I Married My Ex's Billionaire Father-Chapter 300: Were They Fucking

Brandon glared at the television as if sheer hatred might burn holes through the screen.

Lyse sat beside Levi Van Doren, her posture relaxed, her expression open in a way Brandon hadn’t seen in a long time. She laughed at something Levi said, head tilting slightly, fingers brushing his arm with an intimacy that felt deliberate even if it wasn’t. Levi leaned closer, protective without being possessive, his presence solid and infuriatingly calm.

At a fucking burial!

They looked like they belonged together.

The image made Brandon’s jaw tighten until it ached.

"They must be fucking," he muttered.

The words came out rough, ugly, but once spoken they lodged themselves in his mind like barbed wire. He replayed the scene obsessively, imagining Lyse beneath Levi, imagining the way she might sound, the way her eyes might look when she forgot herself. The thought clawed at him, relentless, corrosive.

He grabbed the remote and shut the television off, but the images didn’t disappear. They followed him, projected onto the dark screen of his own thoughts.

He paced the length of the living room, bare feet slapping against polished stone floors. Everything here screamed luxury, designer furniture, art he’d bought because his mother chose it, a view of the city that people killed for but it all felt useless. None of it mattered if Lyse wasn’t here to see it. To want it. To want him.

He had done everything.

He had bent rules, broken people, burned bridges, all with the quiet certainty that Lyse would eventually come back. She always had before. Angry, hurt, but never gone.

Until Levi.

Levi Van Doren had stepped into his life like an uninvited guest and rearranged everything. Took Lyse’s attention, her trust, her loyalty, things Brandon had assumed were permanently his.

And now she looked happy.

That was the worst part.

Not afraid. Not uncertain. Happy.

Brandon’s fingers curled into fists. His nails bit into his palms, grounding him in the sharp, welcome sting of pain.

He needed to do something. Soon.

He couldn’t keep reacting. Couldn’t keep watching Levi win by doing nothing at all. That calm, righteous act of his made Brandon want to smash something. Or someone.

He stopped pacing and stood still, breathing hard.

What he needed was leverage.

Something to smear Levi with. Something that would rot Lyse’s image of him from the inside out. It didn’t have to be true. It just had to be convincing. Disgusting enough that she would recoil instinctively, the way people did when they realized they’d been touching something filthy without knowing it.

Or better yet...

He smiled thinly.

He could find something real. Levi had to have skeletons. Everyone did. The difference was that most people were just better at hiding them.

Jail would work.

Death would work even better.

A dead Levi couldn’t play hero. Couldn’t look at Lyse with those steady eyes and make her feel safe. A dead Levi would be a closed Chapter, something Lyse would mourn and eventually move past.

And Brandon would be there.

He would be the one she leaned on at the funeral. The familiar shoulder. The devil she knew.

He crossed the room and grabbed his phone, dialing without hesitation.

The call connected almost immediately.

"I need something incriminating on Levi Van Doren," Brandon said the moment the line opened. His voice was cold, clipped, all business. "Something bad. Dig through his history. I don’t care how far back you go. Childhood, military records, finances, women, men, blood, anything."

There was a pause on the other end.

"Sir?" the voice asked cautiously.

Brandon stopped moving. "What part of that confused you?"

"No, sir. I understand. It’s just... Levi Van Doren is very clean."

Brandon scoffed. "No one is clean. That just means you’re not looking hard enough."

"Yes, sir," the voice said quickly. "I’ll widen the net."

"And if you don’t find something," Brandon continued, eyes darkening, "I want you to orchestrate something that will stick. I don’t care how. Fraud. Assault. A body that leads back to him. I want his name ruined or buried."

Another hesitation. Longer this time.

Brandon’s grip tightened around the phone. "You have a problem with that?"

"No, sir," the voice replied. "It’s just... there’s something you should know."

Brandon closed his eyes briefly, irritation flaring. "What."

"I’ve flagged some unusual activity," the voice said. "It looks like someone else is searching. Not about Levi. About you."

Brandon’s eyes snapped open.

"What do you mean, about me?" he demanded.

"There have been inquiries," the voice continued carefully. "Cross-referencing financial movements, old associations, incidents that were... quietly resolved in the past. Whoever it is, they’re methodical."

Brandon felt a flicker of something unfamiliar crawl up his spine.

"Who is it?" he snapped.

"I don’t know exactly," the voice admitted. "They’re using layered access points, not sloppy. Whoever it is knows how to stay invisible."

Brandon’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl. "Then don’t call me with half-formed thoughts. I don’t pay you to speculate."

"Yes, sir."

"I want a name," Brandon said sharply. "A face. A motive. Only then do you call me."

"Understood."

"And make sure," Brandon added, voice dropping to a dangerous calm, "that you get me what I asked for."

The call ended.

Brandon lowered the phone slowly, his mind racing.

Someone was looking into him.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

He prided himself on being untouchable. On knowing who was watching and who wasn’t. On staying five steps ahead. The idea that someone had slipped past his defenses without him noticing made his skin itch.

He replayed recent events in his head, scanning for cracks.

Luca Delgado.

The name surfaced unbidden.

Luca had survived when he shouldn’t have. That alone was irritating. But Luca was small-time, a rat scrambling for survival, not a hunter capable of mounting an investigation.

Unless someone had picked him up.

Unless someone smarter, quieter, and far more dangerous had decided Luca was useful.

Brandon poured himself a drink, the amber liquid sloshing slightly as his hand shook despite himself. He took a long swallow, the burn grounding him.

No. He wouldn’t panic.

Panic was for people without control.

He still had resources. Still had people. Still had time—at least a little.

He returned to the couch and turned the television back on, flipping channels until Lyse’s face filled the screen again. This time it was a still image from earlier, Levi’s hand resting at the small of her back, her expression unreadable but soft.

Brandon stared. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"I made you," he whispered to the empty room. "You were nothing before me."

The words tasted bitter, even to him.

He remembered Lyse as she used to be, sharp, defiant, eyes blazing with emotion whether it was anger or desire. He remembered the way she used to look at him like he was both a storm and shelter. The way she had believed him when he said he would protect her.

Somewhere along the way, that belief had cracked.

And Levi had slid right into the fracture.

Brandon’s thoughts spiraled darker.

If he couldn’t break Levi directly, he could still poison the ground around him. Friends. Allies. Anyone Lyse trusted. One by one.

He just needed patience.

And precision.

His phone buzzed suddenly on the table.

For a split second, adrenaline spiked, was it the call back? Had they already found something?

But it was just a message. A notification.

He glanced at it, irritation flaring again when he saw the sender.

A news alert.

Unconfirmed reports suggest renewed interest in past unresolved incidents involving several high-profile figures...

Brandon’s eyes narrowed as he read further.

No names yet. No accusations. Just speculation.

But speculation was how fires started.

He shut the phone off completely and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.

Fine.

If someone wanted to dig, he would dig faster.

If Levi wanted to stand between him and Lyse, he would learn what happened to obstacles that didn’t move.

And if Lyse thought she could escape him...

Brandon smiled slowly, the expression empty of warmth.

She would learn that some things never really let go.