The Billionaire's Revenge

A cream vellum envelope, unmarked, tucked behind the ledgers in her father's study. Caitlin Hartley slides a finger under the seal at midnight and the flap gives with a dry crack. Inside are settlement letters from a maritime law firm she has never heard of, and two names she has: Hartley & Co., Shipbrokers, and Ashford Marine & Drydock. Her father's signature is at the bottom in the same tight, upright script she has seen on a hundred birthday cards. Her family paid the Ashfords one point four million dollars to go away. Eleven years is how long Declan Ashford has been imagining the morning he walks into the marble foyer of Hartley & Co. and watches a receptionist confirm his existence in the building that swallowed his father. His adviser, Grant Webb, tells him in the elevator to keep the bloodlust off his face. Twenty-two floors up, the Hartleys are arranged around a boardroom table, and Caitlin is at the far end of it, already certain this is a trap. He offers fifty-three dollars a share and a twenty percent premium. She asks him what happens to the two hundred and thirty-seven people on the payroll, most of whom have worked there longer than she has. Then she asks the question he cannot answer in that room. *"I'm asking why a man who avoids saying his full first name walks into a family business and expects us to trust him."* Because his father ruined mine. Because I spent eleven years building a company big enough to tear yours apart. Because this isn't business, Caitlin. It's revenge. What neither of them has yet is the truth, and the truth is older and worse than either version. A photograph from a crane christening in 1998 has five people in it, and three of the names on the back are Hartley, Webb and Ashford. A retired lawyer called Harold Crane handled a settlement, then died in a boating accident with the throttle in neutral in calm weather, and his files are gone. Arthur Hartley signed a document his business partner put in front of him during the week his wife was in hospital, and has spent the years since trying to outwork what he did. *"I didn't push Michael off that bridge, but I handed Paul the rope."* And Grant Webb keeps turning up at a yacht club bar with his head bent toward Leo Hartley, and Declan's own laptop has been read by someone who works for him. A contemporary billionaire romance of shipbrokers and shipbuilders, a family firm coming apart over an old loan, and a man who has to decide whether the woman on the other side of the table is on his list or not. The romance is closed-door.