by K. M. Scott
Disappointment washed over me as I rounded the corner and saw no one there. I understood a man like him had to be a slave to his work, but always waking up alone in bed made me feel as I was something extra in his life, like an addition he didn't need.
I was being silly. I knew Tristan loved me, and the wonderful life he offered didn't come easily for him. Being CEO of Stone Worldwide was a twenty-four hour a day job, if the phone calls and emails he received at all hours of the day and night were any indication. That we got to spend any time alone at all was something I should appreciate instead of whining to myself about waking up alone.
The French Vanilla roast in my mug began to work almost immediately, and I was wide awake in no time. Grabbing a sesame bagel Rogers had brought home from the local bakery, I headed back to my room to get ready for my day of research for Atlanta.
Chapter Thirteen
Tristan
"Mr. Stone, Mr. Dreger is here."
Ten o'clock. Karl was getting a late start to his daily stalking today. I looked over at the speaker on the edge of my desk and groaned. No day was a good day to deal with him, but after the night I'd just spent with Nina, I didn't want him to ruin how good I felt.
The man himself opened my office door and without even being asked in made himself at home on the leather couch on the side wall. A big man, his scalp showed more of his large bulbous head every day, and he seemed to be gaining weight in exchange for the loss of his hair. The seams of his suit pulled, as if at any moment it was going to give way and cease to hold back the girth it was containing.
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. "Karl, what can I do for you today?"
"You know what I'm here about. It's the same thing every day. Your time is running out. We've been patient, son."
"Don't call me son, Karl. My name is Tristan Stone. My father was Victor Stone, not you. So remember who the fuck you're talking to."
"Fine. And you remember who the fuck you're talking to, Tristan. You aren't all-powerful at Stone Worldwide. The Board has power too."
I knew he was baiting me, but I took it all the same. "Power to do what? This company has never seen better days. Everyone's making money, Karl. Are you saying the Board isn't happy about that?"
"You know what we're unhappy with. If you don't want all this to come to a screeching halt, you have to take care of the loose ends. She can't continue to be a risk to this business."
Ten o'clock in the fucking morning and I already had a splitting headache, thanks to this asshole. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I repeated to him what I'd said so many times it was like the words were tattooed on my tongue. "Karl, she has nothing. She knows nothing. She would never do anything to hurt me, and that includes anything that would hurt this company."
"And what happens when she finds out the truth? What happens if she finds out that her father died because he couldn't keep his damn nose out of other people's business?"
"She knows her father's dead. Why would she find out anything about how he died? That was years ago. There's no reason for her to go digging about it. It will remain as it always has—an unsolved murder. So you and the Board can rest easy. Nina cares nothing about that."
Karl lurched off the couch and moved to stand in front of my desk. "You don't have any silly romantic plans to tell her yourself, do you? You can't imagine that would be a good idea."
I nonchalantly pushed a pen back and forth across the top of my desk, praying to God my plans to confess everything to Nina weren't written all over my face. After her show of honesty about Cal the night before, I didn't want to go on lying to her anymore. I could make her understand that no matter what my father had done to hers, we could be happy together. I knew I could.
"If you're done with your daily visit, feel free to let yourself out, Karl. And don't feel the need to come back tomorrow. Nothing is going to change. Nina is the woman I love—the woman I intend on marrying—so she's going to stay a part of my life."
"Son, you're not going to win this. We helped your father build this company into the gem you now get to claim as yours, so we won't be cut out."
"Nobody's trying to cut you out, Karl. You and the Board members are safe."
He sneered at my comment, and in a flash, my patience was all used up. Standing from behind my desk, I approached him until we stood toe-to-toe. "I'm going to warn you just once, Karl. If I get the sense that you or any of your friends in this even think about going through with your plans to hurt Nina, I'll kill you myself. I'm not like you old men who won't get their hands dirty. So remember that when you go back to them today. Let what happened with Victor Stone and Joseph Edwards end with their deaths."
Karl chuckled, but I heard the nervousness in his voice when he spoke. "Your father always said you were the one not to cross. Everybody thought Taylor was the piranha, but your father believed otherwise. I guess he wasn't wrong. Fine. You should know, though, that this isn't over."
I turned away from him and waved him off. "Yes, it is."
He stormed out, barking something at Michelle as he passed her desk, while I thought about his comment about my father. Never close to me, my father had always favored Taylor. They'd sit for hours talking about business, sharing his favorite brandy and smoking cigars in his study as they plotted their takeover of some helpless company one of them had spied in distress that day.
That world had never appealed to me. Even now, I remembered the stink of their cigars as I passed that room on my way out at night, never asked to join them and happy for it. They were like strangers I was oddly related to but had nothing in common with. I couldn't imagine sitting around in leather high backed chairs playing like some captain of industry in their private, real life game of Monopoly.
I wasn't a saint, but I wasn't the kind of men they were. Maybe it was because I'd never wanted this. I was happy living a life of excess and good times, hurting no one but myself. Well, that wasn't exactly true, but I certainly wasn't guilty of the things my father and brother were.
