Unlawful Attraction: The Complete Box Set: Alpha Billionaire Romance (13 page)

Shifting my attention back down to the police report, I tapped it with the tip of my left index finger. “What happened when you went to your superior and told him your report didn’t match the reports filed by the detectives assigned to the case?”

Dunne looked away, his eyes grim.

“He’s still 'looking into it.' My uncle and I...” Dunne shrugged. “We chewed the fat on it a while. He told me to give it time. I’m doing that. But it’s rubbing me wrong.”

“Your uncle? Oh, yeah. Never mind.” I rolled my eyes.

Dunne’s uncle was the former chief of police, now retired and enjoying his days sitting in front of the slots down in Atlantic City. Apparently, he was Midas when it came to the slot machines. He was sitting very pretty and according to Dunne, he was including three – and only three – entities in his will. Dunne, a pretty bartender by the name of Jolene, and Marlie McTierney.

I could see why he would choose Dunne to include. Dunne was a wonderful guy and if he hadn't been old enough to be my father, I just might have fallen a little in love with him.

Jolene...well, if the old guy wanted to give his heart to a cute bartender in his old age? Good for him.

Marlie, though...

The chief had been pushed into retirement some ten years ago. Dunne and I had talked about it one late night when I’d run into him at a coffee shop. I’d been dressed in a long coat that hid the leather I’d worn to Club Privé. Dunne had been dressed like a bum, apparently on stakeout. So I’d brought him a cup of coffee and sat at the bus stop a few feet away.

Dunne did some moonlighting as a private investigator. He’d entertained me more than once with some of his stories.

But the story between Marlie McTierney and his uncle wasn’t a pretty one.

Her husband had been murdered by some dirty cops.

There was no other word for it.

He’d been driving home after a day of teaching. They'd lived outside the city and they'd liked to travel, so they’d dealt with the expense and hassle of having a car.

Marlie maintained that more than once, her husband had been stopped by the same two cops, several times while she'd been in the car. She'd even known who they were. One of them had a son who'd been doing just fine in school, according the cop and all his teachers. Save for one class.

The cop had insisted that Marlie's husband had tried to draw on them using an unregistered gun, and they’d ordered him out of the car, tried to disarm him. He’d gotten away and tried to run, reaching into the waistband of his pants for another gun.

Ironically, neither gun had ever been found. And every entry wound of the twelve that had gone into him, had been in his back.

Marlie had gone broke trying to find justice for him, but she'd gotten nothing. The chief of police had suspended the officers. He’d believed her.

He'd also been quietly forced out within six months.

The officers hadn't even been charged, and the boy’s grades had miraculously improved, so much so that he'd won a basketball scholarship somewhere down south. He'd killed himself a week after receiving the call.

A few months after that, Marlie had a son.

“Listen to your uncle,” I said to Dunne, dragging my attention back to the matter at hand.

“Ms. Monroe–”

“Dena.” I sipped at my steaming hot coffee and wished like hell it was something stronger, but I was stuck with coffee because my job was nowhere close to done.

“So what are you going to do, Dena?”

“Keep doing what I’ve been doing. Investigating and talking to witnesses. At least that witness pool has widened, right?”

But so had the list of other possible suspects.

I really wanted to know why Bethany hadn’t seen fit to include in any of the reports that the defendant’s former husband had ties to the mafia.

***

I had another long, restless night. This time, though, it wasn’t dreams of Arik that haunted me. Nope, this time, I got to live-out some of the most horrific moments from documentaries I had seen about the Russian mafia. In Technicolor.

The
Russian
fucking mafia.

I was from New York. Born and bred. Stories of the mafia were almost like bedtime tales for people raised in the city, but this was something different altogether.

The various forms of mafia that had once ruled much of New York City weren't the same beasts they had once been. They were, however, far from gone, and a smart person steered clear of them. The Italians, the Irish...

The Russians...

Even thinking about them made my stomach clench uncomfortably. And now I was involved in a case that just might bring me into contact with them.

What. The. Hell.

“Cheer up,” I muttered to myself. “It could be worse. You could be dealing with, I dunno, somebody from one of the Mexican cartels?” After a moment, I sighed. “Nope, can't be worse.”

Somehow, less than a month into my new job, and without even arguing a single case, I’d gotten tangled up with the mob.

On my first case.

Except it wasn’t even
my
case. It was Bethany’s, and Pierce had second chair. I was just a gopher. Chances were, nobody would even know I existed.

That didn’t help at all.

After brooding in bed for a few more minutes, I forced myself to open my eyes. I had to get out of bed. Not because I wanted to, but because I had things to get done, and I planned to do them before I went into the office.

I didn't know if Bethany was doing something shady or she was just distracted by Pierce, but she couldn't present a case with holes big enough to drive a truck through. As much as I despised what was going on right now, I hated the idea of an innocent person in jail while the real murderer went free.

Somebody had to do their fucking job, and it might as well be me.

And I even had somebody concrete I needed to talk to.

Of course, up until yesterday when I’d talked to Dunne, I hadn’t even been aware of an alternate theory to the crime. Odd that Bethany hadn’t seen fit to tell me about it.

The report Dunne had filed said that the late Mr. Mance had been involved with someone who had known ties to Russian organized crime, both prior to the marriage as well as after the marriage. There was no clarification on just what that relationship had been, but I didn't think that was really necessary. A man married to a woman while involved in a homosexual relationship was less surprising to me than a lot of other options.

