Page 3 of Falling for the Grump Billionaire

The question loops in my mind as I stare at my notes scattered across the coffee table. Names, dates, suspicions—they form a chaotic web that only deepens the mystery. A puzzle with too many missing pieces. My gaze lingers onMartin Caldwell,the former senior engineer from Kane Enterprises. His suddendeparture six months ago might be the key to understanding everything.

I click open his LinkedIn profile again. Sparse, outdated. It’s like he’s erased himself from existence. His last activity was a post about some charity event, but it’s tagged to a location downtown. I jot the address into my notebook—it’s not much, but it’s a thread I can tug on.

My laptop pings, breaking the silence. An alert from one of the forums I’ve been stalking. Someone has responded to a thread I bookmarked earlier:

“Caldwell knew too much. That’s why they pushed him out.”

The post is anonymous, like most of the chatter in these spaces, but it sends a chill down my spine. My fingers hover over the keyboard before I type a cautious reply:

“What did he know?”

The screen refreshes, but there’s no response. I lean back, tension coiling in my shoulders. Whoever posted that knows something, and now, so do I: Martin Caldwell wasn’t just fired—he was silenced.

I glance at the time: 3:15 a.m. Sleep is out of the question. Instead, I grab my coat and bag, deciding that fresh air might clear my head.

The streets are quiet, bathed in the eerie glow of streetlights. My footsteps echo softly against the pavement as I head towardthe small diner on the corner. It’s one of those places that never closes, a relic of the city’s late-night heartbeat.

Inside, the smell of burnt coffee and fried food greets me like an old friend. I slide into a booth near the window, the vinyl seat sticking slightly to my legs. The waitress barely glances at me as she places a chipped mug on the table and fills it with coffee.

The first sip is bitter and scalding, but it jolts me awake. I pull out my notebook, flipping through the pages until I find Caldwell’s name.

“Eva Stone,” a voice says, startling me.

I look up to see Darren, his tuxedo slightly rumpled, holding a coffee cup of his own. “Can’t sleep either?” he asks, sliding into the booth across from me.

“No rest for the weary,” I mutter, closing my notebook.

He nods, taking a sip of his coffee. “You’ve got that look,” he says after a moment.

“What look?”

“The one you get when you’re onto something big.”

I lean back, studying him. Darren and I worked together for years, chasing stories that didn’t want to be found. He knows my instincts better than most.

“Why are you really here, Darren?” I ask, my tone sharper than intended.

He shrugs, his grin fading. “Just wanted to check on you. That scene with Kane earlier? Bold move, but dangerous. Guys like him don’t play fair.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you don’t care,” he says quietly.

His words hit a little too close to home. I glance out the window, watching a car glide past, its headlights cutting through the darkness.

“Look,” Darren says, lowering his voice. “If you’re chasing something, be careful. Kane has resources. He could bury you without breaking a sweat.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” I say dryly, draining the rest of my coffee.

Darren doesn’t push further, but his presence lingers even after he leaves the diner. His warning rattles around my head, a subtle echo of Dominic Kane’s words:Don’t dig where you don’t belong.

By the time I return to my apartment, the sky is starting to lighten. Exhaustion pulls at me, but determination pushes harder. I throw myself onto the couch, opening my laptop to dive deeper into the trail of breadcrumbs left by Caldwell.

A few obscure industry blogs mention his name in connection with a failed project at Kane Enterprises—something to do with encryption software. It’s technical, dense, but the timeline matches up with when the security breaches began. My fingersfly over the keyboard as I search for anything linking Caldwell to the sabotage rumors.

Buried in a comment thread on a cybersecurity forum, I find it:

“Caldwell wasn’t just working on encryption. He was developing something bigger—something Kane didn’t want getting out.”

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