by Bella Rose
“Actually.” Mikhail tossed a manila folder onto the tabletop and smirked. “Technically there is no such thing as your company. It belongs to me.”
* * *
“What are we doing again?” Bella stage-whispered.
Courtney nudged her friend over a little bit so she could see around the large planter positioned outside the wedding planner’s trendy office. Courtney and Bella were ensconced at a little table at a cupcake bar just across the street from Elsa’s glass-front office. So far the trip had been a complete waste of time. Courtney and Bella had watched half a dozen young women from prominent and wannabe-prominent families traipse in and out of the office The florist had been there for awhile. There had been a catering van parked out front for about twenty minutes, and now the place was pretty quiet.
“We need to find some kind of evidence against Elsa and Creighton,” Courtney reminded Bella.
“Sweetie, you do realize that it is entirely possible that your father won’t care who or what Creighton is doing on the side. Right?”
Courtney did not want to consider that option. “My father might be a moneygrubbing, power-grasping social climber, but he still loves me. I can’t imagine he would want me to leg shackle myself for life to a man who couldn’t even manage to be faithful during our engagement.”
Bella looked at her watch. “Doesn’t Creighton work?”
“I think so. Supposedly he works for his father.”
“So won’t he be at work?” Bella frowned. “I can always find Toby at work between eight and six.”
“You’re forgetting that Toby actually works for a living. Creighton is more of a figurehead type. I don’t think he actually does anything but spend company money on personal items.”
“What a loser,” Bella groaned. “But I guess your dad is just after that money, so he doesn’t really care if the guy is a twit, huh?”
“Pretty much,” Courtney muttered. “Hey, that’s Creighton’s car!” She eagerly watched, pulling out her phone and taking a dozen or more photos and then shooting a video. “Look! He’s getting out.”
“And looking this way!” Bella grabbed Courtney’s shoulder and yanked her around so that her back was facing Elsa’s office. “You can’t just announce that you’re spying!”
“Oh, but I would really like to,” Courtney muttered. “What is he doing?”
“It looks like…” Bella began. “Wait! He just planted a huge kiss on her lips!”
Courtney was still taking pictures. “Man, do you think we could get lucky enough that they’ll have sex in the front window?”
“Ew!” Bella said in protest. “I don’t want to see that!”
“Gotcha sucker!” Courtney said with glee. “Just wait until I show these to my father.”
* * *
Gordon Piers-Cameron shoved the file folder back in Mikhail’s direction. “This can’t be legitimate.”
“It is.” Mikhail shoved the information back. “You’ll find it’s all quite legal. I bought your loans from the bank and acquired a controlling number of shares in your company. Therefore I purchased a seat on the board of directors, whom I approached last night. They were all very agreeable to the idea of a sale. It seems they’re a little tired of the way you run your business, Gordon.”
“Bullshit!” Gordon snapped. “You’re lying.”
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not.” Mikhail wondered why he didn’t feel a little more satisfaction. Shouldn’t he be feeling that dark sense of accomplishment that told him he had completely vanquished an ancient enemy?
“You can’t do this!” Gordon opened the folder and began to peruse the contents. He was muttering to himself the whole time. Oddly enough, Mikhail actually felt a little sorry for the poor man. “The business is all I have,” Gordon pleaded. “I had a plan. The bank said they were giving me more time. The directors agreed to do the same. I only needed a few months.”
“Yes. We all know. You intended to force your daughter to save your hide by marrying her off to Creighton Kemper. With the Kemper fortune at your disposal, you would have been able to infuse your business with fresh capital and buy a few more years.” Mikhail didn’t bother to hide his derision. This plan was an anathema to Mikhail for more than one reason.
Piers-Cameron looked aghast. “A few years? It would have put us back on top for good!”
“No.” Mikhail didn’t bother to sugarcoat his assessment. “It was your business practices that drove your business into the dirt, Gordon, not a few lean years. You’re a crappy businessman, and I’m shocked you’ve managed to keep yourself afloat this long.”
