Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (15 page)

“I’m just looking out for
you,” she says.

“No, no,” I say, shaking
my head. “That’s one of those phrases that sounds nice but doesn’t mean
anything. You’re doing what you always do. You’re looking out for you.”

“What you need is a
fling
with someone to take your mind off of
Nick,” she says.

“Right,” I scoff.
“Cheating on my CEO boyfriend sounds exactly like the right move to make.”

“See?” she asks, either
missing or ignoring my sarcasm. “I knew you’d come around.”

“I’m not cheating on
him,” I tell her.

“You know, it’s not
cheating if one of you is out of town,” she says.

“You know you’re a
moron?” I respond.

Naomi catches me with a
quick elbow to the ribs.

“Hey!” I protest, only to
be shushed by the woman sitting behind me. In a much quieter voice, I ask,
“What was that for?”

“Nevermind,” she says.
“You see that guy over there? The one reading the magazine but turning the
pages the wrong way?” she asks.

“What about him?” I
groan.

“He is so looking for it.
Just sit back and watch,” she says. “I’m going to show you what you’re missing
by not being single.”

While it can’t be airline
policy to remove a passenger from the plane midflight, maybe they’d make an
exception.

Naomi gets up from her
seat and “accidentally” bumps into the man’s arm as she’s passing him. She
leans forward and puts her hands together on her chest, saying, “Please forgive
me.” Could she be any more obvious?

She keeps walking toward
the lavatory and, sure enough, within a minute, the man she bumped into is on
his way to join her.

This is
my life.

By the
time
the plane lands, Naomi’s been back to the
lavatory twice, both times with a man right after her. Every time she came back
to her seat—face red and stinking like the cheap cologne of whomever—she’d go
into why what she just did is what I should be doing.

I’ve never been someone’s
excuse for a sexual binge on a plane before. It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

We deplane and find a
driver holding a sign with our names on it. After collecting Max and Sammie,
we’re on our way back to Mulholland.

After we drop the animals
off at the apartment, I tell Naomi I’m going to go for a walk.
Of course,
she insists upon going with me.

We’re
walking,
and she’s still going on about how
I’ve had all the fun I’m going to have with Nick and how it’s time to cut the
cord. The longer we’re walking, the more ridiculous her arguments become.

If I engage her in
further conversation, she’ll never stop, so no matter how stupid or offensive
her words, I keep quiet. That silence ends, though, as we come within sight of
the shop.

“Oh my
god
,” I mutter and take off running. I stop
short before I reach the broken glass of what used to be the front windows of
the store.

There’s glass on the
sidewalk, even going out as far as the road. Inside the shop, it’s all rocks
and beer bottles and glass from the windows. The glass is just everywhere.

“Naomi?” I ask.

“Don’t look at me,” she
says. “I was perfectly fine kicking it in your boyfriend’s beach mansion. How
would I have anything to do with this?”

I wasn’t looking to blame
her; I was hoping she had an explanation. There was nothing in the store.
Whoever did this, it had nothing to do with theft.

Whoever did this wanted
to hurt me, and you know what? They succeeded.

Chapter
Twelve

Down the Line

Nick

“The fact you won’t tell
me how bad it is, tells me how bad it is,” I say through the phone to Malcolm.
It’s three o’clock in the morning, and he knows better than to call if
something’s not seriously wrong.

I look out the window of
my penthouse overlooking Manhattan and rub my eyes. The sky tonight is all a
sick orange light. That means clouds.

“I’m sorry, sir, I just
need you to get in here,” he says. “I don’t know if this line is secure.”

Okay, so it’s bad, bad.

“I’ll be right in,” I say
and hang up the phone. Anyone who says rich guys don’t work for a living should
try it for a while. Success is what they call the target on your back.

Not that I’m complaining.

I get dressed and decide to
forego the driver. A night like tonight, I need to feel like I’m doing
something.

Boarding the private
elevator, I slip down to my private garage in the sub-basement of the building.

“Good morning, Mr.
Scipio,” Hank, one of my lot’s security guards—and a former Marine—says. “Will
it be the Chiron today?” he asks, heading toward the rack of keys.

“No,” I answer. “I’m in
the mood for something less opulent. I’ll take the One-77.”

Of the seventy-seven
Aston Martin One-77s made, I used to own three of them. I found they did
better
as donations to charity auctions than
they did gathering dust in my car cellar.

“E
xcellent
, sir,” Hank says, grabbing the keys and tossing them to
me.

I put a lot of trust in
Hank and the two others, Ed and Val (a former Army Special Forces and a former
Navy SEAL, respectively.) They guard sixty-four sets of keys; each
one goes to
a vehicle worth a lot to a lot of
people.

