Tough Enough (Tough Love Book 3)

by Trixie More

  You can let a man out of prison, but you can’t pry prison out of a man, he thought.

  “Hey Tommy?” he asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s this?”

  “What?” Tommy walked around to look over Doug’s shoulder.

  “This withdrawal here,” Doug said, pointing at the screen.

  Tommy shrugged. “A mistake.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Tommy sighed and pulled his chair over. “Look, I have to tell you something.”

  Doug blew out a breath.

  Now we’re getting to it, to what actually happened to this place, he thought.

  “I met a guy. I took a deal on bitcoin.”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “It was supposed to be a no-loose deal. I put two million into cyber currency. The deal was the other guy...”

  “What other guy?” Doug’s blood ran cold. It had always been just himself and Tommy.

  Tommy was sitting with his legs spread, elbows on his thighs, leaning forward, hands clenched together. His friend looked up at him. This was going to be bad.

  “Camisa,” Tommy said.

  Doug felt his eyes widen. He couldn’t have been more stunned if Tommy had sprouted wings and flown away.

  “Marco Camisa,” Tommy finished.

  “No fuckin’ way.” Doug gasped.

  Tommy held up a hand. “I know. I know that now, but I didn’t at the time. You have to believe me.”

  “Where the hell did you even meet him?”

  Tommy glanced away. “At your gym.”

  “My gym?”

  “Yeah. He’s a member.”

  “Wait. Marco Camisa, the organized crime boss, is a member of my gym?”

  “Oh. No,” Tommy said. “His son is—Marco Camisa Junior.”

  “And you met him?”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said, an ironic hiccup in his voice. “Yeah, I did.”

  “And he conned you?”

  “Yeah, he did. I put in two million. He matched the two million plus another two and put it in an escrow account. That was the deal. It was supposed to be a sure thing.”

  Doug just stared at his friend, waiting for the punchline.

  “Except it did better than I expected. The two million I invested in bitcoin went from thirty-eight hundred to sixty-eight in six weeks.”

  He went through the whole story. He’d put in the two million. Camisa showed up the next day, ready to take him to the mysterious Colton Gerrimon’s office. When they got there, Gerrimon had welcomed Tommy inside, treated him with great respect. At the time, he believed Gerrimon was legitimate. His business was well documented. The money was insane; he had Camisa’s extra two million, and the two he’d invested had gone up.

  “So I let the whole thing ride. Gerrimon was legit,” Tommy said. “I had William check him out. The business was solid. What I didn’t know was that Gerrimon was an idiot.”

  “Wait,” Doug said. “Gerrimon? The guy that...”

  “Died with the only password to the server that held all his company’s cyber currency.”

  “Our two million was on that server?”

  Tommy covered his face. “Eleven million.”

  Doug stared at Tommy. “Eleven?”

  “Bitcoin was over eleven thousand when Gerrimon died. We’d gained nine million dollars.”

  “Where the hell is the server now?”

  Behind his palms, Tommy shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  It was full dark when Doug got home. He had a bag of random food from the fruit market and a headache. There were no messages for him letting him know a small recliner had arrived. No note on his door, nothing in his mailbox. The doorman turned his back on Doug as he entered the building. Happily, online ordering afforded all kinds of tracking, so he knew it had to be down in the delivery center.

  A half-hour later, he’d lugged the thing up in the service elevator, dragged it down the hall, and unpacked it. The cardboard box made a side table for his chair, and the packing material sat by his door. Now, he had a bag of grapes in his lap and his feet up. He dialed Alice.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey back,” Doug said. “Tell me where you are.” It was a ritual for them, and tonight, he could use something, anything to calm him. Eleven fucking million.

  “I’m sitting on my bed, clipping my toenails. Where are you?”

  “I’m the proud owner of a fake leather recliner. I’m sitting in my empty apartment and looking out the window. It’s pretty dark, and I can see myself in the glass. I’m eating grapes.

  “My bedspread is bright green, pink, and white, and I’ve got two dogs in bed with me. I’m not looking out the window, but one of the dogs is farting.”

