Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 237

Chapter 231. Christmas Eve-The Threat Resurfaces.

CAMERON

The house was loud on Christmas Eve. My mother had taken over the kitchen at seven in the morning and had not relinquished it. The smells of food had been building in layers since eight. She displayed excellent cooking skills of a woman who cooked the way she breathed. She did so without needing to think about processes. And she deployed the full repertoire for an audience she had been waiting years to feed. Lake had identified four separate smells by ten o’clock and announced each one with the authority of someone filing a formal report. Drew had written them in his notebook

My father was in the sitting room with the door slightly open, the specific angle that meant he was reading and also available, the door position he had maintained my entire childhood for exactly this purpose. Parker Preston’s version of an open invitation.

Lake and Drew were conducting something in the upstairs hallway that involved every blanket in the property and a rule system only they fully understood. The noise of it came down at intervals, Lake’s full-volume narration, Drew’s quieter interjections, a thud that was probably not structural.

In the back garden, Dante had cleared a space. I could hear them through the glass doors, his voice, then Sedona’s, then the clean thwack of a ball against whatever he’d set up as a target. She had a competition in four days. He had not let her forget that Christmas Eve was also a training day, which she had pretended to object to and hadn’t.

Her laugh came through the glass. I was at the kitchen table with coffee and my laptop and the particular state of a man who had nowhere to be for the first time in three weeks and was not quite sure what to do

with that.

Marcus called my line by two o’clock. I shifted to the hallway from the kitchen to answer the call.

The operative,” Marcus said. No preamble, he never used a preamble when the information was urgent. “The one from Seattle. The one watching Dante’s property.”

I went still. “Yes.”

“He’s in Chicago.”

The hallway was quiet. Through the ceiling, Lake’s narration continued uninterrupted. Through the back wall, the thwack of the ball.

“He was spotted near Dante’s hotel yesterday,” Marcus said. ” He was not staying there, just in the area. And near the Lincoln Park property this morning.”

As I was talking, I strolled the hallway toward the garden. I heard Dante and Sedona laughing. I stood still and listened, thinking I could hear why they were laughing.

“The morning of the announcement,” Marcus said. “One of the two calls we flagged, the ones Logan made after he saw the competitor list. It was a prepaid number. We traced the signal location.” A pause. “Downtown Chicago.”

The ThreaLResurfaces

pressed my back against the wall.

The order is still active,” Marcus said.

A silence that had weight.

“When did you know?” I said.

Claim

“This morning. I wanted to be certain before I called.” His voice had the particular flatness of someone delivering information they had verified fully and did not enjoy delivering. “I’ve been tracking the operative’s movement since last night. The pattern is consistent. He’s not sightseeing.”

I looked at the ceiling. Lake ran past the top of the stairs at full speed, blanket in hand, announcing something to Drew at a volume that suggested urgency and contained none.

“Don’t tell Sedona,” I said. “Not tonight.”

Marcus was quiet.

“The hearing is done,” I said. “The interim order is in place. Tomorrow is Christmas. The twenty-sixth is Nick.” I ran the timeline the way I ran all timelines, fast, complete, looking for the load-bearing points. “Give me tonight. Tomorrow morning, I’ll tell Dante.”

“Cameron,” Marcus said. “The timeline he was given…”

“I know.”

“He’s not waiting much longer.”

“I know.” I looked at the wall again. Through it. The garden, the ball, the laugh that had come through the glass twenty minutes ago, unguarded, the real one, the one Sedona had been finding her way back to for seven months. “Get me everything you have. Tonight. Movement, pattern, anything that tells us when.”

“Already compiling.”

“Marcus.”

A beat.

“Thank you,” I said. “For being certain before you called.”

He hung up.

I was in the hallway browsing with my phone when Lake came around the top of the stairs fast. The way he came down was enough indication that the blanket game had clearly gone up a level.

He saw me in the hallway below, assessed, and announced: “Cameron. Drew has claimed the good blanket. This is not the system we agreed on.”

“Sort it out,” I said.

He looked at me. The Lake assessment was quick and thorough. “You have your serious face,” he said.

“I have my thinking face,” I said.

2/3

< The Threat Resurfaces

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He considered this distinction. Accepted it. Turned and went back at the same velocity he’d arrived with, already narrating the return to Drew at full volume.

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