I don’t worry too much
about it, though. They each make half a mil a year, plus benefits. More than
that, we’re all on friendly terms. Also, I make sure to keep them in the latest
models of the car of their choosing as well.

Not mine, though.
Setting boundaries is good.

I walk out into the vast
expanse of my private garage and nod to each of the guards as I see them. What
can I say? I protect the things I
care about
.

Some people collect wine.

It’s been awhile since
I’ve been down here, so I save myself the search and hit the lock button on the
key fob. The car horn beeps as the doors
re-lock,
and I follow the sound to the fourth row on the left, finding my One-77 where
it always is.

I need to unclutter my
head or wake up or something. It
has
been awhile since I’ve been down here, but this one’s special.

Getting in,
I’m cradled
in the near-form-fitted seat. I
start the car, listen to the rumble a moment, and start on my way.

The problem with having
an underground parking structure like this is it’s a long, winding drive up to
street level. I don’t mind, though.

As necessary as it may be
to get to work as soon as possible, I’ve been fighting battles on almost every
front. So I’ll go in, and I’m sure I’ll even break the limit on the way, but
I’m savoring every unavoidable delay.

Ellie’s
in
and out of touch since she left. Any other time, figuring out what’s going on
there would be my number one priority. Right now, though, I’m fighting for my
job, my position, my company. I’m fighting for everything that made me who I
wanted to be.

I finally reach the guard
post at the top, before the thick metal of the first garage door. There are
seven, each opener functioning on a different frequency. Also, there’s a
locking mechanism at the bottom, so when the doors are down, they’re also
anchored to the foundation below.

It may
seem excessive, but I’ve got a 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa in there for crying
out loud.

Helen gets the doors
open,
and I cruise into the only half-asleep
streets of New York at three in the morning. Once I’m on the road, though, it
doesn’t take nearly long enough to get to the office.

I pull the Aston into my
work garage—which comes complete with
a thick
,
lowering door more reinforced than the one over the vault at Fort Knox. I made
sure of it.

From there, it’s only a
minute on the elevator from the parking lot to the top floor. Malcolm is
waiting for me.

“Let’s talk in your
office,” he says.

I look around me. There’s
no one in sight. Even the custodians have gone home for the night.

“Yeah,” I answer and
unlock the door.

We get
inside,
and I close and lock the door behind
us. Then I turn on the light.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“It’s Marly,” he says.
“She’s giving them everything. Everything you’ve told me, she’s going to
spill everything
.”

“Let’s think about this
rationally,” I say, though I’m not sure I’m capable of the feat, myself. “It’s
not like I’ve broken any laws or even any ethical codes,” I tell Malcolm, even
though I know it doesn’t matter in the slightest. “How bad is it going to be?”

“Bad,” he says. “Maybe it
wouldn’t be an issue if things were going well here, but nobody knew why you
wanted to move the company. I think when they find out—”

“I don’t think that would
have gone over so well if I’d been upfront about it from the beginning,” I
interrupt. “I already know the
why. I
’m
asking how bad it’s going to be.”

“It doesn’t have to be,
though,” Malcolm says. “There’s a way to avoid all of this and get the company
back under your undisputed—”

“You know,” I interrupt,
“when I was a kid, my dad wasn’t around all that much.”

Malcolm blinks.

“See, dad was a military
man,” I continue. “He never quite made master sergeant, but he was with the Air
Force until I was almost eighteen-years-old. He was a decent enough guy, I
guess. There was just too much on his plate for him to spare much time.”

“Okay,” Malcolm says
slowly, furrowing his brow. “Wait, there’s no Air Force base anywhere near
Mulholland.”

“There isn’t
anymore
,” I tell him and go back to my
story. “When dad had time to tell me something, I listened,” I go on. “One of
the things he
said
a lot when I was
growing up was ‘when someone’s telling you something that sounds too good to be
true, give that person a solid kidney punch. They’re trying to sell you
something.’”

It’s an interesting
experience, watching Malcolm’s face. For a second, he smiles and nods his head.
Now he understands why I was telling the story. The self-congratulation never
lasts long, though.

Malcolm’s eyes are a bit
wider than
usual,
and I can tell from the
smacking sounds that his mouth has gone dry. I’m about to ask him if he needs
some water when he pulls through whatever he’s feeling and says, “
It’s not that bad
.” He tells me, “You’re not
going to like it, but just hear her out.”

“I was wondering when the
puppet master was going to come from behind the curtain,” I mutter.

“Sir,” he says, “she’s
down on the first floor. She can’t hear or see
us,
and if you don’t want to meet with her or even see her, you don’t have to,
but—”

“No, that sounds good,” I
interrupt. “No need for an alternate option.
I’m
sold
.”