  Doug laughed.

  “That’s a good sound,” Alice said. “How are you?”

  “It’s been a shit day. Turns out all my money is sitting on a server, and the only person with the password is dead.”

  “Really? Dead?” Alice sounded incredulous. “Wait! Is that the same guy I just heard about?”

  “I hope there aren’t two idiots who died with the only password to a cold wallet.”

  “What the hell is a cold wallet?” Alice asked.

  “It’s a digital device that you put your bitcoin on. You don’t connect it to the Internet, so it’s more secure.”

  “Oh. So like a PC with no Internet cable?”

  “Yeah, or a thumb drive.”

  “Ah!” she said. “So, you connect to it when you want to move stuff on or off?”

  “Yeah,” Doug said. “It’s easier to see how this happened when you think of it like that. Most businesses that deal in cryptocurrency keep the majority of their assets in cold storage, or a cold wallet. They only keep a fraction on the device that’s connected to the Internet. For liquidity.”

  “Huh. So some guy has your money on his thumb drive?” Alice said.

  “God. When you say it that way, it makes me sick,” he said.

  She laughed. “You’ll figure it out, you always do.”

  “So, how are your charges?” Doug wiggled his feet and watched his reflection do the same. When he’d bought them all condos in south Florida, Alice had taken over, making sure their overly trusting mother and blissed-out older sister stayed right side of the ground. The youngest sister, Liz, had lived with Alice until she finally graduated. At the age of thirty-one, Alice was finally on her own.

  “Mom is good. She’s on a tear for tiny coffee. She’s buying variety packs of K-cups by the boatload. At least this way, I know she’s not napping all day.” His sister laughed at her joke, and he felt lighter.

  “And Mary?”

  “Still running a zendo in her living room. As long as the neighbors don’t complain about the incense, I think we’re good. I’m pretty sure she’s in early menopause, so I’m a-okay with her boffing as many men as she can on her zabuton.”

  Doug groaned. “Not a picture I wanted to have, Alice. And thirty-six is too young for early anything.”

  “Fuckity-fuck. Are you going to ask about Liz?”

  Liz was Alice’s favorite. Their baby sister was so much younger than both of them that she was more like a child they’d decided to raise together, with him in New York sending cash and Alice doing all the work.

  “I didn’t think I needed to,” he said.

  “She’s great!”

  “No more bikers?”

  “Hell no, she’ll always have a biker. She’s got something even better. A job.”

  “Amazing,” Doug said. “All it took was six years of college and an entire summer.”

  “Knock it off. You’re proud of Liz, admit it,” Alice said. Somewhere in her home a dog barked. Soon, a chorus of dogs made speech impossible. They waited for it to end.

  “I’m proud of her,” he said. “I’m proud of you more. You did it. You raised her, Alice.”

  “We did it, Doug.”

  Doug looked at the ceiling and dre
w in a deep breath. “Listen, now that I’m out, I’ve got something I’m sending you.”

  “What?”

  “A geo-tracker.”

  “I’m sending it back. I’ve got trackers on my dogs, but I’m not letting you monitor me,” she said. He heard her moving around, so her pedicure was over.

  “This is for your boat,” he said. “I read about it, you put it on the deck or the mast or something. It’s solar-powered, and it sends a signal. This way, if anything happens to you, I can call the Coast Guard.”

  “Because you won’t sail out and find me?”

  “I can barely swim,” Doug said. “All I know about sailing is from you.”

  “I don’t need it,” Alice said. “I’ve got this little canister I can pull the top off of and toss it overboard to send a signal if I capsize.”

  “What if you get hit by that thing that holds the sail?”

  She laughed, the sound low and throaty. “The boom?”

  “Yeah, what if you...lower the boom or something, and you get knocked out? This way, I can find you.”

  “I’ll think about it, Doug,” she said.

  “It’ll be there tomorrow,” he replied. “I’ve got an app on my phone that can track it. When you hook it up, let me know.”