"Mr. Stone, Mr. Knight is here to see you," Michelle announced over the speaker, tearing me from my daydreams about the past.
What was Daryl doing here today, a day early? "Send him in, Michelle."
I prepared myself for Daryl's report on Nina's ex and more importantly, what had happened with her father. Daryl came in with a bounce in his step he always had, like the world's biggest leprechaun, and took a seat in one of the chairs in front of my desk.
"Tristan, I know I'm a day early, but I thought you'd want this information ASAP."
My heart pounded against my chest at the thought that Daryl was about to tell me something about Cal and Nina. I took a swig out of my water bottle and sat back in my chair as I worked to calm my nerves. "What did you find out?"
"Which do you want first, loverboy or the father?"
"Give me the information on Cal Johnson first," I answered with a lump in my throat.
Daryl reached into his suit coat and pulled out a notepad. Looking up at me, he smiled. "Loverboy it is. Let's just say your guy has gotten around. I don't know how he does it, but on what amounts to a clerk's salary, this guy has seen more ass than a toilet seat."
Fucking fantastic. This day was just getting better and better. Forcing a smile onto my face, I said, "Love the way you describe things, Daryl. What are we talking about this for?"
"I thought you wanted to know who he was fucking."
Leave it to Daryl to make this amusing. I had said I wanted to know that, but only because I was afraid the answer would be Nina. Chuckling, I said, "Okay, is he fucking anyone interesting?"
"Not in your league, but he does like women who have money. He's piss poor, but the women he sleeps with aren't."
"What is he, some kind of Casanova, Daryl?" I asked, sure my jealousy was obvious.
"Not as far as I can tell. Used to be some kind of college athlete. Rugby or something like that. Now he's just some guy who runs numbers at an insurance company."
&
nbsp; "Then I doubt he's piss poor. Actuaries make good money. I think your detective skills are getting rusty, Knight."
Daryl raised his eyebrows at the joking insult. "You didn't let me finish. He used to make good money at the firm he worked at before this one, but he was fired under a cloud of suspicion that he'd stolen from the company. As far as I can tell, he didn't steal money but was sleeping with the boss's wife. He hasn't been able to get a decent job since. This one at Peak International appears to be a favor from one of his college profs."
So Cal was a philandering dick. I wasn't surprised. From what Nina had told me about him, I hadn't expected much better.
"Does he have a girlfriend now?"
"None that I can find, but he's left a long line of girls behind him. Did you know one of them is the daughter of the man whose murder you have me investigating, Nina Edwards?"
"Yes," I answered, adding, "Nina is my fiancée."
"Ah, I get it. Well, from what I can tell, she's not with him now. I can watch him to see if they still speak, assuming you don't think they do."
"I know they've met once recently. I don't think they'll be meeting again."
Daryl grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, but it's not a big deal to watch him for a little while."
I thought about it and even though I knew I shouldn't, I nodded my silent agreement to watching Cal Johnson.
"Okay, onto bigger fish than our boy Cal. This Edwards thing is going to get ugly, Tristan. I just want to warn you. The daughter's your intended and what I'm finding out is bad. I don't know if you're ready for this."
I leaned forward and planted my elbows on the desktop. "If you're going to tell me you know who murdered Nina's father, let me save you the effort. My father had Joseph Edwards killed. I just don't know why."
Daryl twisted his face into a scowl. "You could've told me that when you set me on this. Christ, I thought I was going to have to tell you that your own father was responsible for the guy's death."
"I know all too well what Victor Stone was capable of, Daryl. Joseph Edwards wasn't the first person he had disposed of, and he might not even have been the last. My father was every bit the monster you're going to tell me he was."
Shaking his head, he frowned. "I don't have all the details yet. All I know is that he was behind it. I haven't found out exactly why yet, but I do have one piece of information I'm planning on acting on."
"And that is?"
"There's a storage facility in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania that Joseph Edwards stored things in a week before his death. It's in his wife's name, though. Seems she's been dead for years and he had her belongings stored there, but it's interesting that he'd visit it right before he died. I think there might be something useful there."
"Has anyone opened the storage unit since then?"
"No," Daryl said, shaking his head. "The guy at the storage facility said that their records show it wasn't opened for years and then one day Edwards came and opened it just once. That was a week before he was murdered. Since then, it hasn't been opened even one time. My guess is that your fiancée doesn't know it's there."
Or she didn't remember it was there, even if she had known about it. I doubted she had since it was simply a place her father had kept her mother's things after her death. There would be no reason to tell her about it since she was so young when she died. But did her sister know about it, I wondered.
"When are you planning to go out there? I want to know what you find."
"I can go anytime you want. I was planning to wait until after the holidays, but if you like, I can go sooner."
"I don't want to wait, Daryl. Get out there tomorrow and find out what's in there."
"Okay, tomorrow I can do. I'll take a nice drive out of the city and do my best Storage Wars impression. Christ, I have to admit I'm never a fan of digging around these storage units. I think it's ever since that scene in Silence of the Lambs. I'm always afraid I'm going to find some head in a jar. Remember that scene?"
