister.
Khloe stopped breathing.
Roman looked directly into her eyes.
“Your father believed someone inside Harrison Logistics was moving money out of the company.”
Khloe whispered, “Derek.”
“Michael wasn’t sure.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“According to him, because he wanted proof before he destroyed his family.”
Family.
Khloe looked at Aubrey’s name.
Her father had married Aubrey’s mother when Khloe was eleven.
When Aubrey’s mother died six years later, Michael had kept raising Aubrey as his own.
He had paid for her university.
Bought her first apartment.
Given her a job in corporate communications.
Khloe stared at the screen.
“Why would Aubrey steal from him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would my father come to you?”
Roman’s gaze remained on hers.
“Because three of the suspicious transactions passed through companies that owed money to me.”
Khloe’s pulse quickened.
“Did you investigate?”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
Roman was silent.
That silence frightened her more than anything else.
“What did you find?”
“One month before your father died, someone transferred nineteen million seven hundred thousand dollars out of Harrison Logistics through six consulting companies.”
Khloe covered her mouth.
Roman continued.
“Your father discovered approximately twelve million of it.”
“Where did it go?”
“Most of the trail vanished through offshore accounts.”
“Most?”
“One transfer didn’t.”
Roman turned his phone toward her again.
Khloe read the beneficiary.
AUBREY HARRISON — PRIVATE ACCOUNT
Amount:
$1,850,000.
Khloe felt something inside her collapse.
“No.”
Roman said nothing.
“That can’t be real.”
“Maybe.”
“You just said—”
“I said the account bears her name. I did not say we know why.”
Khloe stared at the number.
Then another memory surfaced.
Aubrey standing beneath the awning thirty minutes earlier.
Somebody had to be practical.
Khloe whispered, “She knew about the prenup.”
“Yes.”
“She helped prepare it.”
“Yes.”
Khloe looked toward the locked restaurant door.
Derek was somewhere outside.
Aubrey was probably beside him.
And for the first time since her father’s funeral, Khloe understood something she should have recognized months earlier.
She had never been surrounded by people protecting her from the collapse of her father’s empire.
She had been surrounded by the people causing it.
Roman closed the document.
“Where are you staying tonight?”
“My father’s townhouse.”
“No.”
Khloe narrowed her eyes.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Correct.”
Roman stood.
“But Derek has the security codes. Aubrey has keys. And they both expected you to sign those papers tonight.”
Khloe looked at her phone.
Another message appeared.
This one from Aubrey.
You have no idea what Dad was really doing before he died. Come back before you destroy everything.
Khloe read it twice.
Then Roman’s phone rang.
Vincent’s name appeared.
Roman answered.
“What?”
His expression changed almost immediately.
“How long ago?”
A pause.
“Don’t touch anything.”
He ended the call.
Khloe stood.
“What happened?”
Roman looked at her.
“Someone entered your father’s corporate office twenty minutes ago.”
Her blood turned cold.
“What did they take?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Who was it?”
Roman picked up the prenup.
May you like
His eyes became hard.
“Derek Pierce.”
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