  “I’ll think about it, but I’m not promising. I don’t want anything that gets in the way of the rigging, or looks ugly,” she said.

  “Fine.”

  “Now, tell me the important thing, did you report this cold wallet thing?”

  “I went to the precinct today. They don’t like me there.”

  “So what. Most people don’t like you, Doug. I happen to love you. Doesn’t change anything,” she said this all matter-of-factly. That was Alice, about as sentimental as a chair unless you were a dog. “Did you file a complaint?”

  “They told me I have to take it to Manhattan Cybercrime if it’s a crime,” he said. “So, I’m heading over there tomorrow.”

  “Okay, so you’ll file your complaint, and they’ll sit on it until the thing goes through court, could be like, a million years from now, right?” Pots and pans clanged somewhere in her kitchen. He ate a grape. “I can hear that,” Alice said.

  “Worse than that,” he said. “Right now, they don’t have a case open for it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s what the precinct told me. I’ve been reading everything I can online and looks like the police don’t have a crime. Investors put in money, and risk is part of that. The guy had bad business practices, so the company goes under. No crime.”

  “So, what do you think?” Alice asked.

  “I think someone made it happen. I think I’m gonna find that person, and when I do? Then it’ll be a crime.”

  Chapter 5

  Today was Sophia’s first actual court case working with Jacob, aka Mr. Charming. On the one hand, Jacob had let her participate in the questioning, but she’d changed tactics at the last minute and earned herself a reprimand. To top it off, Doug Lloyd had shown up, sitting in the back row.

  Sophia got her raincoat from the coatroom and made her way to the front exit. Doug had changed a lot since she’d seen him years ago. She’d been an intern the summer he was arrested. At his bail hearing, he’d been polished, well dressed, and utterly fascinating to her younger self. Today, his appearance had been altered. His face was leaner, his perfect haircut, gone. He wore his hair very short and he’d grown a beard. He’d looked young and GQ before, but now? He looked like a brawler. Sadly, she still found him mildly attractive. Too bad he was despicable.

  Outside the courthouse, Sophia finally had a minute to relax. The trial was going well despite her worries about her performance. Sophia had to admit, working with Jacob was a real career maker. The guy worked his witnesses quickly and with humor. The jury seemed to love him.

  She tightened the belt on her raincoat, shrugged her bag higher on her shoulder and started down the steps. At the bottom, a hot dog vendor was doing a brisk business. Her stomach growled as she passed by, the smell of seasonings and yeast tempting her. She turned back, hesitating. She wanted a hot dog, boiled, with a crisp casing and mustard, but she was headed home to dinner. Still, her stomach growled and that made up her mind. Sophia walked to the back of the line. From the corner of her eye, she saw a black leather jacket. Lloyd was coming her way. If she ran away, she’d lose her place in line and really, there was no reason for him to seek her out. They didn’t know each other. He was infamous, a nasty piece of violence and arrogance, nothing but a perp. She was a prosecutor. She was supposed to eat bad guys like him for lunch. She put on her best “don’t mess with me” face and looked down at her shoes, then up at the hot dog vendor, keeping her face expressionless.

  “Hey.”

  Was he speaking to her? Sophia turned her head slowly, chin held high, looking down her nose at him. His eyes. He was so intense.

  “Hey,” he said again.

  “Are you speaking to me?” she asked.

  The line moved forward.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re a prosecutor?” He got in line behind her, standing to her right a bit so he could see her.

  “I’m something,” she said.

  “I need help.” Now that was surprising and yet, not. These lowlifes always felt like they didn’t deserve what was being dished out to them, always thought someone should be helping them.

  “Yeah? Get in line,” she said, watching his face. He was only a few inches taller than she was, so maybe five foot ten? Shorter than Ben, shorter by far than her brother Derrick. His skin was pale with a subtle wash of freckles. His nose was slightly off, flat and wide. She couldn’t quite tell if it was tilted or just larger on one side. Redheaded Irish, through and through, nothing like Ben. Not her type. Only a wealthier, whiter version of an ordinary gang banger.

