The Scandalous Billionaires Collection (69 page)

"Marsha Smith, our head of security, has been
on them like a second skin for weeks." Harrison said. "They've been
spending all that money you sent them and we have plenty of
footage. They moved house, bought new cars, they've been living it
up. I can show it all to you right here, right now, on this." He
took a small tablet computer out of his jacket and handed it to
her.

"It's all ready to go, just hit play."

Just hit play. That's all she had to do to
see the end of this darkness and step out into the light again. She
took the tablet and touched the screen to start the flow of
images.

What she watched next was surreal.

The footage was in a crowded bar with voice
over from Marsha. She explained blow by blow what took place
next.

'Suspects Steve and Stacy Kowalski are out on
the town at the Remington Bar on Lexington Ave. That chilled
Champagne was waiting for them.'

She watched the couple kiss, embrace, fool
around, laugh, quaff champagne.

"This means nothing." She said. "She has to
play along with him or he'll beat her up. If he can't get to her
then he'll get her family instead. She lives in fear."

"She has no family Bella. Marsha has checked
it all out very thoroughly. The only family she has is Steve, her
husband of the last three years. Is that how they've been
controlling you?"

Bella was too shocked to answer.

"This means nothing." She repeated.

"Keep watching." Harrison said.

'Things get nasty now.' Marsha continued.
'Seems to be a 'domestic' situation of some kind.'

Steve and Stacy began arguing and as they got
louder other customers began to give them looks. The wait staff
began to hover around them, ready to intervene.

Eventually Stacy shouted loud enough for the
recording device to pick up her words distinctly.

'I fucking made sure that little bitch gave
us her whore money you piece of shit. I'm the reason we're here,
not you.'

It was enough, wait staff and security began
swooping in but not before Stacy took the Champagne bottle and
swung it expertly at Steve's head sending him to the floor.

The scuffle that ensued was almost comical as
Stacy continued aiming blows with her fists and feet at the
disoriented Steve.

'The happy couple are now escorted outside',
Marsha continued, 'where the battle of the sexes continues on the
street. Eventually a passing patrol car saves Steve from his wife
and they catch a cab to the nearest ER.'

Harrison reached out and took the tablet from
her.

"There's a lot more Bella, so this game is
now over. These people deserve to go to jail and that's exactly
where I'm going to put them. You don’t have to worry about them
anymore. This is over."

Bella struggled up from the couch and walked
to the window. Harrison went to follow her but Suzy stopped
him.

"Leave her." She said. "Leave us alone, just
for now."

He glared at her and then to the mother of
his child, the woman who had turned his world upside down. The look
of pain was fleeting but then he acquiesced and left the women
alone together.

"Bella…"

"Wait Suzy, please…God. I need… I just need a
minute." She stood at the window looking out into the manicured
gardens. Outside it looked like there wasn't a problem in the whole
wide world. She looked down at her belly again, her baby bump was
just barely beginning to show.

When she turned around her eyes were full of
tears and Suzy crossed the room quickly to take her in her arms. It
felt so good to be close with her best friend again, after so many
months of subterfuge, secrets and deception. At last she could tell
the truth, the whole truth.

"Come on Bella, sit down. You need to rest
and the baby needs to rest. You need all your strength right now."
She led her friend back to the couch and the two sat down
together.

"Harrison is going to take care of all this,
you don’t need to worry about anything anymore. He's been so great.
All this time, I don’t know how he's been so strong. He's always
believed in you. It's a quality he has that brings out the best in
people, apparently he's always been like this. That's why the 2nd
Chance Foundation has been such a success. Whenever he goes down
there I swear to you, he changes lives."

"Well he's certainly changed mine." She said
with painful irony.

"He's so sorry about that. You have no idea.
He totally blames himself for everything that's happened to
you."

"So why has he been so cold to me? These last
weeks have been so, God Suzy, it's been so lonely." She had to
struggle not to tear up again.

"He had to be sure. You've been lying to him,
remember? If you had just trusted him he could have taken care of
this weeks ago. He didn't want to risk you fighting against him or
revealing anything to those two creeps Stacy and Steve, so he had
to pretend everything was exactly the way it looked on the outside.
He didn't even tell me or Zach or anyone else about what was going
on. I'm telling you Bella, never underestimate these Demovic guys.
They aren’t who they are because of luck or waiting for things to
happen to them. These guys make things happen and when Harrison
closes in on them Steve and Stacy won't know what hit them."

The very mention of Stacy's name was painful
to Bella.

"I can't believe she would lie to me like
this. We were so close in…" She still couldn't bring herself to
talk about prison in front of Suzy. She had known her for so long
and never said a word about it, to openly talk it about it now was
just so uncomfortable.

"It's okay Bella, you don't have to talk
about any of that if you don’t want to. Not to me anyway."

"No. Suzy. I want to. I've got to put all
this secrecy behind me. I need to tell you what happened to me. I'm
just sorry I didn't tell you earlier."

Suzy nodded her head. She was ready to
listen.

"Eight years ago I put my father in the
hospital."

Suzy waited. She had been coached by Melissa,
her ex-psychotherapist big sister and by Harrison. No judgment, no
commentary, just open acceptance of whatever was to be shared and
revealed.

"He was beating my mother, again. I had
already decided I was going to do it. I even warned him but he just
told me I'd get a beating too if I tried anything. So when he came
home drunk again that night and started taking it out on her in the
kitchen, I gave him one warning. He ignored me. He raised his fist
to hit her again and I gave it to him with a piece of lead pipe I
found in the basement. I was standing behind him and he went down
with the first blow but I was so terrified he would get back up
again that I started hitting him, again and again to make him stay
down. When I was finished there was blood everywhere and my mom was
screaming at me, asking me what I'd done. I walked out of the house
with no shoes on and I don't know when the cops found me. They say
it was the next day but for me it could have been weeks, could have
been minutes. I have no idea to this day where I went or what I did
in those twenty-four hours. I pleaded self-defense but my mom
wouldn't back me up. She was too afraid of what would happen. They
gave me seven years Suzy. Seven years for stopping that drunk
bastard from beating my mom."