Of course they'd been fucking. Dunne had been doing follow-up since then and had found enough receipts to support the theory. Except he wasn't a detective, so he'd had to turn over that information to the pair who were working the case. And they didn't seem to care.

While it did offer an alternate suspect for the murder, it also gave a nice motive for the widow. Money was a good motive.

Sex was better.

Eyelids closing, I slid my hand down my belly until my fingers brushed through the thin layer of curls between my thighs. Last night had been the first time I hadn’t dreamt about Arik since we first met. But it wasn't the relief I'd thought it would be. I would've rather had those dreams than the half-formed ones where I'd come home to find somebody I didn’t know sitting at my kitchen table, waiting for me.

I needed to forget.

A hiss escaped my teeth as I found the wet heat. Just thinking about Arik had made me ready. But I didn't want to be ready for my fingers.

I wanted him.

Here.

Between my thighs.

Inside me.

Just those few thoughts managed to push back the anxiety I'd been feeling since I'd woken up. Circling my clit, I gave in to the tantalizing promise of his memory.

The climax was short and bittersweet, but when I climbed out of bed, my head was clearer.

I could work now.

Some people laughed about the idea of sex being restorative. Clearly, they’d never had really, really good sex.

Or at least the memory of it.

***

The strip joint wasn’t disgusting.

It was actually about three steps below that.

How those girls shimmying and swaying around the miniscule stage could bear to take their clothes off in here...I hadn’t even wanted to step inside. I was no prude, but all of this made my skin crawl.

None of the women paid me any attention, but that was fine. I didn’t need to talk to them. They didn’t need to pretend they hadn’t seen me. We could all happily ignore each other, and I’d leave some money with the guy at the door for any inconvenience I caused them. He looked like the kind of guy who actually looked out for the girls. So they’d get an extra twenty a piece tonight...I hoped.

It made me feel a little better, but I wasn’t going to feel really good until I stripped out of my clothes, burned them, and then scrubbed for about thirty minutes. Maybe with bleach. And perhaps some sulfuric acid.

At least one thing seemed to be going in my favor. The man I needed to find wasn’t exactly hiding.

He sat, staring drunkenly up at a young blonde who was probably barely sixteen. A part of me wanted to go outside and call the cops, get this place shut down. But I knew she'd run. Her and any other girls here trying to hide. Which I assumed was most of them.

I mentally blew out a sigh and noted her face. I’d think about her later. Runaways were common in New York. It always bothered me, but it'd gotten worse since I started on my path to be a lawyer. I wanted to rescue them all.

Some of the lucky ones ended up stripping. That was a sad fact since the unlucky ones ended up turning tricks until the life killed them in one way or another.

When the guy I was eying reached out a hand toward the girl, I started forward, disgust and loathing boiling up my throat. Somebody else cut me off first though, and irritation had a cutting remark leaping to my lips.

I stopped, however, as the bouncer from the door caught the man’s wrist and gave it a savage jerk that made me wince involuntarily.

“Duggar, you remember what I said I’d do if I caught you trying to paw one of my girls again?” The bouncer spoke in a calm, easy tone as he manhandled the skinnier man away from his spot.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Duggar yelped and swore, trying to wiggle his way free as the bouncer dragged him toward the door.

Shit.

This was going to hell in a hand-basket. I needed to talk to that guy, but if the bouncer threw him out, he could vanish before I could get to him. I tried to cut around the man in front of me, but it seemed he had the same plan in mind.

“Look, man, I didn’t mean nothing! I didn’t do nothing!” Duggar was flailing now, all arms and legs.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” I muttered, disgusted.

My human barrier stopped abruptly and I crashed into him.

Jerking away, I snapped, “Hey, watch it!”

He turned, and all the noise, the bouncer’s voice...all of that faded as the tall, muscular man in front of me faced me.

“Son of a bitch,” I breathed.

Arik stared at me.

The man on the floor shouted. Somebody else swore.

Under any other circumstances, I might've been curious as to what was going on, but in that moment, Arik’s mouth caught mine, and everything else no longer mattered.

Chapter 4

Dena

His fingers raked through my hair.

The rocking, pulsing beat of the music. The strobe lights. The disturbance going on just a few feet away.

It was nothing more than background noise even as Arik raised his head. My eyes opened and I looked away, not wanting to see those emerald green eyes.

“Dena?” His breath was hot against my skin.

Backing away, I pressed a hand to his chest. “Not so fast.”

“Fine.” The smile that canted up one corner of his mouth was so devilish and hot, my knees practically turned to jelly. “We could go nice and slow. I can call the office. No one will think twice if I take some time off.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned on my heel, but it was too late. The man I needed to talk to was gone. Shit. Now I had to track him down. The bouncer. He'd known the guy's name. He might know where to find him.

All the while, there was a voice in my head screaming at me to forget chasing after some maybe witness who might be able to give me something for Bethany's case. The hottest, sexiest man I'd ever met, the only man who'd ever been able to hit all those right notes...he was here. And he wanted me.

Yeah, and last week, he clearly wanted another woman.

Stiffening my spine, I reminded myself of the plain, simple facts. We hadn't made any commitment or promises between the two of us.

And he'd already been with another woman.

A series of flickers passed across Arik's face, as though finally realizing something wasn’t quite right.

“How is Sabrina?”

Son of a bitch. Had I really just said that?

The words had come out before I could stop them. Blood rushed to my face as I realized how terrible it sounded.