by Jana Leigh
Bonus Material
If you missed “Dangerous Christmas, Dangerous Series Book Five ½”
JK Publishing is proud to be offering it free in this copy of the Dangerous Series Book Six.
Dangerous Christmas
Author: Jana Leigh
Editor: Rose Colton
Artwork by: JK Publishing, Inc.
Published by: JK Publishing, Inc.
Dangerous Christmas
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
© Copyright December 2012 JK Publishing, Inc.
All cover art and logo © Copyright 2012 by JK Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
~Dangerous Christmas
~Prologue
~Chapter One
~Chapter Two
~Chapter Three
~Chapter Four
~Chapter Five
~Chapter Six
~Chapter Seven
~Chapter Eight
~Chapter Nine
~Chapter Ten
~Dangerous: All Bark No Bite
~Prologue
~Chapter One
~Chapter Two
~Chapter Three
~Chapter Four
~Chapter Five
~Chapter Six
~Chapter Seven
~Chapter Eight
~Chapter Nine
~Books by Jana Leigh
~Excerpt from Alpha’s Mate
~Excerpt from Cat’s Choice
~Excerpt from The Mating Call
~Excerpt from Playing with Zach
~Excerpt from Perfect Perfection
~Excerpt from Meridian Warriors
Prologue
The woman sat down in the chair in front of her half-brother she never met before. He was an asshole and a monster; however, this had to be taken care of. Junior Digrossi was going to pay for everything he did to her family. His secretary was running behind her, trying to tell her she wasn’t allowed to be in the room. Please, like that was ever a fuckin’ option. It took Lily weeks to get up the courage to do this. She knew all of her friends would be pissed, but they needed to get the hard drive that should be in the chair she was sitting in currently. Lily pushed down the urge to stick her hand in the chair and look right now. Then she could get out of there, but no, she had to wait.
She heard the secretary talking to Junior. The woman was a throwback to the eighties, her blonde hair teased into a bun. Her blue eye shadow was the kicker, with the red lipstick she looked like a two—bit whore. If Lily were in a different situation, she would have given the strange secretary a business card to get in touch with Calli—the woman seriously needed help.
“Sir, she just barged her way into the office,” the woman said frantically. Lily laughed bitterly at the woman and then flicked her finger. Her manicured nails looked amazing, Lily thought, and then made her face look as if she was bored, and not scared shitless.
Junior put the fear into all of his employees apparently. The woman was waving her hands and practically had tears in her eyes as she begged his understanding. Her ‘brother’, and she used the word loosely, looked back at her with a frown as his secretary continued to make a big fuss. Wow, drama was prevalent in this office, Lily thought, if Junior was allowing her to keep going on and on. Maybe he was having sex with her. It would be the only explanation.
Lily knew once she got into the office Junior wouldn’t get rid of her. He would be too curious with what she wanted. One of the long-lost siblings finally coming face to face with a true Digrossi, he was going to be pissed. Lily knew that in the last year, the brothers worked hard to eliminate anyone who could lay claim to the fortune the brothers were sitting on. She also knew that Junior was holding out on his brother. He intended on having Sam killed soon. It was a matter of time before he was the last living heir, or so he thought.
For a month, her friends and the men worked on a plan to get back into this office, sort of. They planned a breakin that was supposed to take place tomorrow. Phoebe, her half-sister, made a small mistake when she was undercover in this office. It was a good plan really, if she hadn’t been caught by accident.
Instead of being able to get damning evidence out of the building, she ended up having to hide the small hard drive somewhere she hoped no one would find it. Lily was here to retrieve it before anyone else got hurt. This whole thing came to a head a few days before Christmas. Although, Lily had been unable to confide in her boyfriends—mainly because they would never have allowed this—and it would have blown them away if they knew the truth, it was too early in their relationship to lay this on them and expect them to smile and accept her.
She thought for a few days she would tell her men what she discovered, but then she chickened out. If they dumped her right then, she would have been devastated. Bear and Trent were going to be pissed, there was no getting around that, but she hoped they would come to understand her reasoning. Lily had the means to end this before anyone else was hurt, and she intended on doing just that.
She told the whole group, who was still in upper New York State, she was going to the store to pick up a few things. Then she just kept driving, pulling over at a rest stop only long enough to change into the clothes she was now wearing. She made it to New York in enough time to call the Attorney who wrote her and check her facts. When she was assured that she was correct, Lily headed for the office building. She was gonna blow this whole thing sky-high and have fun while doing it.
