The Benefactor

by Nana Malone

  “Oh, I was just in the neighborhood. I had a meeting.”

  “This is the London Lords building. Who are you meeting with?”

  Yes, the London Lords had the majority of the building, but they leased out space on the bottom floors. Fenton could be meeting with anyone. But if he was lying, I was going to catch him in it.

  “Well, aren’t you curious? Why don’t you tell me what you’re going here?”

  “I work here. Is there a reason you’re here, Mr. Mills?”

  “Dear, like I said, I had a meeting. Why are you so sensitive today?” He leaned in as if to touch me, and I deliberately stepped back, angling my body so he couldn’t.

  “You seem to appear in a lot of places where I am, and it makes me uncomfortable, if I’m being honest.”

  His brows lifted and he raised his hands. “I have never intended to make you feel uncomfortable. I’ve only ever been kind and wanted to welcome you into the family.”

  Liar. “Well, I’m not your family.”

  As his lips thinned, his gaze narrowed imperceptibly. “I heard from Dexter that you were having some troubles. And honestly…” He took a step toward me, and I took one back. My gaze flickered over to Scott, who was busy directing someone somewhere. “I could certainly help you two kids get back together, but maybe there’s someone else better for you. Someone you’ve never considered before.”

  His creep factor skyrocketed. Way the hell sky high. “Mr. Mills, I need you to step back. You’re crowding me.”

  His brow furrowed and that carefully constructed expression that he always wore in public, twisted into a sneer. “What?”

  “I said, you’re too close and far too familiar. You act like we’re family or friends, but I don’t know you that well and don’t want you touching me. So back the hell off.”

  This time his brows lifted, and the malice in his eyes was plain as day to see. Anger. Resentment. Hatred. Rejection.

  “You’re overreacting, Miss Ashong. I mean, why are you so hysterical?”

  “I’m not hysterical. Just because a woman calls you on your bullshit, it doesn’t mean she’s hysterical. Just because she doesn’t want you to touch her, it doesn’t mean she’s cold or frigid. Just because I don’t smile when I see you, it doesn’t mean you get to comment on who I am as a person. I’m not here for your enjoyment. You need to back off, or I will go to the police and tell them you violated the restraining order.”

  He sputtered. “N-now, now, wait just a minute. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Adrenaline flooded my system, narrowing my gaze to a single focal point. Fenton Mills. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him, so I was surprised when I heard Ben’s voice. “Mills, is there a reason you’re harassing my girlfriend?”

  Fenton whirled. “Excuse me?”

  Ben glowered at him and then stepped over and placed an arm around me. “My girlfriend, Olivia, you’re harassing her. On my property, no less, and I’ve got you on security cameras doing it.”

  Fenton glanced around. “Like I told Miss Ashong here, I had a meeting on the fifth floor.”

  Ben nodded. “Then you won’t mind us having a look at the log to see who you met with? I can make it a point to encourage them that you meet offsite from now on.”

  “You don’t have the right.”

  “Well, it’s my building. So I can kick out whoever I want if they don’t comply with my requests.”

  Fenton’s gaze bounced back and forth between Ben and me. “I don’t know what the hell you two are on about, but I’m just here meeting a client. If Olivia is having some kind of mental difficulty, maybe she should see someone. But I was just saying hello to a friend. I didn’t mean to cause any consternation.”

  Ben released me and stepped forward into Fenton’s face. “Stop it. Your attempt to gaslight her won’t work. I have you on camera and we have witnesses who have seen Olivia trying to back away from you, and who have no doubt heard her telling you what for. So you can take what’s left of your balls, collect them, and march out of here and never bother her again, or I’m going to get the police involved. She will be backed up. So, what’s it going to be?”

  Jesus Christ, he’d never been hotter.

  Doesn’t it feel nice to have support?

  It sure as hell did.

  Fenton glowered at me one more time, but he backed off. “Well, it was never my intention. I was only saying hello. If you’re going to have a stick up your ass, fine. Next time I see you, I’ll give you a wide berth.”

  I flipped him off, but it was probably Ben’s parting line that scared him. “If you like sticks up your ass, Fenton, that can be arranged. If you come near her again, I’m going to give you exactly what you asked for.” Fenton scurried out of there so quickly I almost choked back a laugh. When Ben turned around, his gaze roamed over me. “Are you okay?”

  “I am fine. I don’t need protection.”

  His brow furrowed then. “Look, all I’m doing—”

  My fingers pressed to his lips. “I was going to say, I don’t need protection, but I’m so glad you came down here when you did. I appreciate it. Thank you.”

  His lips spread into a cocky smirk. “Does that mean I get a thank you present? You know, a good-boyfriend treat?”

  “Oh, you want a kiss?” I stood up on my tiptoes, angling my face up trying to reach him. He took the kiss, but he shook his head when he pulled back. “My idea was for a kiss somewhere else entirely.”

  “Well, that was likely going to happen anyway. How is that a treat?”

  “From your lips, it’s always a treat. Come on, let’s go. But we’re going to let the police know he violated that restraining order.”

  I shook my head. “You scared him off. He’ll back away.”

