Longing For The Beach Billionaire Daddy
Chapter 73

*Michael*

I didn’t leave Colorado until the day Shelby was released from the hospital. Even though she didn’t want me there, I couldn’t bear to leave in case she changed her mind, so I stayed.

Bruce refused to leave my side, even with the state of the penthouse back in New York City. Each day he would check in at the hospital to monitor Shelby’s recovery. Most days, she wouldn’t even let him in the room, but he always gave me peace of mind that she was on the road to recovery.

The day she was discharged, I sent Bruce to pick her up and drive her to the airport, but Shelby refused to take my private jet back to Cambridge. At that point, I knew I needed to let her go.

As much as I wanted to reach out to her just to make sure she was okay, I refrained. Part of me wanted to send someone from my security team to campus to keep an eye on her. Just to make sure that Blaine was keeping his distance.

However, I knew if Shelby ever found out, she would be furious with me. And if Blaine ever found out that I had security monitoring Shelby, he would never honestly believe that our relationship was over.

So, it was safer for me to leave her alone despite how it hurt me.

So that day, I took my private jet back to New York to try to pick up the pieces of my life. When I got there, I found my penthouse in shambles. Blaine’s lackeys had torn the place to shreds. Feathers floated around my feet as I walked through the house; each step met with crunching glass—all the pillows from my sofa were ripped in half. Every book, knickknack, and trinket was pulled off of my shelves. Picture frames filled with family photos lay shattered on the floor. Bruce had offered to find someone to clean it up before I got back, but I needed to see it.

It looked as though whoever had been here tried to cause as much damage as physically possible. If it was at all possible, my bedroom was worse than the living room. Every shirt and suit jacket was pulled from the closet or dresser with shoulders torn or slashes cut from every angle. Every drawer was upended onto the floor, leaving the contents strewn around the room.

An emptiness washed over me walking through my home, which had lost all of its safety and comfort.

The damage was so bad, I decided to stay in a hotel, and now two weeks later, I was finally moving back into the penthouse. I opened the door half expecting to see the shards of glass still scattered on the carpet. Instead, the elevator opened to my living room; it looked just like the day I left it, with nothing out of place. Not everything was replaceable, but it was pretty damn close.

I didn’t know what to do with myself over the first few hours of the morning. It looked like the same penthouse I’d called home, but it still felt different. It felt defiled. I made a cup of coffee and took it out onto the balcony as I waited for my meeting with Roman Gatlin.

Roman was the FBI agent assigned to my case after we reported the break-in to the police. Because my laptop and hard drives were stolen, which made it possible for my company information to be accessed, the local authorities turned the case over to the FBI.

I was still unsure of what the meeting with Roman was about, but I was anxious to get to the bottom of this situation. The quicker we could get some solid evidence to put Blaine behind bars, the faster I could try to make things right with Shelby.

The thought of Shelby immediately felt like a pit in my stomach. Even if I could work everything out, I had no idea if Shelby would ever talk to me again. I leaned over my balcony rail, staring out across the city skyline, thinking about Shelby.

I did my best to recall each one of her features, her auburn hair and the creases next to her eyes when she smiled. I’d spent a lot of time over the past few weeks thinking about the small things because if she didn’t want to see me again, I wanted to make sure I would never forget.

I lifted the cup of coffee up to my mouth and took a large drink of lukewarm coffee. I’d been standing on the cold balcony for so long that my coffee was in that weird, awkward stage between fresh brewed and iced. I dumped the remains of the cup into a small planter on my balcony and returned back inside.

When I could no longer stand being idle, I returned downstairs and grabbed the keys to one of my favorite sports cars. Then, I headed straight to the office, not having anywhere else to go, even though the meeting didn’t start for hours. I would simply have to kill some time until Agent Gatlin arrived.

I made my way to the top floor of the building where my office was. The reception desk sat empty; being a Saturday, most of my regular employees had the day off. I was surprised to see a man sitting in my waiting room. As soon as he saw me get off the elevator, he stood and crossed the room toward me.

“Michael Astor?” he asked.

I reached out my hand to shake his, “Yes, sir, and you must be Agent Gatlin. I didn’t expect you here for our meeting for another few hours. Have you been waiting long?”

“I got here a little early,” was the man’s simple reply.

“Well, in that case, we should just have our meeting now. So if you’d like, please make yourself comfortable in the first conference room on the right. Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked, gesturing to the conference room.

I didn’t like to be caught off guard, but my anticipation of finding out what the man knew outweighed my irritation.

“I’ll take a coffee, one sugar, and two creams,” Agent Gatlin replied, taking off to the conference room as if he’d been there a thousand times before.

It took me a while to figure out how to get our coffee pot started, but after a few errors, I walked back into the conference room with two coffees in hand.

“I have to admit. I’m not sure why you called this meeting, but I’m hoping you have some more information on the person who broke into my penthouse,” I said, sliding a cup of coffee across the conference room table to the man.

“Unfortunately, we have no further information on who broke into your penthouse or what exactly they were looking for. It’s all a bit unusual,” Agent Gatlin said, pouring a creamer into his coffee.

“What do you mean unusual?”

“It’s unusual that even though this individual had the ability to access all of your company files, including your bank accounts, the only thing that we found to be accessed were personal messages between you and a Miss Shelby Hatton.”

The FBI agent slid a light blue-colored folder across the conference room table for me. I opened the folder cautiously, and inside were copies of every email, text message, and phone call I had made to Shelby over the last six months.

“We have a protocol in place to freeze all my accounts if they’re breached, so my personal life was all they could attack,” I said as I glanced through the folder, dread weighing heavily in my stomach.

“Who is Miss Shelby Hatton to you, Mr. Astor?” Gatlin asked.

“She is…excuse me, I misspoke. She was my girlfriend,” I answered.

“So why is it that someone would break into your penthouse just to get copies of your personal correspondence? Let me put it bluntly. Are you being blackmailed, Mr. Astor?”

I let out a noise between a cough and a laugh.

“I own a company that’s worth billions. Of course, I’m being blackmailed. Every time I turn around someone new is trying to blackmail me out of my money,” I said dryly.

“Why would someone think they could blackmail you using your ex-girlfriend Mr. Astor?” Agent Gatlin asked, his face staying as still as stone.

“Miss Hatton is significantly younger than I am. I suppose someone would think they could use that against me. If I were to guess at another thing, I would wager that you and the FBI already knew that,” I said, knowing they wouldn’t have sent an agent to speak with me without doing their own investigation into Shelby.

“That’s true. I just wanted to check with you to see if you had any theories as to who was behind this or why this break-in occurred?”

“I don’t. I came here today hoping you had a lead,” I said.

I decided to follow Bruce’s advice to let Blaine think he had gotten away with this. So even though I knew exactly who was behind the break-in, exactly who had gotten into my files, I kept my mouth shut. All I could do was hope that the FBI knew what they were doing and would eventually put Blaine back behind bars where he belonged.

“We do have a lead,” Aget Gatlin said.

“Are you going to leave me in suspense?”

“Do you or anyone in your family have connections with the Weston Crime family?” he asked.

“Crime family? Are you talking about the mob?” I replied, extremely confused.

How would the FBI connect a crime family with the break-in that occurred at my penthouse? What had my half-brother gotten himself into, gotten me into?

“Yes, Mr. Astor. The mob.”