by Samson Weld
“Are you sure you’re really wondering who we are? I find it hard to believe you would let complete strangers into your hotel room. You know exactly who I am, Aylward.”
“Is that so?”
The older man reached the couch and sat down. He grabbed his fine china cup and drank some coffee.
“Well, you should. After all, you tried to have me killed.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Oh no, that’s right. It’s probably your lap dog Lars Moultrup who gave the order.”
At that, Aylward was startled. He stared at the visitor.
“I can see it was a mistake inviting you in my suite. Please, kindly leave before I sue both your asses from here to next month.”
A faint smile crept on Nick’s face. He swaggered over to the nicely upholstered armchair and leaned back against it.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he began. “I’m sure you didn’t set out to have me killed. All you wanted was for me and Stanley to report that Hozalex was in bad shape so you could snatch up the company.”
“A deal’s a deal,” Aylward said with a shrug. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Of course not. I’m all about the deal myself. Deals keep me up to my shoulders in fine wines and luxury vacations. I love deals. But what happened was more than a deal, wasn’t it? It’s about Stanley.”
“Don’t know anybody by that name.”
“Yes, you do. Stanley was impressed by you—fascinated, in fact—and he wanted a job with you. Only you didn’t need him. He was good at his job, but he was nobody exceptional. You didn’t think much of him until you found out one thing.”
“Is that right?” Aylward mocked, finishing his coffee.
“You discovered that Stanley was auditing Hozalex. That suddenly made him very valuable to you. You offered him a job. All he had to do was keep me from writing a positive report on Hozalex. And he had to be willing to go to any length necessary.”
“Look, I’m gonna go take a nap. Be kind enough to wake me when you get to a part where I’ll actually give a shit.”
“You should never have told Stanley to kill that girl.”
A furious Aylward stood up. “Wait a minute! I never told that slimy cocksucker to kill anybody.”
“But you did tell Stanley to make sure the report was negative, right?”
“It’s business, everybody does that. It’s expected, like cheating on your taxes.”
Anne-Marie recognized that as her cue and stepped forward.
“And that’s something you’re really good at. I called David Helmbold and he confirmed that the project he was supposed to develop for you was an accounting system that would register fewer sales in the books so you could skim at your pleasure.”
“Big deal, sweetheart. The government has bigger problems than a guy like me holding on to a few more dollars.”
“Bigger problems, uh?” Nick snorted. “Like murder? Like when you realized I was digging around to clear my name? We came here directly from seeing Lars. He said it was your idea to have me killed.”
“Bullshit! He suggested it, okay? I had nothing to do with it. He was the one who brought it up.”
Grinning, Nick walked to a nearby desk and grabbed the phone. At the same time, he got a piece of paper from his pocket. He dialed the number which was scribbled on it.
“You got all this?” he asked into the phone.
Aylward was struggling to understand what was going on when the door opened and three people hurried in. Two police officers in dark blue uniform were followed by Detective Claude Bédard. All three had their pistols drawn. Sorensen was already in custody, handcuffed, being held outside the room by two other officers.
“What?” the billionaire mumbled. “How?”
Nick came back and fished out his tiny Bluetooth microphone. Its chief characteristic was that it didn’t look like a microphone. He waved it in front of Aylward.
“Computers do all sorts of wonderful things nowadays. Gotta love free WiFi.”
His laptop had been set up down the hall, on an innocuous-looking room service cart, and served to relay the conversation to the cops stationed one floor below.
“What the fuck is going on? You can’t do this, I’m William Aylward!”
“Cry me a river, jerkweed,” Nick said. “Think about your next orgy. It’ll be in prison with four hairy dudes.”
Bédard put his gun away and came closer. “Don’t worry, Mr. Eversull, I have people arresting Lars Moultrup right now. You’re safe now, you understand?”
“Thank you,” Nick said, feeling more emotional than he thought he would. “Thank you.”
The two uniforms holstered their weapons and went to the corporate raider. He was promptly frisked and handcuffed.
“You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder.”
“This is bullshit! I’m innocent. I didn’t kill that hooker!”
“You have the right to remain silent, everything you say can be used against you in court as evidence. You have the right to a lawyer. You understand?”
Nick put his hand around Anne-Marie’s shoulders as they watched Aylward being marched away.
Epilogue
Anne-Marie gasped and they climaxed together.
It was fast, brutal, maybe even urgent, despite the fact that up until that moment their coupling had been gentle and languorous. Their bodies undulated harmoniously under the bed sheets. They were silhouettes against the bright window opening on the majestic New York skyline.
Nick kissed her as they tipped over the edge. He moved within her with sheer enthusiasm and tenderness. He cradled her face as she writhed underneath him, her feet finally kicking the sheets away. Their moans were wordless and yet spoke volumes. They rode out the blissful wave together.
After long minutes they disentangled, but kept holding each other once they were side by side. They made out again to prolong the afterglow and she snuggled against him.
“How does it feel to still not be vice president at Hozalex?” Nick asked with an amused smirk.
Anne-Marie rolled her eyes. “You love bringing this up, don’t you?”
“Sue me, it’s fun. You wanted to be vice president of the company and that didn’t happen. Life can be so cruel.”
“I guess I’ll get used to it,” she said. “Besides, being CEO is turning out to be better than just a vice president. They say you can get used to anything.”
