[BL] Bound to My Enemy: The Billionaire Who Took My Girl-Chapter 226: The Leak

The man looked at Charles. My father nodded once, a cursory dismissal. "Thank you, Arthur. We’ll finish this later."

The man excused himself, the door clicking shut behind him. Charles leaned back in his chair, his hands steepled, his expression one of infinite, weary patience.

"You’ve been unreachable for most of the morning," Charles said. "I assume the business in the port district required your personal attention?"

He knew. Of course he knew. He might not have the specifics, but he knew I’d been out in the dark, doing the work he pretended didn’t exist.

The air in the study was stagnant, thick with the scent of old paper, expensive tobacco, and the suffocating weight of things left unsaid for two decades.

My father remained seated behind the expansive mahogany desk, his head now bowed over a leather-bound folder.

He resumed the rhythmic scratch of his fountain pen. It was a performance, a calculated display of indifference designed to remind me that my arrival was merely an interruption in a more important day.

I didn’t sit. I never sat in this room unless I was prepared to negotiate from a position of weakness, and today, I was vibrating with a cold, focused clarity.

"Why did you send him?" I asked.

The question wasn’t a question. It was a demand for the truth I already possessed. Charles didn’t flinch. He didn’t even stop writing. "Send who?" he murmured, his voice light, practiced, and entirely weightless.

"Nick Bennett," I said, each syllable hitting the floor like a lead weight. "To my office. Without a single word of notice."

Charles finally paused. He turned a page with a slow, agonizing deliberateness. "I sent him your way to discuss the early stages of the rehabilitation project. It seemed the logical next step."

His tone was mild, reasonable, the sound of a man who truly couldn’t fathom why such a mundane administrative decision required a confrontation.

"You couldn’t brief me first?" I countered.

"You couldn’t afford me the basic professional courtesy of knowing who was walking through my front door?"

Charles finally looked up. He set the pen down and leaned back, adjusting his glasses.

He looked at me with the weary patience of a teacher dealing with a particularly slow student. "Brief you," he repeated softly. A beat of silence followed, stretching until it snapped. "As I recall, Cassian, I call the shots. I called them long before you arrived, and I call them now."

The arrogance of it was a physical goad. I felt the heat rising in my neck, but I kept my voice flat, drained of any emotion he could use against me.

"Then you don’t need me," I said. "Handle the project yourself. Navigate the board, manage their ego, and oversee the construction. I’m out."

I turned slightly, the movement a clear threat of departure.

"You’re being unreasonable," Charles said, his voice sharpening. He set the folder aside, the first real concession that this conversation was happening on my terms, not his.

"This project is significant. The governor’s office is watching. The President’s inner circle has a vested interest in XUM’s expansion into medical rehabilitation. The hospital handles the clinical side; we build the infrastructure. That is all this is. I don’t understand why you’re making this personal."

"I’m not your errand dog, Charles," I said, my voice dropping to a near-whisper. The quiet made the words more jagged. "I don’t exist to execute your whims on your timeline. I agreed to a role in this company. I did not agree to being summoned like a footman."

Charles stopped. He went entirely still, his full attention finally arriving. It was the look he used when he was dissecting a balance sheet, searching for the hidden debt, the one variable that didn’t align with the rest of the data. He looked at me, really looked at me, and his eyes narrowed.

"You’re not acting like yourself," he said carefully. "You’re reactive. Defensive."

"I don’t know what you’re implying," I said, though the lie felt thin even to my own ears.

"I got a call from the hospital board thirty minutes ago," Charles said. He let the silence hang, heavy and expectant. "Nicholas Bennett returned from his supposed meeting with a visible bruise on his jaw. He didn’t file a report, but he didn’t exactly hide it, either." He stood up slowly, walking around the desk. "Care to explain how a professional consultation ended in physical battery?"

"No," I said.

"I’m not asking if you hit him," Charles said, stopping a few feet away. "I know your handiwork, Cassian. If you had hit him, he wouldn’t be walking. I’m asking why his presence bothers you so much that someone in your orbit felt the need to strike him." He leaned against the edge of the desk. "Why does a Bennett bother you?"

"Because you did it intentionally," I spat. "You knew exactly what you were doing when you directed him to my office."

"And what exactly did I intend?" Charles asked. He sounded genuinely curious, the most dangerous tone he possessed.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. The silence did the heavy lifting for me, filling the room with the ghost of the man I’d left in my office.

Charles tilted his head. "I chose the Bennett boy because he’s an impressive surgeon with a pedigree this project needs for optics. However," he paused, his eyes tracing the tension in my shoulders, "you seem disproportionately agitated. Is there some ancient rivalry I’m unaware of? Or is this about the other one?"

He didn’t wait for me to flinch. He knew exactly where the nerve was.

"Noah," he finished.

The name felt like a physical strike. I felt the tension coil in my frame, a sudden, violent instinct to protect something that wasn’t supposed to matter. I contained it instantly, forcing my face into a mask of stone, but I saw the flare of triumph in my father’s eyes. He’d found the leak.