The call ended with a dead tone that seemed to echo through Alexander’s empty office like a gunshot.
He stood frozen, his phone still pressed to his ear, the silence of the room pressing in on him from all sides.
His jaw was clenched so tight that his teeth ached.
His free hand had curled into a fist at his side, his fingers hurt from the pressure, veins standing out against his skin like wires beneath the surface.
“This is the man your fake fiancée can never escape from.” The words replayed in his mind on an endless loop, each repetition fueling the fire burning in his chest.
He had given Kelly one job.
Just ‘one.’ Stay in the office.
Don’t wander.
Don’t embarrass him.
Be the perfect, obedient fake fiancée until he returned.
And what had she done?
She had vanished.
Disappeared into thin air like a ghost.
And now some ‘man’—some unknown, faceless man—had answered her phone, drunk and slurring his words, speaking to Alexander as if they were old friends at a bar.
“Fake fiancées, loan sharks, no real life support—it’s a lot.
A ‘lot.'” Alexander’s stomach twisted.
Loan sharks?
What the hell was Kelly mixed up in?
And more importantly—was she safe?
He hated that he cared.
He hated that the thought of her hurt or scared or in danger made something cold settle in his chest.
She was a tool.
A means to an end.
A pretty face he had hired to play a role.
Nothing more.
So why couldn’t he stop thinking about the slurred desperation in that man’s voice?
Why couldn’t he shake the feeling that something was terribly, horribly wrong?
He pressed a speed dial button.
The line rang once, twice, three times.
“Track a phone for me,” Alexander said before the person on the other end could even greet him.
“I need the location now.” “Mr.
Morrowgate, I’ll need the number—” Alexander recited Kelly’s number from memory, his voice clipped and cold.
“Send me the address the moment you have it.
I don’t want updates.
I want results.” The line went dead.
Alexander paced his office like an angry lion.
His eyes kept darting to the door, as if expecting Kelly to walk through it at any moment with some flimsy excuse about getting lost or needing fresh air.
But she didn’t come.
The minutes stretched into an eternity.
Then his phone buzzed.
An address.
‘The Rusty Nail.’ A bar in a part of the city that Alexander had never set foot in.
A part of the city where people went to forget their problems, not solve them.
He grabbed his coat and strode out of the office without a word to anyone.
******** The drive to ‘The Rusty Nail’ took twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of Alexander sitting in the back of his sleek black sedan, his leg bouncing with restless energy, his mind racing through a thousand possible scenarios.
What if Kelly was hurt?
What if the man who answered the phone had done something to her?
What if she had walked out of Alexander’s life and left him scrambling to explain her absence to his grandfather, to the board, to the press?
‘I’ll fire her,’ he told himself, gripping his knee until his knuckles ached.
‘The moment I see her, the moment I confirm she’s alive and breathing, I’ll fire her on the spot.
No excuses.
No second chances.
She’s done.’ It was a comforting thought.
A clean, simple solution to a messy problem.
He couldn’t let her embarrass him like this in the future.
But as the car pulled up to the curb outside ‘The Rusty Nail’, Alexander’s attention was immediately pulled away from Kelly.
Parked directly in front of the bar, gleaming under the flickering streetlight like a predator resting in the shadows, was a car that Alexander knew better than his own reflection.
A custom-built Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII.
Matte black with chrome accents that caught the light like shards of moonlight.
The windows were tinted so dark they looked like pools of oil.
The license plate was unmistakable: ‘KING-1.’ Alexander’s blood turned to ice.
‘King.’ His older brother.
His oldest rival.
His enemy disguised as family.
Alexander’s jaw tightened until it hurt.
King Morrowgate was the eldest son of the Morrowgate empire.
From the moment Alexander and King were old enough to walk, everything between them had been a competition.
Toys became battles.
Their parents’ affection became something to win instead of receive.
Every birthday, every achievement, every scrap of praise turned into another score to settle.
Growing older hadn’t changed a thing between them—it had only raised the stakes.
They fought over controlling shares of the Morrowgate empire.
They fought for public admiration, for influence, for power.
Even success itself became a contest.
The bigger mansion.
The faster car.
The more expensive watch.
The better reputation.
If one brother had it, the other wanted something greater.
And now King’s car was parked outside a cheap, rundown bar in the worst part of the city.
‘What the hell is he doing here?’ Alexander’s jaw tightened.
Whatever King was doing in a place like this, Alexander knew with bone-deep certainty that it wouldn’t be to his liking.
He stepped out of his car, the evening air hitting him like a wall.
The street was dimly lit, lined with flickering lampposts and shadowed alleyways.
The muffled thump of music seeped through the walls of The Rusty Nail, a low, pulsing heartbeat that seemed to match the furious rhythm of Alexander’s own pulse.
He pushed open the door.
The bar was exactly what he had expected—and worse.
Dim, smoky, smelling of spilled beer and cheap perfume.
The floor was sticky beneath his polished leather shoes.
A few heads turned as he entered, eyes widening at the sight of a man in a thousand-dollar suit stepping into their world like a wolf walking into a den of sheep.
But Alexander didn’t care about any of them.
His eyes found King immediately.
His older brother stood near the far end of the bar, his back half-turned to the door.
He was tall—taller than Alexander by an inch—with broad shoulders that seemed to fill the space around him.
His suit was charcoal gray, perfectly tailored, worth more than most people’s cars.
His dark hair was swept back, revealing a sharp jawline and cold, calculating eyes.
And in his arms, cradled against his chest like something precious, was Kelly.
Alexander’s vision went red.
She was limp.
Unconscious.
Her head rested against King’s chest, her wig slightly askew, her makeup smeared across her cheeks.
Her dress was wrinkled, her shoes were missing, and her breathing was slow and heavy—the unmistakable rhythm of someone who had drunk themselves into oblivion.
But it wasn’t just the sight of her that made Alexander’s blood boil.
It was the way King was holding her.
Possessive.
Intimate.
His arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close, his other hand gently cradling the back of her head as if protecting her from the world.
‘Protecting her.
My fiancée.
In his arms.’ Alexander’s hands clenched into fists at his sides.
Every instinct screamed at him to cross the room, rip Kelly out of his brother’s grip, and demand answers.
But the Morrowgates didn’t scream.
They didn’t shout.
They didn’t make scenes in public places where anyone could see them, where anyone could report back to their grandfather or the board or the press.
So instead, Alexander walked forward with measured, deliberate steps.
Each footfall was calm.
Controlled.
Deadly.
He stopped a few feet away from his brother, close enough to see the faint smirk playing at the corner of King’s lips.
“King,” Alexander said, his voice flat.
“Imagine finding you here.” To be continued…