“… but,” Malcolm
continues, looking quite small in the center of the office, “I think you should
at least hear her out. She doesn’t have to be our enemy, but if you don’t at
least talk to her, it’s happening tonight—this morning—whatever.”

“You’re doing a good job
of working yourself out of your shiny new position,” I inform Malcolm. “If you’re
just going to be her messenger, why not just replace you with her? She’s done
the job already. If it weren’t for Marly starting the leak in the first place,
I probably wouldn’t even remember your name. That seems
like an experience
I’d like to recreate,” I tell Malcolm.

“Just listen to her,”
Malcolm says. “If you don’t like what she has to say, you can fire me
afterward.”

“Why don’t I save some
time and—”

“Just
listen
to her!” Malcolm shouts.

It’s silent as he stands
there. His eyebrows are up a
little,
and
he’s not quite able to keep his mouth all the way closed.

“Any points you would
have gotten with me for doing that just now are more than outweighed by you
going behind my back and talking to the one person I told you not to talk to,”
I tell Malcolm. “Get her up here. She has five minutes from the time the
elevator door opens.”

Malcolm’s smart enough
not to say anything. He just walks past me and out the office door, closing it
on his way.

I know what she’s going
to say. It’s nothing new.

She’s going to tell me
that if I don’t get the company out of Mulholland, she’s going to tell the
board why I wanted to move it there. Appearances are everything. I don’t just
mean in business.

The board’s already
working on collecting evidence of mismanagement. They’re going to find it
whether they know about Ellie or not. The only difference is they’re going to
work a lot faster once they have the full story.

There’s a knock on the
door,
and I can already feel the side of my
mouth twitching.

“If you’re waiting for a
red carpet, you’re in the wrong building,” I call
out,
and the door opens.

Marly shows herself in,
but she doesn’t have her usual smirk. If anything, she’s hanging her head a
little. She’s trying to get my sympathy before she even opens her mouth.

The one problem with
Marly is she never got it
through her head
I’m not an idiot.

“Close the door and start
talking,” I tell her. “Make it quick, too. I look forward to going back home
and to bed so I can pretend this whole thing was a nightmare.”

“You’re
so dramatic,” she says, her voice quiet.
“You don’t have to be dramatic.”

“Thanks for the advice,”
I tell her. “Now, if there’s nothing else…”

“Why do you have to do
that?” Marly
asks
though I can barely
hear her she’s speaking so softly.

“What was that?” I ask,
just to prod at her.

“I don’t know if you
understand this or not, but I had a lot invested in this company,” she says. “I
don’t just mean stock options. I mean I cared about this
business
like it was my own. I still do,
whether you believe it or not.”

“Can we just get to the
pitch so I can turn it down and go home?” I ask, gritting my teeth.

“I cared about you,” she
says. “Not in
that
way, I mean, but
as more than just your inside girl. We’ve been through a lot of things
together, you and me,” she says. “I’ve never said this out loud, but I’ve
always considered us to be close friends.”

“You’re appealing to the
wrong emotion,” I tell her. “You’ve got a gun to my head. That’s what we’re
talking about
here. Only,
you’re going to
have to convince me to care whether or not you pull the trigger. Right now, it
doesn’t look like there’s that much left you can do to me that’s not going to
happen regardless.”

“You need to stop that,”
she says. “Quit blaming other people for your mistakes. You know you’re the
reason you’re in this mess. The board knew that without me having to tell them.
You have to drop her, Nick. I don’t just mean the two of y
ou should stay out of public places; I’m saying you
need
never to see that woman
again. You need to stop the construction on the new headquarters. Forget you
ever went to Mulholland and maybe
begin nodding
your head to a few things the board wants. You don’t have to lose this company,
Nick. I know that you’ve carried the torch for this stranger forever, but you
are blowing up a life
I
worked very
hard to build. I’m not going to stand for it, Nick.”

“And there are the
teeth,” I say, smiling.

“When I was working for
you—from the moment I
started
working
for you, I’ve been the one doing a lot of the heavy lifting,” she says. “You
grew into a brilliant mind of your own, but every once in a while, you get some
idea in your
head,
and it doesn’t matter
what I say or how loudly I say it, you’re going
to
do what you want. That’s what scares me
.”

“I’m glad we can agree on
that,” I tell her and start for the door.

“The problem is
that they’re
rookie mistakes. You fell into a
company,
and you had to learn under battlefield
conditions. I get that, but it also means you have some blind spots no one else
on your level has,” she says, stepping in my way. “You don’t know how much time
I’ve spent over the years cleaning up after you. I tolerated it for a long time
because when things started taking a nosedive, I was right there to tell you
how to pull it out again. Maybe you didn’t always agree, but you’d at least
hear me out when things started going bad. Why is the one thing that would
solve everything the one thing you
won’t
do? You know I know where the skeletons
are
.”