  Doug swallowed, moving his tongue and jaw like he was chewing something; his smooth lips parted just a bit while he glanced to the side and then back to her. It was an incredibly masculine movement. Still, there was no way Sophia could have even the faintest interest in him. He was rotten, through and through. He’s paid his debt, a small, unwelcome voice in her mind piped up. She shut the door on the thought.

  “I, do you know who I am?” He tipped his head, forehead wrinkled, puzzled.

  The line moved forward, and Sophia ignored him. “One dog, please.” Just take the one standing next to you, her internal voice said. Sophia rolled her eyes at herself as she fished a ten out of her purse.

  “And one for me.” Lloyd’s voice wasn’t deep, but it had a slur to it, a sexy laziness about it.

  Sophia’s breathing picked up. Beside her, Lloyd paid for both hot dogs.

  “I’m paying for mine,” she said to the vendor.

  “He paid, Lady. Move on.”

  “Give me another. He can have both of those.”

  The vendor shrugged and handed her a hot dog, taking her money. She ignored Lloyd and moved to the side of the cart, putting mustard onto the dog, getting some napkins. The hot dog wasn’t as appealing anymore.

  Same old thing...once you get something, you don’t want it, she thought to herself.

  Beside her, Lloyd doctored up his food, holding both dogs in one large, broad hand. He wasn’t tall; he wasn’t all that built, not as much as her brother Derrick, but his hands were so large.

  She was staring at his hands. Annoyed, she stepped back and marched away, but he was followed her.

  “Hey!” He caught up, putting one hand on her elbow. She stopped dead and stared at the blunt fingers on her clean, ivory sleeve.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said. His hand slid away, and he stepped back. “I just, do you? Know me?”

  “Douglas S. Lloyd, recently released from prison, serving time on a reduced sentence for false imprisonment, but if you ask me, it should have been felony kidnapping. Currently under suspicion for...” Here, she hesitated, saying it out loud just raised her own self-disgust. How could she feel anythi
ng for this vicious stranger? “Under suspicion for rape, but you haven’t been charged. I believe there’s a civil suit underway on the kidnapping.” His face. He looked her right in the eyes as she spoke, his mouth shut, lax, then, his jaw clenched and he looked away. She finished her thought. “So yeah, keep your hands off.” Sophia began to walk again and, damn it, the guy followed.

  “Fine, so you know who I am. I’m also a citizen of New York.”

  Oh, here it came. The part she knew so well. He had rights; he needed something; the world didn’t treat him well. She wanted to turn and kick him before he even started to speak. She tossed her hot dog in the next garbage can she passed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hesitate as if he might throw his out too, but he held them.

  “No, I get it. I committed a crime,” he said as if he’d heard her thoughts.

  Thank God he can’t hear my thoughts.

  “A crime?” she asked.

  “One crime. I was charged, and I paid for it, but I know that doesn’t absolve me. I’m still guilty. I can’t undo it.”

  She stopped. “What do you want, Lloyd? Are you following me down to the subway? I’m going straight back to the courthouse to get an officer to detain you then.”

  “I, my money was stolen.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “No, I mean virtually stolen. You work for Cybercrime, right?”

  She shrugged. She saw a uniformed cop coming their way. She would wave him over if it came to that.

  “While I was in prison, my partner invested in a cyber currency. The CEO died, and the company went bankrupt. I believe it was murder. I think it was set up just so that would happen.”

  Sophia stared at him. “Look, I’m not homicide. It sounds like you should go there. I work the cases brought to me. Go file a report at your local precinct.”

  “I did, but, look. Don’t think of it as me.” He flicked his hand into the air, a short, quick gesture that caused her a small startle. The leather of his jacket creaked as he moved. “I know you have no sympathy for me. Why should you? I sure as hell don’t.”

  That surprised Sophia, just enough to keep her standing still for a moment. She made eye contact with the uniform, and the cop started to move toward her. Lloyd continued. “There were other people who invested. Good people. At least, not criminals. They lost everything. I just happen to be smarter than them. Like you.”