“Excuse me?” Piers-Cameron looked incensed. “I was doing this sort of security work before you were whelped!”
“Exactly.” Mikhail snorted. “And you’ve been doing it the same exact way ever since. You don’t advance with the times. You’re afraid of technology, and you’re worse than a late adapter. You cannot survive in this new digital world, and you know it.”
“You’re wrong!”
The protest was going to get the man nowhere with Mikhail. He had already made the deal. The papers were signed, it was official, and the only thing left was to depose the former leader. In other words, Mikhail needed to fire Gordon Piers-Cameron and have him escorted from the building.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” Piers-Cameron protested.
Mikhail smiled. “I already have.”
Chapter Eight
“Daddy!” Courtney strode through the front rooms of her father’s house, searching for him. “Daddy, where are you? This is really important!”
The housekeeper had told her that her father had come home a few hours before and was somewhere in the house. The woman hadn’t expanded on that very much. Usually she told Courtney if her father was in his study, or in the den, or even upstairs in his bedroom suite. This time the housekeeper had seemed a little hesitant to say anything at all, but Courtney had been utterly determined.
“Daddy?”
“In here.”
Courtney stopped in the darkened hallway, cocking her head and trying to decide if she’d imagined her father’s voice coming from the deserted dining room. The immaculate antique table was covered in a drop cloth, and the chairs were covered too. They never used the space except for her father’s exclusive, few and far between dinner parties.
“Dad?” She peered into the darkness, finally spotting his silhouette in a corner. He’d pulled a chair over to the window and was sitting with a decanter of brandy and a glass. Courtney approached slowly, unsure what to make of this bizarre behavior. “What are you doing in here?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. His voice was completely morose. She had never heard him sound so depressed. Not even when her mother had passed away. “What do you want?”
“You have to see these photographs I took and this video!” Courtney eagerly pulled out her phone. “Bella and I staked out Elsa’s office—you know, she’s the wedding planner—because we had suspected that she and Creighton were having an affair.” Courtney tried to hand the phone to her father. “They are! See? You can see them kissing and stuff right in these photos.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her father shoved the phone back into her hands. “I don’t care if Creighton Kemper fucks the whole city. You’re going to marry that man in less than three months.”
“But Dad, he’s cheating on me.” Courtney had to admit that considering her lack of commitment to their relationship, cheating was sort of a loose term to apply. But still, he considered them engaged. “Creighton Kemper is a cheating asshole. He’s fucking the wedding planner, Dad. You can’t expect me to marry a man I don’t like, who won’t even respect me enough to be faithful!”
“Men do what men do,” her father said listlessly. “If you don’t like him, you should be glad. That means he probably won’t want you in his bed.”
Courtney was dumbfounded. Her mouth popped open, and she felt as though her entire world wa
s falling down around her ears. “But Dad, you can’t mean that. Surely you don’t want me to spend my life tied to some jackass like Creighton Kemper!”
“He has money,” her father said quietly. “At this point that is the only thing that matters. The rest is just romantic nonsense not worth worrying about. You’ll get over it. Women always do.”
* * *
Mikhail sat in his darkened office and brooded silently. The lights were out, the staff had gone home, and he was alone. He should have been out celebrating. He should have been elated. He had accomplished everything he had ever set out to do. Even with the added bonus of getting Courtney Piers-Cameron into bed, which hadn’t even been on his list of possible accomplishments.
So why did he feel so empty?
“Thought I might find you here,” Toby said as he walked into Mikhail’s office.
The door was wide open. It let a strip of light fall across the floor in the big corner office where Mikhail did business. Now Toby sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of Mikhail’s big desk and propped his feet up. His friend didn’t necessarily look as if he was in a hurry to speak, but Mikhail knew him too well to think he’d come here for any other reason.
“What do you want?” Mikhail asked softly. “I was thinking I needed to be alone.”
