The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 119

Chapter 107: The Trap

Bella POV

The message came through my business contact line, which was why I almost didn’t question it.

Re: Singapore acquisition – potential whistleblower with documentation on Richard Hart’s shell company activity. Can only meet in person. Time sensitive. Tonight, 8 PM, 14 Crane Yard (warehouse district).

The attached name was someone I’d heard of a mid-level compliance officer who had worked briefly at one of Richard’s firms before the collapse.

I called the number. It went to voicemail, a professional enough greeting to pass a cursory check. I told myself the location was odd but whistleblowers were paranoid by nature, and warehouse districts at eight in the evening weren’t inherently alarming if you were the kind of woman who moved through the world with the baseline confidence that you could handle most situations.

I almost texted Caleb. My thumb hovered over his name twice. But Tom was at Maya’s, the restructuring reports needed to go out by morning, and I told myself it was a preliminary meeting, a quick assessment, nothing that required backup.

drove myself, which was the second mistake.

Crane Yard was what it sounded like – a block of commercial warehouses that had been awaiting redevelopment for long enough to become genuinely derelict. The streetlights worked intermittently. My heels sounded loud on the pavement as I walked from where I’d parked, my phone in my hand, and I was maybe thirty feet from number fourteen when something in my body registered the wrongness before my mind caught up.

The light inside was strange. And there were two cars parked at angles that blocked the access road, which was not how a nervous whistleblower wanting a quick exit would position themselves.

I’d already stopped walking when the door opened.

Not the compliance officer. Not anyone I recognized at first two men I’d never seen, and then a third figure stepped out behind them, and it took me longer than it should have because she looked different than the last photos I’d seen.

“Bella,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow.”I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

I took a step back. “I’m leaving.”

“I really think you should come inside.” She nodded at the two men, who moved to flank her, and my mind shifted fast.

I threw the phone hard toward the streetlight to my left, the clatter drawing their eyes for a half-second, and I moved – toward the adjacent building’s service entrance, which I’d clocked without consciously noting it on the way in. The door gave under my shoulder and I was inside and moving through the dark.

I could hear them behind me. I hit the fire exit bar on the far wall and came out onto a service alley, breathing hard and I ran – toward the end of the alley where the streetlights were, where there would be people or at minimum cameras.

1.3

< Chapter 107-the-Trap

+25 Points

One of the men came out of the door behind me, faster than I’d hoped, and he caught my arm at the alley’s mouth, and I put my elbow into his face with everything I had that it was enough to break his grip, and then someone stepped out of the shadows ahead of me and I had half a second to process that it wasn’t one of theirs before Caleb said, “I’ye got her,” his hand closed around my wrist.

Behind us: the sound of his security team, three of them, moving into the alley with the practiced coordination of people who did this professionally.

He didn’t stop moving, pulling me forward and then into a waiting car I hadn’t seen, and only when the door closed and the locks engaged did his grip on my wrist loosen, though his hand didn’t let go.

“Your phone pinged the crane yard area before it went dark,” he said, his voice controlled. “I had someone watching the message traffic on your contact line. There was a flag on the sender’s IP a few days ago.” He looked at me, and what was in his face wasn’t anger, exactly, but something more desperate. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought it was real,” I said. “I almost texted you.”

“Almost.” The word came out rough, he looked down at my arm – a bruise already forming where the man’s grip had been – and something in his jaw worked. “The contact chain traces back to the same source as before, but the operational lead is someone new. Someone with access to your business line and enough knowledge of the Singapore deal to construct a plausible story.”

“She was there,” I said. “I saw her.”

His eyes met mine, he didn’t ask because he already knew.

The car moved through the city and I became aware, slowly, that I was shaking slightly- and Caleb pulled me against his side, his arm coming around my shoulders, and I let myself lean there.

“You should have called me,” he said quietly, into my hair.

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

Outside, the city lights slid past the window, and I thought about how close the calculation had been, and how different the end of the alley might have looked if he hadn’t been there, and I held onto his jacket and breathed.

The pain hit around the same time as the parking garage – my side, where I’d hit the door, sharper than I’d registered while running. I shifted and made a sound I hadn’t meant to, and Caleb looked down immediately.

“Where?” he said.

“Side. It’s fine.”

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