Secrets had a way of making things so much worse than what you thought they were. This time they really were worse. There were several things going on all at once that involved many more people than what they originally thought. Damn her parents, they just expected her to ignore the facts when she found the diary. Really?
Narrowing her eyes at her ‘brother,’ she said, “Hello, big brother, I think we have some things to talk about, don’t you?” This really sucked, Lily thought, she hoped her voice wasn’t wavering like she thought she heard.
Junior waved his hand at the woman who he was probably going to fire in the next hour, and looked at Lily curiously. She knew what he was thinking. He was cussing their dead father. He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, and he had more than ten children out of wedlock. Junior didn’t want to give any money to them, so one by one they had met with a series of accidents.
Lily was not going to let that happen to the remaining siblings she had. They needed to be protected and the information she needed was somewhere in this building. That’s why she had to change the plan.
Her parents were dead, both killed in an accident. Then Lily discovered papers in the attic that proved Senior Digrossi fathered her, along with detailed information that would bring this empire to its knees if she turned it over. She shivered every time she thought about it. The onl
y problem was that it was in partial code, and the code was on the hard drive Phoebe attempted to copy. That wasn’t the only problem though. Junior had already set a plan in motion, one she had to stop, and the only way to do that was playing the one card she had hidden for a few weeks.
Junior laughed loudly, “Brother? What the fuck are you talking about? I have one sibling. And he is in the building somewhere.”
Lily was more than happy to play the game with Junior. She was putting him on notice, and throwing out a few things in the process to get the ball rolling faster than the men had planned. They didn’t know the whole story yet. If they did, they would know she was doing this for the best.
Lily played her part and grinned as evilly as she could. She practiced this for so long in the mirror, now that she was playing the part—it was awkward. “Really? You wanna play it that way. Well, I happen to have verified documents, as well as a signature from our father, acknowledging me as a biological child.”
Lily saw the recognition flare into Junior’s eyes as she spoke. “Also, I have a few more documents that you may find interesting. While you think our father somehow was ignorant of your games, he wasn’t. In fact, I spoke to him just a few days before his death. He told me where I could find the evidence of your illegal activities in the event of his death. Dad was all kinds of pissed off at the way you and Sam decided to run things. In fact, maybe you will find this a little interesting,” Lily said smugly and flipped a folded paper at Junior, who was sitting with his mouth open staring at her.
When he didn’t pick it up, Lily laughed and snapped her fingers. Junior seemed to focus—he was uglier when he was mad. His pasty, fat face began to turn red. Junior picked up the folded paper, and when he saw what she gave him, his face turned even more red. He made a bunch of noises that could only be perceived as grunts of dismay.
“Where the fuck did you get this?” Junior finally yelled, and Lily laughed at him.
“Watch it, bro, you may burst a blood vessel.” She teased and then smoothed a hand over her perfectly styled hair, another thing that should have clued the guys into her not going to the store. Her shoulder-length, brown hair bounced with the slight curls she put into them, and her hazel eyes accentuated with freaky, expensive make-up. The overall effect was amazing she had to admit. It was absolutely crazy how they actually didn’t figure out where she was going. But up until now, she had been a wallflower. She had been a frightened, little virgin who had no idea what the fuck was going on until a few months ago.
Now she had a crazy-ass family, some of them in hiding, and two men who wanted to share her. Damn, really, she figured out two weeks ago, if she was in for a penny, she was in for a pound. Bailey, Calli, Jazz, and Ginny were strong and forceful women. She looked like a stupid child next to them, hiding behind her glasses when she could have worn her contacts, letting her mousy, brown hair hang straight and lifeless around her shoulders, until Calli made her dye it and taught her how to fix it. Finally, her amazingly full and sexy figure, which looked hot right now in the little, black dress Calli gave her. Who knew that she could actually look sexy and hot? She was feeling good about herself, and knew it showed.
The piece of paper she just threw at her brother was a deposit slip showing his payment to the hitman for their father’s murder. Senior Digrossi identified the hitman as one he used previously. To make sure she had enough ammo, her father even included the phone number to the lawyer who set everything up for him. Lily looked up at him with a dead expression and then said smoothly, “You can throw it away, destroy it. I don’t care, because I have copies. I have lots of copies of things you would probably love to know about.”