"Yeah," I answered absentmindedly as I thought about what he might find in Joseph Edwards' storage unit. Daryl continued to ramble on about dismembered bodies and other grotesque oddities he'd heard about being found in storage facilities, but I wasn't paying attention. He had a tendency to go off on tangents like that, so I'd learned to just wait until he was finished. Ordinarily, I wouldn't give someone that much leeway, but Daryl was a decent guy, even if he was a little weird.
I stood from my desk and held out my hand to shake his, a not-so-subtle sign I was ready for him to leave. Daryl took the hint and stood to go, still mumbling about the things he could imagine uncovering the next day.
"Call me as soon as you get in. I want to know everything you find," I said as I escorted him out toward Michelle.
"You got it. Talk to you then."
Dinner was ready at five when I got home, but Nina was nowhere to be found. I quickly hunted down Jensen, but he hadn't driven her anywhere all day. West reported that she hadn't left, but he did think he'd seen her on the grounds within the hour. The snow that had been falling all day had tapered off, but it was getting colder now that the sun had gone down. I called her cell phone three times, but it went directly to voicemail. Frustrated, I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and set off to find her without even grabbing my coat, scared something might have happened to her.
The doctors had warned me that she may act abnormally at times because of her head injury, so immediately I was concerned about her walking the grounds since she'd never spent any time outside, as far as I knew. I hurriedly walked around the house and then headed out toward the gardens, finally catching a glimpse of her as I rounded the first stand of hedges.
"Nina! Wait up!"
She turned and waved at me, giving me the sense that she wasn't out there for any dangerous reason. I jogged over to her and saw she was dressed for the cold weather, so at least she wasn't wandering around half-clothed unsure of where she was or what her name was.
"It's freezing out here, Tristan. Where's your coat?" she asked in a worried voice.
"I'm looking for you. Why are you out here?"
"I was feeling cabin fever inside after working all day. I was going to go into the city to see Jordan, but I decided not to. When it stopped snowing, I figured I'd take a stroll around and see what the rest of the place looks like. It's nice out here."
She seemed okay and was making sense, so I guessed she wasn't having some episode from her injury like the doctors had described. "It's cold out here. Let's go inside."
Nina held out her hand to take mine, and we walked back to the house together as she described her day researching pieces for the Atlanta property. It was moments like these that erased all the bad of my days—everything with Karl, the job I had Daryl doing for me—and made me feel as if things were going to be okay between Nina and me, no matter what came our way.
I took her coat as we entered the house and felt for her cell. Sitting in her pocket, it showed no calls at all. One of the disadvantages to living out in the country.
"How was your day at work? I was so busy talking about my day I didn't even ask how yours went," she said as we sat down to dinner.
"Same as always. Just another day at work," I answered, knowing it was a half-truth but preferring her to believe that my days were like hers instead of the nightmare that they were.
We ate and then laid in each other's arms after as we watched one of her chick flicks I hadn't wanted to deprive her of again. As if the universe had chosen to give me a sign, Nina picked a film about some woman dealing with the death of her mother. I watched and patiently waited until it was over to ask her about her own mother's death, my conversation with Daryl weighing heavily on my mind.
"Does watching something like this make you think of your mother?"
Shaking her head, she said it didn't, but I saw it did. The woman in the film had died of cancer. Had hers?
"What happened to your mother, Nina?"
Cuddling
up next to me, she quietly said, "She died of leukemia. It was fast, I think. I was so young I don't really remember, but my father told me she didn't suffer. They diagnosed her and a few weeks later she was gone."
The sadness in her voice made my breath catch in my throat. I'd always thought that losing my mother the way I did was better than watching her fade away for months or years, but I could tell by what Nina said that it wasn't that way for her. Maybe because she'd had so little time with her mother. At least I'd gotten most of my life with mine.
I kissed the top of her head and hugged her tight. "I'm sorry. I know it hurts."
"Even after all this time, it still does. I sometimes think of what it would be like if she was still here."
"I know. I think the same thing about my mother. What would she think of me now?" I wondered out loud.
Nina lifted her head and smiled. "She'd think you're an incredible success with a great girlfriend."
"At least the second part," I said, unsure if anything I'd done could be considered a success.
"You would have liked my mother. She was sweet and kind. My father used to say I was just like her. Were you more like your mother or your father?"
"My mother, I guess. Taylor was always closer to my father, so I naturally gravitated toward her."
As she curled up closer to me, Nina whispered, "Then I would have liked her."
We laid there silently thinking about the people we'd lost, good and bad, and for the first time in a long time, I missed my mother. I rarely thought of her, something that my shrinks always considered to be a serious problem. They'd always talked about the need for me to mourn her, but I had mourned her. Just not the way they wanted me to.
Nina fell asleep on my chest as I remembered the last time my mother and I talked alone just days before the plane crash. She'd been upset about my unwillingness to do anything but party and sleep around, not that she knew the full extent of either activity in my life. I'd pushed her off with my usual ability to charm her as I always had as her favorite. I saw in her face the worry that I'd never grow up and be the man she believed I could be or find someone to spend my life with.
