Page 194 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

“Then I suppose I have my answer.”

“You have the answer I gave you.”

His eyes lift again. For one brief second, the old tension is there between us, sharp and immediate.

I shut it down.

“Can we go back to the California expansion?” I ask.

Julian’s face settles into that familiar unreadable mask.

“If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

I look back at my notes before he can see anything else.

Camille exists.

That matters.

Whatever is happening in this room, however familiar his attention feels, I am not crossing that line. I turn the page and continue the interview.

By the time I get back to the apartment Blackwell arranged for the assignment, it is after 7:00.

The building sits a few blocks from Central Park, the kind of discreet, expensive address designed to make temporary stays feel permanent. The apartment itself is larger than I need, with two bedrooms, one and a half baths, pale hardwood floors, a compact marble kitchen, and tall windows overlooking a slice of the park between neighboring buildings.

I leave my heels by the door, change into leggings and a soft sweater, then settle onto the sofa with my notes spread across the coffee table.

For the next hour, I work through transcripts and interview summaries until my attention blurs. I reach for my phone, intending to check a message from Maya, and a business-news alert sits near the top of the screen.

“BLACKWELL-WHITFIELD WEDDING DELAYED AGAIN”

I stare at the headline longer than I mean to before opening it. The piece is thin on actual information. Anonymous sources. A postponed planning meeting. A public disagreement outside a charity event two weeks earlier. Camille photographed leaving separately. Julian declining to comment.

Nothing definitive.

Still, the pattern is obvious enough for whoever wrote the headline.

I scroll once and stop on a photograph of Julian and Camille from an event earlier in the year. She is elegant beside him, one hand resting lightly against his arm while cameras flash around them.

I lock the screen.

Whatever is happening between them belongs to them. A delayed wedding does not make Julian available to me, and tension between an engaged couple is not an invitation. If anything, it gives me another reason to be careful. I pull the interview notes back toward me and return to the work in front of me.

***

The next afternoon, I am back in Julian’s office with yesterday’s article still sitting somewhere in the back of my mind.

He looks irritated before I ask the first question. Not visibly enough that anyone unfamiliar with him would notice, but I do. His answers are shorter, his jaw tighter, and twice he glances toward his phone when it vibrates against the desk without reaching for it.

I keep the interview where it belongs.

“We’ve covered the initial California investment,” I say, looking down at my notes.

“What changed enough for Blackwell to make Silicon Valley such a large part of the long-term strategy?”

Julian folds his hands loosely in front of him.