“Success really agrees with you, doesn’t it?” Toby mused. “You’re in here pouting as if you’d lost.”
“That old man wasn’t really a threat,” Mikhail reasoned. “He’s just an old guy who never really evolved.”
“Perhaps.”
Mikhail plowed his way through the haze of lethargy in his mind. “What are you saying?”
“Bella told me something rather interesting a few minutes ago.” Toby leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his midsection. “Actually, I should say that she basically screamed it at me. Her outrage—fortunately—was not aimed at me. It was aimed at Gordon Piers-Cameron.”
“What happened?” Mikhail sat up, feeling his blood begin to thrum in his veins. What had that bastard done to his daughter now?”
“Apparently my wife and her BFF went on a little spying mission today.” Toby sounded amused. “They caught good old Creighton Kemper and the wedding planner about to have a little tryst. Bella says they only got photos of the two of them kissing, but the fact that he was at her office in the middle of the day was suspicious anyway.”
“All right.” Mikhail couldn’t understand where this was going. It should be good news. Surely Courtney could get out of the wedding now.
“Bella was pissed because when Courtney told her father about the infidelity, his response was to announce that Courtney was marrying Kemper within three months no matter how many women he fucked between now and then. Bella wants old Gordon’s head on a platter, but my thought is that you’re actually the one to blame. At least indirectly.”
Mikhail shot to his feet. “Excuse me?”
“You just took everything away from that man,” Toby said quietly. “You took his business, his purpose, his financial security, and his identity. You knew you were going to do it. You knew what it meant to him. That’s why you did it. Fine. But what you created was an absolute ironclad reason for him to need his daughter to marry that bastard Kemper.”
“He needs Kemper’s money for himself,” Mikhail whispered, horrified at what he had done.
* * *
Courtney remained alone in her room. Time spooled by unchecked. Twilight turned to dark, night into dawn, and still she lay curled in a tiny ball on her bed. She would have stayed there indefinitely except that her stomach revolted and forced her to take action. It was a horrible feeling. The choking nausea made her suck in deep breaths while she tried to gain control of her digestive system, but it was no use.
Rolling off the mattress, she stumbled to her en suite bathroom. Her knees hit the tile as she slid toward the toilet. She grabbed the white porcelain bowl just in time. Heaving into the toilet, she wondered if this whole nausea thing was a product of her anxiety or something else. She grabbed for the handle to flush. Groping for one of the towels hanging on the rack, she pressed her face into the fluffy cotton. She felt much better after throwing up. This ridiculousness couldn’t go on, though. She would have to make an appointment with her doctor and find out what sort of flu she’d managed to pick up. Maybe if she was lucky, it would be the kind that required her to stay in quarantine for months on end. Six months would be good. Maybe that would be long enough for her father to find a new scheme that wouldn’t necessitate marrying her off to Creighton Kemper.
There was a sudden banging on her bedroom door. “Courtney! You can’t stay in there forever! Get dressed and get your ass downstairs. Creighton will be here in a few minutes to take you to the park to settle on the location for the wedding.”
The park? Her sluggish brain had completely forgotten the bullshit meeting with the wedding planner where she’d chosen the city park as the scene of the crime—er—wedding. Courtney sucked in a deep breath. “I can’t go this morning. I’m not feeling well.”
There was a rattle of the knob, and then her father burst into her bedroom. Apparently locks meant nothing in this house when he had one of those tiny keys that voided her desire for privacy. Her father came stomping into the bathroom. He took one look at Courtney curled up on the floor in front of the toilet and glowered as though she personally responsible for her poor physical condition.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he snarled. “Are you trying to sell me on that anxiety idea again? I already told you. If the doctor thinks you’re suffering from anxiety, get some pills. That’s what everyone else does. Swallow a few of those and move on. You’re acting ridiculous. Now get dressed and get moving. I don’t care if you throw up on Creighton’s shoes. That’s his problem. He’s the one who is still dead set on marrying you.” Her father actually rolled his eyes. “I can’t even understand why, but I can thank my lucky stars that he is. So don’t screw this up.”
