Page 5 of Billionaire Wolf Needs a Fixer

Zane piped up, waving his phone."Speaking of investments, Krista, please tell me you're not actually taking Ubers everywhere.Because that's a security nightmare."

Krista scoffed."I don't need a chauffeur, Zane.It's just until my car is fixed."

I bristled."You do now."

She blinked."Excuse me?"

I stepped closer, looming over her until my shadow swallowed hers."If you're going to dig into this mess, you're doing it from an armored car with my people.No exceptions."

Krista opened her mouth to argue, no doubt, but Garrett cut in."He's right.Dante isn't playing around.Neither should we."

She glanced between the three of us, her stubbornness warring with logic.Finally, she sighed."Fine.But no fancy snacks or drivers calling me ma'am.If I see one monogrammed pillow with my initials in there, I'm setting it on fire."

Zane choked on a laugh.Even Garrett's mouth twitched.

I should've been annoyed.Instead, my lips lifted into a smile against my will.

Then my phone buzzed with an incoming text.The name on my screen made me pause.Dean Nightfang, my oldest and arguably only real friend.He and I had known each other since boarding school, when his reclusive nature and my rebellious streak had made us social pariahs.Now, he lived behind layers of encryption and killer security, hacking into places no one else could reach.Dean was antisocial to the max and didn't do favors for anyone.If he was texting me, it meant he'd found something.

Dean: FOOTAGE LEAKED.DANTE'S MOVING.

And if Dante Grimshaw was involved, it wasn't a coincidence.He was my father's half-brother, a bitter and power-hungry bastard who despised me not only because I refused to merge my production company with his dying studio, but because I was a shifter and he wasn't.Dante never wanted family, only control.It would be just like him to leak doctored footage to the press.

Krista's pulled out her own phone, her sharp gasp cutting through the night air."Oh, hell.TMZ's running raw footage of you screaming at Selene the day she died."She sucked in a breath."It looks bad, Levi."

Zane groaned."That's not just leaked, it's edited.Look at the time stamps, they cut all her lines out to make it seem like you're monologuing like a psycho."

Rage burned through me, righteous and molten.Of course Dante had his claws in this.He had been waiting for this moment since I refused to bow to him and built an empire without his name, his money, or his tainted legacy.

Krista was already typing furiously, firing off messages."Give me twenty minutes.I can bury this under the animal shelter campaign if we get in front of it now."

Zane was pulling up analytics."Better make it ten.It's gaining traction in the conspiracy and gossip forums.

I watched her.The way her brow furrowed in concentration, the way her teeth worried her lower lip, the way her fingers moved with lethal precision.Most people crumbled under pressure.Lawyers panicked.Agents groveled.Even Garrett defaulted to brute force.She barked orders at Zane while somehow managing to shoot me a look that said, Don't just stand there, help.

That's when it hit me.

She wasn't just good at this.

She was brilliant.

The realization hit like a sucker punch.

This woman would set the world on fire before she'd let it bury me.And I'd never wanted anything more.Against all reason, for the first time in years, I trusted someone.

Chapter 3

KRISTA

The glow of my laptop screen was the only light in the room, painting it in eerie blue.Zane and I had set up our makeshift office in one of the guest suites in Levi's mansion.Since Levi was our biggest and only client at the moment, this was going to be HQ for OPERATION FUR AND FURY, which was how Zane and I affectionately referred to our task of salvaging Levi's career.It was easier than having his driver chauffer us back and forth from my office to the mansion.And this way, we would be ready to pounce on any crisis that popped up.Or at least, that's what I told myself.

A knot twisted in my stomach.Zane had crashed hours ago, sprawled across the couch with a half-empty bag of flaming hot chips on his stomach, his snores punctuated the silence of the night.In the distance, the crash of waves against the cliffs below the mansion was the only reminder that the world outside still existed.

The files Dean had hacked from Selene's cloud account glared back at me.I scanned the list of medical records, flagged emails, and a string of texts to a contact labeled only as D.My fingers hovered over the keyboard, the weight of what I was reading weighing on me.

This wasn't an overdose.This was staged.

I zoomed in on Selene's prescription history which listed anti-anxiety meds, nothing lethal.But then, tucked away in a subfolder like a dirty secret, there was a scanned document with Dante's production company logo.A "consultation" receipt from a private clinic.

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