My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 364

The Trail

~Julian~

Zane walked into my office without knocking, a thin folder tucked under one arm, the kind of quiet urgency in his strid told me he had found something before he said a single word.

“You are going to want to see this,” he said, dropping the folder onto my desk.

I opened it.

Bank statements. Wire transfers. A chain of payments routed through three different accounts before landing, eventuall account Jude Wolfe had used to cover his living expenses in the months before he arrived in New York.

“Where did this come from?” I asked.

“Marcus,” Zane said. “He has been quietly pulling financial records from the warehouse. It took this long because whoe this up buried it well. Shell companies stacked on shell companies. Whoever did this understood exactly how to make me disappear.”

I traced the chain of transfers with my finger, following the money backward through each account, each one more caref obscured than the last.

“This is not the work of an amateur,” I said.

“No,” Zane agreed. “This is the work of someone who has done this before. Someone with resources, patience, and a very lawyer.”

I reached the final account in the chain, the original source before the money began its careful journey through shell comp designed to make tracing it back nearly impossible.

A holding company. Meridian Crest Holdings.

“Do you recognize the name?” Zane asked.

I did not.

“No,” I said. “Run it. Ownership records, registration history, anything that connects it to a real person

“Already tried,” Zane said. “It is registered offshore, in a jurisdiction that does not require disclosure of beneth Whoever set this up knew exactly what they were doing. This is not a name that leads anywhere on its own

I sat back in my chair, staring at the folder, the careful architecture of the payment trail last out at true. missing its most important piece.

shi

“A rival,” I said slowly “Someone I have outmaneuvered in a deal someone whose cascosity at ground to Wear Canton years That is the profile that fits”

“Perhaps,” Zane said

“You do not sound convinced I said

“I am not,” Zane adulted Business rivals do not usually go to this more outle eventually They want you to know who beat you even if only in private

1

taken extraordinary care to make sure they are never toul arab Babciate Showhood Hing, L

I thought about that for a long, moment buthing the deservation oves tallog might want to hurt one badly enough four hestra wo thing this chalosale

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“Then what is it the behavior of?” asked

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wn beleved hot wha

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Zane was quiet for a moment.

“I do not know yet,” he said. “But I intend to find out. I have already asked Marcus to keep digging on Meridian Crest. a real name behind that holding company, we will find it eventually. Everyone leaves a trail somewhere, even the care

I looked back down at the folder, at the name sitting there, meaning absolutely nothing to me, a locked door with no v

“Keep me updated,” I said. “The moment you find anything.

“You will be the first to know,” Zane said, gathering the folder back up. He paused at the door, looking back at me with something thoughtful behind his expression. “Whoever this is, Julian, they have been planning this for a long time. Lo than Jude has been in the country. That should tell you something.‘

“What should it tell me?” I asked.

“That this did not start with Katia,” Zane said. “It started with you. Long before any of us understood what was actually happening.”

He left, and I sat alone with the folder for a long time after the door closed, staring at the name Meridian Crest Holdings the letters stopped meaning anything at all, turning instead into a shape I could not yet see the edges of.

I pulled up my own contacts list and began working through it methodically, cross–referencing every rival, every failed acquisition, every man who had ever walked away from a negotiating table with me holding the better hand. I made a list names: men whose companies had lost ground to WEG over the years, men whose egos I had been bruised in boardroom:

three continents.

None of them fit.

Zane was right about that much. A rival wanted to be known, even quietly, even years later over a drink at some exclusive c where the story could be told as a cautionary tale about crossing Julján Windsor. This was different. Whoever had built this gone to considerable lengths to ensure their name never surfaced at all, layering shell company behind shell company with patience of someone who had been planning this for years rather than reacting to a single lost deal.

I thought about the timeline. Jude had arrived in New York only months ago, but the accounts Marcus traced stretched back much further, some of the earliest transfers dating to well before I had ever crossed paths with Katia publicly, before the W * partnership, before any of the business dealings that might have given a rival reason to resent ine

That timing bothered me more than anything else in the folder.

If this had started before Katia and I were ever connected in any visible way then Zane’s theory cared more wei wanted to admit. This was not about a deal I had won. This was about something older, something that pray involvement with her entirely, which meant the target had never,eally been the partnership at all

It had been me

I picked up my phone and called Marcus directly skipping the used for dines

“Pull everything you can find on Merident rest’s corporation date

know exactly when this company was created, and I want to know whorse was hqqanding its tide of a conUS

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