Billionaire Boss
Page 13
Brady fell back against the wall. He was gasping, hand on his belly where Adam had hit him. Adam rolled his shoulder, rubbing the place where my brother landed his hit.
“Both of you, stop it,” I said with anger reverberating through my voice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Cassidy?” Brady gasped. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”
“That’s enough,” I snapped.
“Cassidy,” Adam said. He had his back to the wall, his legs out in front of him on the floor. He was rubbing his shoulder. “Wait.”
I turned back to Brady.
He looked from me to Adam and gave a bitter laugh. “Screw both of you, then!” my brother shouted. “I’ll handle this on my own.”
“Brady!”
I reached out a hand to stop him, but he was striding through the door, slamming it behind him.
I looked back at Adam. I felt exhausted and confused. What the hell had just happened? I sat on the chair, covering my face with my hands.
When I looked up, Adam was standing against the wall. He had his hands clasped together, watching the knuckles as he flexed his fingers, over and again. He was frowning, but I couldn’t read the expression on his face. Inscrutable, bitter. Sad.
“Adam?”
“Is that true?” he challenged. His eyes held mine, bitter and hurt.
“Is what true?” I gasped.
“Is it true you slept with me to convince me to go along with Brady’s harebrained scheme?”
“What?” I was furious. “How dare you?” I crossed my arms over my chest and squared my shoulders.
As if it wasn’t bad enough hearing my brother saying it, having Adam believe him was worse.
“You actually believe that?” I asked.
He raised a brow and looked me full in the face with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Well?”
“Well, what?” I shouted. “What do you think?”
He covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know,” he said.
I snapped. “You really think that I would stoop so low as to use my body to fix my brother’s fuckups?” My voice was low, dangerous.
He looked at me brokenly but said nothing. He looked helpless and confused; and that fueled my rage.
“How dare you?” I spat. “You really are an arrogant shit, aren’t you? Convinced of your own capacity to help us poor, weak, and feeble commoners, to the point that you think I’d whore myself to you?”
“Cassidy,” he protested. “I didn’t say that.”
“You did!” I shouted. “That’s exactly what you said. You, and my brother. Well, if that’s what you think, you can go straight to hell.”
Before I had a chance to even think through it clearly, I strode past him, grabbing my purse from where it hung on a peg by the door. I spotted my dress, lying behind the couch, my underwear rolled up beside it. I grabbed them both and, still shaking, balled them into my bag. I strode out of the door, slamming it behind me.
“Cassidy!” I heard him shout after me, but I didn’t look back.
I strode down the hallway to the elevator.
I got into my car and started the engine, banging on the steering wheel and swearing out loud. How could they both be such assholes? I had been trying to help Brady and sleeping with Adam had had nothing to do with it. My feelings for Adam were completely separate. The more I thought about their accusations, the angrier I got. All I wanted was to get home and wash the whole thing off my body.
As I weaved through the traffic toward my apartment, I leaned back in my seat and gripped the steering wheel. I was utterly worn out. I felt humiliated, insulted, and drained.
“Damn both of them,” I whispered under my breath.
My brother, I could probably forgive. But I planned never to see Adam Stern again.
18
Adam
“Damn it,” I said to myself.
I was sitting on the couch, where I had been since Cassidy left. I had no idea how long I’d been there.
I looked at my watch, numbly. It was almost ten. I ran a weary hand over my face. I hadn’t showered or changed – I was still wearing the semi- “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
I couldn’t believe I had blown it quite so badly. And so soon. We had just fixed things between us, and now I had screwed up again. Probably irreparably.
What kind of guy accuses a girl of sleeping with him to get something?
I couldn’t believe I’d done that.
And what the hell was with Brady?
It was his fault this mess had happened – partly so.
I sighed. Of all the unexpected things that happened, Brady turning up at eight o’ clock on a Saturday morning at my apartment was one of the weirdest. He’d been adamant about the deal, almost to the point of looking crazed. The erratic behavior wasn’t like him at all. No, something was up. I shook my head. If I thought about it, Cassidy had been trying to tell me something. She wanted to discuss a business idea with me. I should have listened then, let her tell me first. Maybe it would have saved us all a lot of heartache this morning.
All I could do now, I reckoned, was to try to find out what was going on.
Feeling as if I’d just been punched in the stomach, I stood and went through to the kitchen. My phone was on the kitchen table. I lifted it and dialed.