  Ben took my hand. “It’s not up for discussion. I know you don’t want to cause a fuss. And the idea that this is all being done because of you, makes you uncomfortable. I get it. But I want you safe, and we’re doing this by the book. He has scared you enough, and I’m not taking any more chances. Do you understand?”

  Why did his bossy attitude make me clench all over? I nodded. “Yeah. I was just really looking forward to getting home.”

  “Oh, we’re still going home. The police will come to us.”

  My brows lifted. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

  “Well, I belong to a very exclusive club, and it comes with certain perks.”

  My lips twitched. “You don’t say.”

  21

  Livy

  The following night, I ran my hands through my hair as I stared at my tackboard. There were names, places, and people, faceless people, which was far worse because I knew they existed; I just couldn’t identify them.

  That was how Ben found me. Staring at my pin wall. “What are you doing? You should be in bed, naked, and under me.”

  “Sorry. I went down a rabbit hole.”

  He frowned up at the board. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever figure this out. I started this thing, but I can’t make any sense of this. I’m this close, Ben. I can taste it, but I can’t see it.”

  His voice was calm, soothing. “Easy does it. You’re just feeling frustrated. I mean it’s a mystery, right? Even Interpol hasn’t solved her disappearance. You have to give yourself time.”

  I scrubbed my hands over my face, well aware that I was on a deadline. My editor was going to come calling for pages, and I wasn’t going to have anything to give to him.

  My curls were in complete crunchy, wild disarray. I was in workout gym shorts that I often rolled up. I was pretty sure I had ass hanging out, there was an ice-cream stain on my T-shirt, and I needed a shower. Luckily, I still had to go into the office every day, so the crazy look hadn’t gone on for too long, but it had gone on for long enough. A day and a half of me looking like a crazy person hunched in the library, trying to make sense of a mystery that didn’t make sense, and I was due for a change of scenery.

>   Ben tried to wrap his arms around me, but I shook him off. “No, Ben, I’m pretty sure I stink.”

  He shook his head. “No. You always smell amazing to me. I think it’s the stuff you use for your hair. I don’t know why, but I get really horny when I think about coconut and lime.”

  I snorted a laugh. “Oh, you’re ridiculous.”

  “So you keep telling me, but it’s true. Coconut and lime. That’s my aphrodisiac.”

  “Good to know. Because right now my mystery-solving ability is not anybody’s aphrodisiac.”

  “Okay. Let me look. Where are you starting.”

  I pointed to the center at the picture of Caroline. “There.” I went over and pointed again at a photo of Caroline at the Sussex Grand Ballroom in London. “This one is three years ago. The night she disappeared.”

  “Okay, so she was in London. What was she doing here?”

  I rolled my shoulders. Forcing my brain to come back online. I could do this. Maybe I just needed someone to talk to, to walk it through with. I ran my hands through my hair, realizing that my elastic had long since done a runner. Frustrated I reached up, trying to slap it off my face, and when that didn’t work, I tried to tie the front bits into some semblance of a braid. Ben shooed my hands away and instead took my hair in his enormous hands and started to braid it into a very neat French braid. I looked at him, asking, “Do I even want to know how you know how to do this?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not.”

  I might not want to know where he picked up the skill, but I was grateful because I felt marginally better without the random curl tickling a spot of skin I couldn’t quite reach. “Okay, so she was the Sussex Grand Ballroom. She was working for the organization Return Home, and they had been working on a case with Interpol and trying to secure the return of a couple of college students that vanished and were suspected to have been human trafficked.”

  “She was hot on the trail, so she went to a ball?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know why she went to the ball. There are no notes from her personally, only my mother’s speculations, so I can’t be sure.”

  “Okay, so what did your mother think?”

  “My mother thought that Caroline went there to meet someone or to follow someone. But she couldn’t track down a guest list. I’ve called the Sussex Grand Ballroom, who keep meticulous records by the way, and my mother had called them as well. Mom and I ran into the same thing. While there were publicized guest lists for the event the week before, and the event two weeks after, the guest list for that particular event was only kept by the organizer.”

  “Who was the organizer?”

  “ELTPP, just that acronym, and I don’t know what it stands for. It appears to be a shell corporation, and I can’t find any record of ownership. Every time I dig, I find another shell corporation. But by and large, they are the ones who put on the event that night. I don’t know who was on the guest list, but from what my mother could seem to gather, it was the kind of clientele that would make you either shudder or drool. It would have been the kind of people who, well…”

  He sighed and relaxed his hold a little bit as he peered down at me. “People like me?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Follow the clues. Don’t worry about where they’re going to lead. Just follow them and see what happens.”

  “Right. I don’t know how she got into the event, but I have to assume she was on the trail of human traffickers. And it isn’t too much of a leap to assume that people at the party valued their privacy and were up to no good.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense.”

