I Caught My Billionaire Fiancé Kissing Another Woman While Carrying His Baby—Then Found Out The Horrifying Truth About Why He Did It

The red envelope felt greasy under Nora’s leather work gloves.

The photograph of her battered Ford truck was taken from an angle that made her skin crawl. It proved someone had been watching her park outside the harbor garage long before she took off her ruined heels and walked through the sleet.

Molly stood frozen on the stairs behind her.

"Nora, talk to me," Molly whispered, her voice shaking like dry leaves. "What red ledger are they talking about?"

"I don't know," Nora said through gritted teeth.

She turned the slip of heavy cardstock over, searching for a watermark, a fingerprint, or a postmark. There was nothing except those seven words printed in clean, soulless block type.

The office phone rang again.

Both women flinched as the harsh bell echoed off the high rafters. Nora let it ring four times before marching across the mezzanine and ripping the handset off the cradle.

"I told your firm not to contact me again," she snapped.

"Nora, step away from the front bay doors immediately," Cassian’s voice commanded.

He wasn't using a lawyer this time. His voice was raw, stripped of the velvet polish he usually wore in front of city politicians and high-society donors.

"You don't get to order me around anymore," she hissed, pressing the phone hard against her ear. "Did you send someone to my shop with a threat?"

"What threat? What did they deliver?"

His panic was genuine, cutting straight through his habitual arrogance.

"A picture of my truck," she said coldly. "And a demand for a red ledger."

There was an agonizing pause on the other end of the line.

She could hear the muffled roar of traffic and the sharp sound of someone barking orders in the background. Cassian exhaled sharply, a ragged sound that vibrated down the wire.

"Listen to every word I am about to say," Cassian said, his tone dropping an octave. "Sabine Kessler’s family doesn't just own shipping lanes; they run black-market cargo through the maritime corridor. Her brother thinks I kept a paper log of their offshore payoffs."

"And did you?" Nora asked, her knuckles turning white around the plastic receiver.

"No, Nora. My father hid that ledger before he died ten years ago."

Nora’s breath hitched in her throat.

"Then why are they targeting my restoration business?"

"Because my father’s estate sold his antique mahogany cabin cruiser to your father's yard fifteen years ago," Cassian said. "They believe the book was built into the hull before the boat was ever restored."

Nora remembered that boat.

The Sovereign Star. Her father had spent six months rebuilding its teak deck and replacing the bronze keel bolts.

"Cassian, that boat was sold to a private collector in Montreal eight years ago," Nora whispered.

"They don't care about Montreal," Cassian countered grimly. "They think you kept the salvage records, the schematics, or the original hideaway compartments."

Outside on the harbor slip, the sound of an idling diesel engine rumbled through the floorboards.

Nora looked through the mezzanine window toward the waterfront. A black surveillance van with tinted windows was parked across the street near the salt sheds.

"They’re already here," she breathed.

"Get Molly and go out through the dry dock service tunnel," Cassian urged, his breathing heavy. "Don't touch your truck. I have two men coming to pick you up at the commercial pier."

"No," Nora said, her anger flaring hot against the terror coiled in her stomach. "I won't trade one cage for another."

She slammed the receiver down onto the cradle.

Her apprentices were still working downstairs, unaware that their workplace had just become the center of a mob shakedown. The rhythmic tap-tap-tap of copper rivets sounded innocent against the freezing harbor wind rattling the corrugated roof.

She reached down and touched the waistband of her canvas pants.

The secret was still there, alive and vulnerable under her sweater. Ten weeks of new life that Cassian Rourke had forfeit the moment he pressed his mouth against Sabine’s lips.

"Molly," Nora said, turning to her terrified bookkeeper. "Grab the hard drives and every paper folder marked Sovereign Star from the basement archive."