Junior’s face began to tinge to a molten red color, his thick, fat neck bulging more over his shirt collar, then he exploded into action. Lily forced herself not to jump as he screamed at her, and slammed his beefy hand on the desk as he stood and began to rant and rave around her. She could do this. She could be the cold-hearted bitch she had to be. Lily used his distraction, pushed her hand down into the cushion, and felt the small little square. Thank goodness, it was here.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing, you can’t walk into my place of business and think I will instantly bow down and kiss your ass! I have no idea who the hell you are. For all I know you could be just a slimy blackmailer,” Junior yelled behind her now, making sure she was supposed to feel intimidated by his standing above her.
Lily forced herself to continue the game she was playing. By now, Bear and Trent knew she was gone. They were going to be pissed. Steadying her breath, she chuckled and looked over her shoulder. “Really? Sit down, brother, you don’t scare me, so let’s cut out the dramatics and get down to business. We have only a small window of opportunity before something is going to happen that you really would regret. I knew you were going to act like this, so let’s say I have a little insurance policy. As for where I got the information, here, as you can see, you were not the only one who was in touch with good ole dad. He just hid our contact better.”
She flung an envelope that had the address and postmark of the lawyer who their father had dealt with for years. Unfortunately, this is when the crazy-ass shit started. Lily received letters when she was young from Mr. Stone and from the tone of his letters, she assumed he was her biological father’s best friend. In the initial letters, it explained her father loved her but died in a car accident. Mr. Stone expressed his friend’s desire to make sure she never wanted for anything.
Her adoptive parents encouraged her to write to Mr. Stone, looking back though, she could see how reluctant they were since they always used a PO Box to send the letters, but as a child, she never caught that. So Mr. Stone and Lily became pen pals. Over the years, they sent hundreds of letters back and forth to each other, telling them each things about their lives.
When all of this came down, Lily had been shocked to discover who Mr. Stone actually was. Senior Digrossi had been writing her all these years with an alias. Mr. Stone was an actual lawyer he used; however, the stoic man she contacted when she discovered the truth could in no way be the man who sympathized with her when her cat passed away, or congratulated her when she got an A on an English paper.
Anger had coursed through her when she thought of all the things she talked about with the man who destroyed their lives. And the worst part was she was devastated the man who wrote her was gone. She missed being able to write what was going on down on paper and sending the letters in the mail. It was like therapy for her.
Of course, she hadn’t told anyone that for the last ten years she had been a pen pal with a crazy-ass murderer. Hell, she could barely believe it herself, reading her mother’s journals about how Senor Digrossi was a stalker. It was hard to reconcile the two different men in her mind.
Lily panicked when she put all the pieces together, because over the years, Mr. Stone sent her gifts and money. He claimed it was from an investment her biological parents made. Sadly enough it had been true, but the investment turned out to be a payoff and the lawyer turned out to be the go-between for payments. Lily felt sick to her stomach. So many lies, so many people hurt. Digrossi had been a sick man, and she was a part of it.
Lily spent hours worrying about how to tell her friends that she had been talking to Senior for years. How the mobster had paid in partial for the land they all live on. They would freak, probably leave, probably tell her she was a naïve fool. She had been, and so much more.
When the last letter came, she refused to open it. In fact, it had sat in her hiding place for a month. Then she felt compelled to read it when she found out he was killed. She found a key to a lock box in the bank that she used. It held more information than all of them could have ever hoped. Unfortunately, it also had the documentation of her parent’s wrongdoing. She had not wanted to tarnish their name. They had only tried to protect her. Lily was shocked at what she discovered, and once again she feared what her friends would say when they found out. However, instead of actually
doing that, they made her the prime obsession of a crazed man.
Senior had been two different people: the person she hated and the person she sent her most personal secrets to. The last letter she sent him explained how her friends had begun to move onto her property. She had given the mobster their position. Stupid, she was so stupid, and it was something she wanted to hide. Lily had no idea what Senior shared and what he didn’t. There were some things she needed to protect. That was why she was here. She needed to protect herself and someone else before all this went somewhere none of them could come back from.
Junior slumped back into his chair with his eyes narrowed and glared at her. “So, you know what I am capable of, why the fuck did you think you could walk in and out of here unscathed?"
Lily laughed again, “Oh, I have no illusions about what is going to come next. But the good thing is you just need to make one phone call to confirm what I am about to tell you. Once you do that, then we will see who has the next move.”