  I pointed at the photo of a somewhat familiar man. “Now this guy shows up in several other photos. Or at least I think it’s him. He’s always obscured; you never get a clear look. But the thing that gives him away twice is that a burn shows on the back of his hand in both photos.” I pointed to another area of the board. “This is a surveillance photo from Interpol. This woman, Cecilia Alcott, her story sounds like something out of Taken and is very similar to Ms. Stanton’s, who we spoke to yesterday. While on holiday in Croatia, she went to Prague with a friend, and they went to some party with a cute boy. The next thing she knew, she’d been drugged and sold to some rich twat who wanted to deflower a virgin. But you know, the right kind of virgin, period. Rich, educated, white.”

  Ben rubbed at the back of his neck. “Jesus Christ, that’s fucked.”

  “Oh, it gets worse. So one of the first instances Caroline was involved with that we know of was her niece, Sadie. She’s snatched at some rich guy party, held for a few days, then returned after a hefty ransom. But a couple of years later, we have Cecilia Alcott, seventeen at the time, and she gets taken, right? But she’s less lucky than Sadie. Her abductors didn’t know that her father is another fuck-off billionaire,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yep, got it. Fuck-off billionaire.”

  “Well, he was. He left no stone unturned in finding his daughter. He called in the most unsavory of unsavory people from a mercenary team. They located her within three weeks. And she was in bad shape, but they did get her back.”

  “Okay, so did she tell anyone anything about her attacker, her abductors?”

  I shook my head. “She was too drugged up and obviously terrified. She refused to ever talk about it or even describe the man who took her.”

  “Fuck, of course.”

  “Yeah. So after being rescued, she lived by herself in a swank New York penthouse that her father bought for her. All the bells and whistles. Basically, she never had to leave if she didn’t want to. But, check out the surveillance photo taken by Interpol across the street as they were watching to see if she would come out and they could speak to her. Her father’s bulldogs were planted at the door and never moved. She had a full security detail anytime she left to go see her family. Her father was taking no more risks with her.”

  “Do you think she was targeted on purpose because of him?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I mean, it can’t be discounted. So anyway, Interpol is watching and waiting to speak to her. And look who is in the frame of one of their photos. You still can’t see his face, but look right there.” I pointed to the image. “It’s the same burn.”

  Ben peered closer, swallowed. “Holy fuck. That’s him.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. So the same guy that’s at these fancy black-tie events, the kind of parties you will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a table for, he’s watching this girl who got away. You don’t see his face, but he’s easily identifiable enough.”

  Ben whistled low and released me as he studied each of the images. “Are these all the photos?”

  I shook my head. “No. I have a bunch more in the box. I just haven’t put them up yet because I don’t know where they go or how they fit with the timeline.”

  I watched him as he rubbed at the stubble on his jaw, perched on the arm of the couch looking sleep rumpled and still good enough to eat with a spoon. “What’s your best guess?”

  “I definitely think something surrounding her anti-trafficking work got her in trouble. But that’s hardly a secret. Interpol alludes to it even though they won’t tell me anything specific. But if she was trying to follow this man, he very well could have killed her. Or it might not have anything to do with her work at all. I just don’t know. But my money is on this guy. I think maybe he works for the traffickers.”

  His brow furrowed. “You think he works for human traffickers? But why go after Cecilia?”

  “I don’t know, unless they are afraid she can identify them. I haven’t been able to talk to her. She has one hell of a bulldog for a publicist. I have tried to go through Interpol, I have tried the publicist, and I even considered posing as a maid in the building. Hell, I even had Telly try to hack her way in to access her, but she didn’t have any luck. It’s like the darkest black hole surrounds her. And there she is, a little spot of light. And I can’t get to her to ask her any
questions.”

  His brow furrowed even more. “Liv, I obviously have a whole slew of concerns about this.”

  “What do you mean? You don’t want me chasing this down?” No way he was going to bench me now. He’d always been so supportive.

  He swallowed. “I support you digging into this; I just want you to do it as safely as possible. And remember what Sadie said. The parties she used to frequent. The kind of men in attendance. They are rich, powerful, and they like underage girls. People like that will be dangerous, and they will have the power to protect themselves.”

  I watched him closely. There was something he wasn’t saying. His eyes were filled with concern, and I could tell he was working hard to not stick me in a protective bubble. “They sound like the kind of men you might know.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Well, considering I have my own force of bodyguards around me all the time, I think I’ll be okay. I’m just missing a piece. And I think this guy with the burned hand is the missing piece. He’s the key.”

  “Okay, so three years ago, Caroline vanishes. How long before that did she start investigating?”

  “Three years before her disappearance. It started with Sadie’s abduction, then with a woman she knew from the Medicorp. A friend of a friend’s daughter had gone missing. The authorities were no help, Interpol was no help. But these girls, wealthy, but not so wealthy that they’d be noticeable, daughters of businessmen, but not famous businessmen, were being abducted and occasionally returned.”

  “You’re thinking this started accidentally with Sadie. But then grew into something more?”

  He got it. “Yes. I mean this is so far out there, but the kind of people that go to these events, elite people, they’re bored with their lives, with everything. And what’s the ultimate taboo? Sex, no matter how you like it, there’s something always a little bit forbidden about it. And imagine if it’s the ultimate forbidden. Young virgins, bluebloods, pure. Daughters of men that you might know.”