His Secret Merger (Off-Limits Billionaires #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Damian

The knock on my door was too soft to be urgent but too purposeful to ignore.

“Come in,” I called, closing the donor spreadsheet in front of me. I’d been staring at it so long that the numbers were beginning to look like abstract art.

Louisa stepped inside, dressed in her usual neutral palette—soft gray slacks, white blouse, and thin gold chain that caught the light. It was just enough to say I have impeccable taste and I’m not trying too hard . She was brilliant like that—sharp without showboating.

I smiled. “If this is about next week’s Provenance Roundtable, tell me you’re canceling it. I need one less thing on fire.”

She gave me a tight smile. “It’s not that.”

Louisa crossed the room with the kind of grace that came from years as the University of Miami’s art curator and a storied career researching in Europe’s glass-walled museums, then placed a single sheet of paper on my desk.

Resignation letter.

I didn’t even have to open it.

“You’re leaving.”

She nodded once; her shoulders stiff. “I’ve accepted a position with the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Curatorial lead on a special Baroque acquisition.”

I blinked.

“That’s huge.”

“It is.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t want to say anything until it was official. There were interviews, funding considerations... I wasn’t sure it would work out.”

“You’re moving to Italy,” I said, still absorbing it.

“In six weeks.”

She looked sorry. And I believed her. We’d only been open a few months, and she’d been with me since day one. Vérité’s name carried weight in the right places, but Louisa was the anchor. The scholar. The real deal.

“I thought we had more time,” I admitted.

“I did too.”

I leaned back in my chair. The office still smelled like new carpet, citrus oil, and fresh ambition.

Vérité was sleek, minimalist, and designed to look far more established than it was—a polished glass conference table, a curated book collection, and a few carefully hung pieces that whispered legitimacy. The mission was clear:

A nonprofit dedicated to identifying, recovering, and returning stolen artwork to rightful heirs, focused on post-war looting and unethical private acquisitions.

We weren’t just writing checks or lending names to exhibitions. That was what legacy families did—quiet philanthropy, tax write-offs, cocktail hours masquerading as causes.

What we were doing at Vérité was different. At least, it was supposed to be.

We were digging into the quiet, often invisible thefts that shaped generational wealth—paintings taken under duress, sculptures shuffled through auction houses with missing years in their provenance, heirlooms hanging in penthouses whose owners didn’t care—or didn’t want to know—where they came from.

We followed cold trails and dead names and hired researchers to comb through dusty shipping records and museum archives, funding digital restoration scans, private investigators, and legal teams. It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t clean, it was complicated, slow, and full of risk, and it cost more than I’d admitted out loud.

But it mattered.

It was personal to me. My mother had been a patron of the arts—more interested in obscure provenance documents than dinner parties. She used to whisper when we visited galleries: That one shouldn’t be here. Or, someone probably lost that to a war or a man with a contract and no conscience.

She never said it for drama. She said it like the truth.

This foundation—this entire concept—was a promise. Maybe to her legacy. Maybe to myself. A way to take the influence I’d been born into and aim it at something that felt like redemption—until she left my father and ran away with her doctor.

But without Louisa?

Without her quiet authority and museum-world fluency?

We looked like a shell. Worse—a vanity project. A billionaire bored with branding, chasing cultural clout.

And if there was one thing I couldn’t afford right now, it was for the wrong people to start whispering that I was out of my depth. I knew how fast that sort of rumor caught fire in rooms full of crystal and curated smiles.

I stood and picked up the letter, scanning the graceful, formal phrasing. She was thanking me. For the opportunity, the trust, the vision.

She should’ve been the one getting thanked.

“You helped me close Milan,” I said, lifting my eyes. “They wouldn’t have taken us seriously without you in the room.”

“You did the talking,” she said, almost amused.

“Maybe. But they listened because you were nodding.”

A beat passed between us.

“I’ll miss this,” she said softly. “What we’re building. But Rome...” She exhaled, her eyes lighting with something unspoken. “I couldn’t say no.”

I reached out and shook her hand. “You shouldn’t have. This is incredible. I’m proud of you.”

Her fingers squeezed mine gently. “You’ll find someone. You always do.”

She let go and turned, pausing at the door. “I’ll stay on for a few more weeks, of course. And anything you need after that—references, remote calls—I’m happy to help.”

Then she was gone.

The door clicked shut behind her with an elegance that somehow made it worse.

I dropped back into my chair and stared at the letter.

Six weeks to replace the only person who made us look like more than a cocktail hour pitch.

Six weeks to convince Judge Valencia—chairman of the Miami Art Association and a man whose only greater passion than lost art was low-stakes golf—that we weren’t built on glass.

Six weeks to keep the press from sniffing too closely at the foundation’s filings. Six weeks to make every invite, every handshake, every champagne toast look like we were thriving.

And now I’d have to do it without the one person who knew how to play the long game.

Without the one person who made this place feel like more than just a beautiful idea, barely held together with charm, strategy, and borrowed time.

My phone buzzed just as I shut the door to the conference room.

Morris Wextner.

