Billionaire's Match novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The First Line

Elliot saw her before the cameras did.

She stood inside the doors in a grey coat with her hair cut to her jaw, and she was older than the girl in his head.

She was twenty-four now. She had been twenty when she stopped answering the phone.

Her eyes went down the length of the hall to the stage and found him.

Then she started to walk.

The cameras caught up with her halfway down the aisle, and the whole press row turned in its seats to follow.

"No," Dalton said into the dead microphone. "No."

Brittany's hand closed on Elliot's sleeve and stayed there.

His sister climbed the steps with a small black drive in her fist.

She did not look at Dalton. She walked straight to the technician at the side desk and held it out.

"Please," she said. "The top file."

The technician looked at the exchange official, who nodded without seeming to know why.

The screen lit.

It was a page of code, and across the top of it a line of header text and a date four years old.

Under the date was her name.

Elliot had said that name once a year to a phone that rang out.

Beside it on the screen the technician opened Dalton's version of the same file, with the same code and the same date.

In place of her name was his, and below it a university stamp, and the signature of the advisor who had approved it.

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