“Yes, Dad,” Courtney whispered. She couldn’t ever remember missing her mother so very much.
* * *
“This is a bad idea,” Toby grunted. “And I still can’t figure out why you dragged me along for the ride. What do you think I can do?”
“You know him,” Mikhail murmured as the two of them strode into the headquarters of Kemper Industries.
“Not well,” Toby argued. But he straightened the cuffs of his tailored dress shirt and rolled his neck from side to side. “At this rate he’ll be lucky if I don’t plant my fist in his face.”
Mikhail glanced over in surprise. “Really? Why the violence?”
“Bella thinks I should.”
Mikhail couldn’t help but chuckle. “Tell me, do you always do what Bella thinks you should these days?”
“I do what I can to make her happy.” The blissful expression that stole over Toby’s features made Mikhail grimace.
“Ugh,” Mikhail spat. “Keep that look of sexual satisfaction off your face.”
Mikhail’s mind wandered back to that hotel room where he had experienced the most profound sexual satisfaction of his life with Courtney in his arms. He hadn’t been with anyone since. There just hadn’t been a desire. She was perfection; why would he settle for anything less?
“We’re here to see Creighton Kemper,” Mikhail told the receptionist in a terse tone of voice. “My name is Mikhail Krachenko, and this is Toby Pinckney.”
Mikhail could tell that Toby’s name had the desired effect on the woman, but she bit her lip and looked uncomfortable. “I’m terribly sorry, but Mr. Kemper is in a meeting.” She threw a surreptitious glance toward the double doors just behind her desk. “Could you wait? I can have coffee and whatever else brought to the conference room.”
“Certainly.” Mikhail wondered to himself what sort of business an empty figurehead like Creighton could possibly have to conduct this early in the morning.
The receptionist showed Mikhail and Toby to the conferen
ce room. Soon a tray of coffee and pastries was on the table. Toby began eagerly helping himself. Mikhail paced.
“What is your deal?” Toby asked through a mouthful of strawberry tart.
Mikhail turned and stared out the glass doors, his gaze zeroing in on Creighton Kemper’s closed doors. “What business could that pansy possibly have to conduct? We all know that he has an office because his daddy owns the company. He does nothing. And the board pays him to do nothing so he doesn’t mess things up.”
“True.” Toby bobbed his head in agreement. “Maybe he’s got Elsa in there—you know—planning.”
Then the office door swung open, and Creighton appeared. Mikhail thought he might actually be in danger of losing his composure as four men walked out right behind Kemper. Mikhail knew them instantly. They were the top men in the Russian mafia there in the city. Yuri Gregorevich, Dimitri Orlov, Denis Krakov, and Vasily Romanov did not take meetings unless there was genuine business to be discussed. Whatever Kemper was up to, he was in way over his head, and Mikhail wanted to know why.
Chapter Nine
“Mikhail?”
The voice seemed to be coming out of a tunnel. Mikhail could only stare transfixed at the Russian mafia bosses striding out of Creighton Kemper’s office. They looked exactly as he remembered them from his boyhood. Yuri was so skinny he appeared to be nothing more than a scarecrow, with a pointed beard and long thin fingers. Dimitri was short and fat. His lumbering walk was deceptive. Of the four, Dimitri was the most likely to pull out a gun and start shooting. Denis was the crabbiest. His expression was always dour, and he complained about everything. And Vasily? Vasily was the one who gave Mikhail stomach cramps. He would never forget looking down the barrel of his cousin’s handgun and wondering if he was going to get help or lose his life.
“Mikhail, what’s wrong?” It was Toby’s voice trying to pull him back to the present.
The present. Mikhail was no longer their man. He belonged only to himself. “I’m fine,” he told Toby. “But I would like to know what business Creighton Kemper has with the Russian mob.”