Suzy couldn't even begin to understand the
pain her friend had suffered. She couldn’t believe she had kept it
a secret all this time. Her own story of being an invalid and being
on kidney dialysis for years seemed nothing by comparison.

"So when you met me, you must have been…"

"I was only out of jail just one week. I
served four years for good behavior and if it hadn't been for Stacy
I might not have made it. She saved my life more than once."

"So why did you turn your back on her."

"I didn't. It was never like that. I just
couldn't bear to be reminded of my old life. My mom disappeared
about two years into my sentence. Missing person. No trace, never
been found. My dad is still out there, in Iowa last I heard, living
his drunken life and probably abusing some other poor woman. I
haven't seen him since our last day in court and I hope I never see
him ever again. He can rot in hell. Really. I hate myself for
having those feelings about another human being but I can’t help
it. If I could go back and do it again…"

Her words trailed off.

"My God Bella," Suzy was stunned. "I could
never have imagined."

"Yeah. Neither could I."

They sat in silence for a while before Suzy
got up.

"I think you better see Harrison now. You
must have a lot to say to each other."

Bella nodded. This wasn't going to be
easy.

Suzy left and Harrison entered. He approached
softly, cautiously and then knelt down in front of her, looked at
her with his intense eyes and then placed his hand onto her
abdomen. She covered his hand with hers and then in a moment their
lips came together. The nightmare must surely be over now and she
was waking up to the pure sunshine of a new day.

"God I've missed you." She whispered into his
neck.

"I've always been here Bella. Always. I will
never let you down. Either of you." He placed his hand to her
abdomen again. "Watching you, wanting you from so close by and not
being able to touch you has been so damn hard."

She could feel the strength of his desire
course through her. It had been an age since they had touched.

"Since we found out the truth about Steve and
Stacy I've wanted to come to you but we needed solid proof."

His hands had begun to explore her body and
she couldn't believe the strength of her own response; pregnancy
had multiplied her libido by ten but there had been no outlet, no
one to even think about as a partner much less someone to hold in
the flesh and now her man was back here beside her, pulling her
close to him.

The heavy baby care book she had put down on
the couch slid to the floor with a thump and caused Harrison to
look around.

"The baby." He said with a kind of agony.
"I'm sorry Bella. God this is going to be hard."

Bella sat up on the couch in front of him.
The sight of him on his knees before her was almost too much to
bear. She put her hands to her thighs and eased them open, her
loose summer dress plunging down between them, revealing the
contours of her just barely rounding abdomen, her inner thighs, her
soft pubic mound.

"The baby won't feel a thing." She said
huskily. "But I will."

Harrison didn’t smile; what he was about to
do was a serious business; as serious as life itself. He had been
holding back for months with the woman he desired right under his
nose becoming inexplicably sexier every day as she grew more subtly
pregnant.

She had been denied to him all this time but
now she was drawing him in, waiting and ready to receive.

He closed his hands around her hips and drew
her down from the couch onto the plush, soft rug below. The dress
she wore rode up her thighs revealing the sexy underwear she had on
below. Since her libido had gone off the charts she had been
wearing racier underwear each day, subconsciously choosing the
sexiest she had in her wardrobe as an outlet for the powerfully
sublimated forces of her desires.

She watched as Harrison's eyes were
inexorably drawn down to her engorged breasts, to her quivering
abdomen and finally to the eye-catching lavender and lace
underwear. The stiffening vision was the last thing he had expected
to witness when he had steeled himself to come and tell the mother
of his child that she would be released from the grip of a
blackmail plot. The unexpectedness of it took him totally off guard
and the erection it gave him threatened to burst the buttons off
his pants.

"My God." He whispered. "I hope you're right
about the baby." He put his hands vise like around her ankles and
drew her closer to him. This was going to be like nothing he had
ever experienced before.

In an instant his head was buried between her
legs, his tongue and teeth plundering, exploring and setting her on
fire in a way she would never have thought possible. The power of
her body's changing hormonal levels were sky-rocketing her
responsiveness to levels she had never felt before and every touch
of the tip of his tongue, every tiny nip from his perfect white
teeth sent raw sexual energy rippling through her from point of
contact inwards to the core of her being. The changes to her body
had kept her permanently swollen, sensitive, insatiable and ready
for sex from morning until all night long for weeks and her breasts
had been so responsive to even the light touch of the fabric in her
clothes that she had avoided touching them for days.

Something told her that wouldn't be
Harrison's plan though.

His caressing hands were all over her legs,
stroking her inner thighs, higher and higher as his tongue played
with her in ever more daring fashion. Her breasts wouldn’t be far
behind.

"Your mine now." He grunted. "All of you,
every tiny bit. You're never going anywhere again."

He slid off the sexy underwear leaving her
thrillingly exposed as his head descended again, his tongue played
around her lower lips, teasing, cajoling, exulting in the freedom
to lap her waiting pussy. He was possessed with desire and
determined to hear her scream out her lust for him.

"Oh my God." She gasped as she felt herself
become almost breathless. "Suzy… God… Suzy must still be
outside."

"Don’t care." He grunted and plunged again to
her pussy, her lips, her waiting clit. She screamed with release
and felt the first hot waves of orgasm buckle through her.

"That's right." He said, pulling himself back
again, taunting her. "It's all for me now."

His hands went higher, underneath her loose
dress and found her bra. Her breasts were so sensitive that even
the approach of his hands caused exquisite sensation to pass
through her.