In the firestorm that had followed, Helmbold had had no choice but to leave the company. His mere presence was exposing the business to lawsuits and the loss of clients. In a unanimous decision from the board, Anne-Marie was promptly promoted to the top position.
Nick was happy for her. She deserved it. More than that, she would be great in her new role. The company would prosper. That made him laugh. With all that had happened, his first instinct was to think about the well-being of businesses.
He got out of bed, not bothering to put any clothes on, not even his robe. He left the room and headed to the kitchen where he grabbed a couple of water bottles. He remained in front of the open refrigerator to cool down.
“And bring some snacks!” Anne-Marie shouted.
Instead of replying, Nick went to the cupboard and prepared a bowl. Candy bars, pretzel sticks, and a peach. He had second thoughts about the latter—eating fruit in bed could get messy—but it gave him a thrill to think about her eating a peach. The thought of peach juice running down her chin, all the way to her bare chest…
Hmmm…
The Aylward affair became the scandal of the year. His arrest was headline news for weeks around the world, especially when he was not granted bail. This was extremely damning since, in Canada, bail was the rule rather than the exception, and it wasn’t usually set very high. But since Aylward was a billionaire, had access to private aircraft, and owned assets around the world, the prosecution made its case that the risk of flight was most probable.
His army of lawyers worked around th
e clock to place the blame on Lars Moultrup. The recorded confession about his corporate improprieties had opened several investigations by the SEC and the FBI. As it turned out, this wasn’t his first shady deal. More and more, it was looking as if it was his MO.
No one knew if he’d had other people killed before, but prosecutors from around the world were looking into it, desperately hoping to make their careers on this. Leading the pack was the powerful US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was an open secret that she was banking on this to launch her political career. Nothing had been announced, but she was already polling ahead in the next Senate race.
With the spotlight on him, Aylward’s holdings had already dropped twenty-five percent and vultures were circling to grab the rest. Banks were pulling their funding from ongoing projects. Charitable causes threw him off their boards. Investors were cutting ties as quickly as they could. Ex-wives were lining up to fleece him of what was left.
Nick returned to the bedroom with a sullen expression. He ultimately had to break his word concerning Xavier.
With the pimp’s prints on the knife and surveillance footage having caught the scuffle at the Hozalex offices, there wasn’t much they could hide from the authorities. Nick therefore had had to come clean. He had to explain to the police who the pimp was and how he had gotten involved.
In the end though, no criminal charges were filed against Xavier. Nick had read on a discussion forum that he had left the business. In a surprise move, one of his girls, Bella, had taken over the agency. What’s more, she had promptly turned it around.
Service improved, the practice of bait-and-switch stopped, and all the hobbyists agreed that it was invigorating the scene. Bella had a good head for business. As for Xavier, there were rumors that he’d left the city.
Nick liked to think that the man had seen what real crime was like and had discovered that he didn’t want any part of it after all. At least something good came out of it.
He climbed back into bed and thrust the bowl toward Anne-Marie. To his dismay, she didn’t choose the peach. Instead, she grabbed the bag of pretzel sticks and dug into it, munching on each one as if she was a rabbit.
He said, “I’m gonna miss you when you go back to Montreal for the week.”
This had become their ritual. She came down to New York for the weekend and the next week it was him who went up to Montreal. Every third weekend they met somewhere in the middle such as Lake George or Saratoga Springs or Albany. It didn’t matter where they were because they mostly stayed locked inside their hotel room.
Before she could start on another pretzel stick, he kissed her and lay down next to her.
“You’ll miss me enough to wait for me next weekend?” she asked.
Nick understood her loaded question. She wasn’t fishing for a compliment. She actually wanted to know if he could keep himself from calling an escort during the five days they would be apart. He had been doing this hobby for so long that it had become automatic, if not completely an addiction.
Being with her was allowing him to understand himself. Now, two months since that devastating ordeal, he was finally understanding why he met with call girls. If at first they’d been a convenient date, they had become an easy way to cope with solitude, maybe even self-loathing.
As he looked at Anne-Marie with her luscious hair falling across her cheeks and down to her shoulders, he knew he was no longer alone. Love wasn’t a foreign concept anymore.
“I’ll wait for next weekend,” he whispered. “I’ll wait forever.”
She gasped at his words and couldn’t help smiling. He came closer and pressed his lips against hers. The kiss hastily heated up and Nick was suddenly worried things would once again be over much too quickly. But it was all right. They had time.
They had all the time in the world.
THE END
About the Author
Before going into publishing, Samson Weld was a world-renowned pediatrician running a clinic in the war-torn jungle of Burma. He keeps modeling strictly as a hobby, when he's not volunteering to find homes for abandoned puppies. Samson Weld is also a seasoned liar.
That's because Samson Weld is in fact the pen name of Steve Richer, the international bestselling author of the thrillers The President Killed His Wife, Stranger Danger, and The Pope’s Suicide.
You can expect Samson Weld books to be outrageously fun and reading like action movies.
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Books by Steve Richer
The President Killed His Wife (Rogan Bricks 1)
Counterblow (Rogan Bricks 2)
Murder Island (Rogan Bricks 3)
The Pope’s Suicide
Stranger Danger
Critical Salvage
Terror Bounty
Park Avenue Blackmail
The Kennedy Secret
The Gilded Treachery
Never Bloodless
The Atomic Eagle
Sigma Division
Intense Past: Historical Thriller Collection
Eyes Only: Spy Thriller Collection