Seeing my attorney’s name alone triggered a dull ache behind my right eye.

I answered without ceremony. “Tell me you’re calling with good news.”

“No news is ever that good at two fifteen on a Wednesday,” Morris said, dry as sandpaper. “You sitting down?”

I stayed standing. “Try me.”

“It’s official. The Cut of Her Jib is in bankruptcy processing. Papers were filed this morning.”

I exhaled slowly through my nose, gripping the edge of the sleek glass table like it might hold me steady. “And?”

“And we’ve got a court date. Nothing assigned yet—judge pending.”

The Cut of Her Jib had been a gamble. A flashy, fashion-forward accessory line launched five years ago with designer handbags, minimalist silk scarves, and a fragrance that, for a hot minute, had a profile in Vogue .

It had buzz. It had elegance. Then the market shifted, influencers stopped promoting silk, and my so-called creative director decided she wanted to be a wellness guru.

Now, we were bleeding capital and quietly sinking, and I was praying the wreckage didn’t surface too soon.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How long before my name starts circulating?”

“Technically, you’re insulated. But technically, it doesn’t last forever. If the media starts poking around the court docket—or if a creditor starts talking—you’ll be tied to it.”

“How likely?”

A pause.

“You’re too shiny, Damian. That kind of shine draws light. And attention. If this gets linked to you before the Vérité funding solidifies, it’s going to raise questions you don’t want to answer.”

I swore under my breath. “Does Valencia know?”

“Doubt it. But that window is shrinking.”

I didn’t respond right away. I just stared out the wall of windows overlooking the marina. Boats lined the slips, pristine and bright in the midday sun, like little floating illusions of control.

“Tell me the second a judge is assigned,” I said.

“Already flagged it.”

I ended the call and slid the phone onto the table, letting it sit there like it might cool off.

This was what it meant to juggle appearances. Keep one arm in philanthropy while the other shoved a sinking brand off a cliff and prayed no one watched it hit bottom.

I’d built a life where the worst thing that could happen wasn’t failure.

It was being seen failing.

And right now, the veneer was thinning faster than I could patch it.

I changed my clothes and laced up my running shoes like I was heading into battle.

A full hour had passed since the call with Morris, but the weight of it hadn’t budged. The numbers, the implications, the slow bleed from something I used to be proud of—it all pressed against my chest like wet cement. Too much to say out loud. Too risky to name.

So I ran.

Out the front door of the Vérité office, down toward the quiet stretch of Coconut Grove that snaked along the marina. The sidewalks here were wide, shaded by palms and jacarandas, edged with iron gates guarding homes that screamed old money. I kept my pace hard and fast. Focused.

But my thoughts didn’t fall in line.

The art show was three weeks out, and country club cocktail hours before that. The donor brunch at the Biltmore in a couple of weeks—all of it stacked like a house of cards—gowns, wine lists, auction items—whispering one thing beneath the surface: Is Sinclair slipping?

They wouldn’t ask outright, of course. The Miami elite never said the quiet part out loud. They’d do it in glances. In hesitation. In the fact that my name didn’t appear in the event program’s top tier.

I clenched my jaw and pushed harder, the slap of my sneakers against the pavement like punctuation.

Reputation was everything. Not just the illusion of wealth but the confidence in it. The ease. No one wanted to write checks to someone who looked like they needed saving. They tried to align themselves with people who had already won. Who didn’t sweat. Who always landed on their feet.

Which made this moment, with one foundation barely crawling and another brand in free fall, feel like standing on a trapdoor with my own hand on the lever.

I slowed as I reached the curve near the marina, the kind of view people came to this side of the city to photograph. Bright blue sky, white boats, calm water.

It was quiet here, and for a moment, so was I.

Then I thought of Juliette.

Not in a clinical way. Not like I should. She wasn’t leverage or a reputation booster or someone with strategic value.

She was chaos and comfort. A woman who didn’t care if I owned half of Miami or bartended part-time in Brickell. She didn’t ask how the foundation was doing. She didn’t want reports. She wanted tequila. Music. Pleasure.

She wanted me—or at least the version I let her have.

And I wanted her, because with Juliette, I didn’t have to be any version of myself. I could just be .

She was heat in a short sundress, legs for days, and a smirk that told me she always knew more than she was saying.

There was something unapologetically alive about her—like she was always dancing just out of reach of consequence.

I envied that. The way she moved through life unbothered, unfiltered, like she’d already decided the rules didn’t apply.

Jules didn’t need my name. She never asked for the fancy dinners or the private drivers. She took what she wanted, when she wanted it, including me.

I pulled out my phone, thumb hovering for a beat before typing.

Damian: Want to crash an auction this weekend? I’ll buy you something pretty. If you behave.

I hit send, shoved the phone back in my pocket, and turned toward home.

I’d fix the bankruptcy, find a replacement for Louisa, and spin the next few weeks until Vérité looked bulletproof again.

But first, I needed a weekend with Juliette. Something that didn’t require spin. Or polish.

Just a woman who knew exactly how to take the edge off.

And how to sharpen it all over again.