Page 96 of Assistant to the Billionaire CEO

I knocked and waited.

Someone shuffled toward the door from the other side and peered through the peephole. I recognized Ace’s light-blue eye staring out at me.

“Damon?” His door beeped electronically as he unlocked its electromagnetic lock. He opened it and peeked out. “It’s really not a good time.”

“I really need to talk to you,” I said.

I heard Ace muttering something under his breath.

“Let me in,” I insisted. “It won’t take long.”

He slipped through the door and closed it behind him, preventing me from catching even the slightest glimpse of the inside of his apartment. What the hell?

“We can talk out here.”

“Sure.” I didn’t really care what Ace was hiding in his apartment—unless it was a chick.

“Speak your piece.”

“I’ll get right to the point: Are you fucking my sister? I just saw her, and she’s not… Well, she doesn’t seem like her usual self.”

“That’s a weird assumption to make,” he rumbled. “Maybe she’s just having a bad day.”

“She was fine until I mentioned you. So, be honest with me. It’s the least you can do.” The irony of it all didn’t escape me: I hadn’t been completely honest with Ace myself and was now urging him to tell me the truth. But here and now, it was more important than the merger. It was about family, about my little sister. “Are you and Stella fooling around?”

He stared at me. His face was entirely expressionless, but I knew he was thinking about how to respond to my line of questioning. We’d been friends long enough that nothing either of us could do would be unpredictable to the other.

He leaned against the hallway’s blindingly white wall and crossed his arms. “Why did you mention me?” he asked.

For the first time in years, my heart stopped beating—out of distrust, not out of shock. “That’s not the point.” I stepped closer to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Tell me.”

He shook my hand from his shoulder and grimaced. “Does Stella know you’re here?”

“No, she doesn’t,” I said seriously and narrowed my eyes as if that would allow me to see inside his stubborn head. “For the last time. Are you fucking my sister? Are you stringing her along? Don’t lie to me.”

There was a long pause. “Damon,” he finally said, nodding solemnly. A sound came from inside his apartment. “I gotta go.”

“Why? Are you hiding a chick in there?”

“What the fuck?” He shook his head. “Are you high? My sister is staying with me, and her baby is sleeping. Enough of the interrogation, Damon. I have a workload to manage, tasks to complete, and a deadline to meet. Go home.”

“Wait. How are the acquisition papers coming along?”

“Good. We got the last shipment from the San Francisco archive and are soon going to wrap things up. You’ll have the information on your desk as planned: in two weeks, Monday first thing.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll see you around then. Mr. Humphries is waiting for it. Don’t be late or the deal is off.”

“Sure,” he said.

With that, he slipped back into his apartment and closed the door behind him.

There was nothing I could do about the fact he hadn’t given me a real answer to either question. Damn slickbastard.

Iwalked back toward the elevator and whipped my cell out of my pants’ pocket mid-stride. I started dialing Miles’s number just as the empty elevator arrived.

“Damon, is everything okay?” Miles’s crisp voice echoed through my phone’s speaker as I stepped inside and pressed the button.

“No,” I said as the elevator started descending. “I think Ace is screwing my sister.”

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