Queen of Wild Cards novel Chapter 103

Frustrated by her daughter's cowardice, Miranda reached for the phone.

Chloe rolled her eyes, unlocked her screen, and pulled up Julius's contact.

She shoved it at her mother. "Fine, call him. See if he cares!"

Miranda snatched the phone and hit dial.

Sean was about to walk into the office for the third time when the phone buzzed yet again.

He looked at the screen. A completely new number.

What kind of relentless scam ring was this? Swapping numbers just to harass the CEO? When did his private number get leaked?

Furious, he snapped into the receiver, "Are you people out of your minds? Scamming the Blackwood Group? Do you have a death wish? I'm warning you, call this number one more time, and I will have your entire operation ripped apart!"

Feeling marginally better after his outburst, Sean finally knocked and entered the office.

Julius had just wrapped up his video conference.

"Who was that? What took you so long?"

"Mr. Blackwood, has your private number been leaked? I just got three scam calls in a row from different numbers."

Julius frowned. "That's highly unlikely. My phone is encrypted. It doesn't get leaked easily."

"I swear it's true, sir," Sean explained. "I took three calls. The first guy claimed to be your father-in-law. The second was a woman claiming to be your mother-in-law. When the third number called, I just cussed them out and hung up. You aren't even married. What in-laws?"

Sean had absolutely no idea that Julius was legally married. At the time the papers were signed, Julius was at home recovering from his supposed terminal illness, and Jason Blackwood was acting as interim CEO.

Add to that the fact that Stella had explicitly requested they keep the marriage a secret to avoid a messy public fallout if they divorced in a year, and literally no one outside the immediate Blackwood family knew about it.

Hearing Sean's report, Julius instantly knew exactly who was calling.

"I understand. It probably was just a scam. You can head out. I don't need anything else right now."

"Right away, sir," Sean replied respectfully, closing the door quietly behind him.

The moment he was gone, Julius dialed Stella's number.

"Stella, did Frederick call you?"

"He did. Tried to invite me back to the Hawthorne house for dinner, and told me to bring you along. I turned him down. Why?"

"That explains it. Right after you rejected them, Frederick and Miranda showed up at my headquarters. They've been blowing up my phone, but I was in a meeting, so my assistant answered."

"And how are you handling it?"

"They told my assistant they were my in-laws. Sean has no idea I'm married, so he thought it was a scam and told me to block them."