I had expected that he wouldn’t answer – not straight away. He was good and mad at me, though I didn’t really understand why yet. To my amazement, I heard his voice.
“Adam!” he said. “Adam! You have to help me!”
He sounded frantic. I felt my heart clench with fear.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice reasonable and gentle. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Cassidy!” he said. He was sobbing. “I don’t know what to do! It’s my fault. All my fault.”
He broke down.
“Brady,” I said, feeling my own veins go icy. “Is Cassidy hurt? What’s happening? Tell me!”
I was starting to get frantic too, now. I forced myself to breathe.
“It’s…” He sniffed. “It’s them. I can’t stop them. I don’t know what to do! Help me? I can’t do anything.”
“Shh,” I said, thinking frantically. What the hell was going on? “Who is them?” I asked. “What have they done to Cassidy?”
“The Mob, Adam.”
“What?” I exploded. My mind stopped working. He couldn’t be serious. “What the fuck have you gotten her into?”
“They went to her apartment,” Brady sobbed. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know they saw me.”
“Saw you?” I interrupted. “Saw you doing what?” I was furious and scared.
“When I went there early this morning,” Brady said. “Before I came to your place. I wanted to talk to her, to apologize, but she didn’t answer, and when I left here today, they called. They must have followed me yesterday. Because now …”
He broke down again.
“Listen, Brady,” I said. “You’re not making sense. What were the Mob doing, following you? And why are they at Cassidy’s place now; what’s happening to her?”
I heard my own voice going hard. What the hell had Brady been involved in? I tried to calm him down. He was sobbing now, and I knew my anger wasn’t helping anything.
“Listen, take a breath,” I said softly. “And another one.”
I heard him comply, drawing in a shaking breath, and then another.
“Better?” I said, when his breathing sounded normal again.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Now. Tell me. Why were the Mob following you?”
“They think I have it,” he said softly. “The money. And now they have her, and they say they’ll kill her, if I don’t give it to them.” He sniffed, then hiccupped, his sobs abating.
“They said they’ll kill her,” I repeated softly. I couldn’t believe it. This was a nightmare, wasn’t it? The wine had given me weird dreams, an
d I was still asleep. I was about to wake.
“Yes,” Brady whispered, shattering my hopes it was a dream. “They have her at their meeting place.”
“Their meeting place?” I seized on it, suddenly. “You know where she is?” I almost laughed with relief. If we knew where she was, we could find her.
“I think so,” Brady whispered.
“Well, what the hell are we doing, then?” I shouted. “We need to get the police and get down there.”
I was already striding through to my living room, reaching for my jacket, my keys.
“We can’t,” Brady said sadly. He sounded exhausted.
I felt my certainty falter.
“Why can’t we?”
“They’re watching the place,” he said. “If I go near the police, they’ll kill her immediately. They already threatened it.”
“Oh.”
I sank back against the wall, eyes closed, and put my face in my hands. This was crazy. This was way worse than the worst thing I could imagine. What could we do?
“Adam,” Brady said. He sounded frantic. “We have to pay them off. It’s the only thing we can do. The project, the one Cassidy told you about.”
“She didn’t,” I said grimly.
Brady was silent. “She didn’t?”
“No.”
He started sobbing again. “I accused her of sleeping with you.”
“Stop it,” I snapped.
He stopped. I guessed I’d shocked him now.
“This isn’t going to help us right now,” I said, not knowing where all this was coming from. “We need to plan. What was she intended to tell me?”
“About the only way I can make money, fast.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s going to be fast enough.”
“No,” he said. “No, it isn’t.”
“Well, then,” I said thoughtfully. “We need to think of something else, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Brady said.
I slid down the wall, sitting on the floor like I had been after the fight. I felt exhausted and drained. We needed a plan, but I had absolutely no idea what to do, or where to start. How were we going to save Cassidy?
“Adam?” Brady said. He sounded hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure whether I was going to reply, or not.
“Yes?”
“I have an idea.”
19
Cassidy
I was in a car, on the back seat. I could hear men shouting – loud voices, lots of swearing. They were fighting about something, but I didn’t know what it was. All I knew was that my head was sore. And so was my arm.
The images changed and shifted, drifting through my consciousness. I rolled over and opened the door, my head still pounding. The shouting had died down, now I was outside the car, in a quiet road. I could hear distant traffic, and smell the scent of grass, and spilled diesel. The nasty scent of burned rubber; the smell of tires braking fast on a road. I was leaning on the car, I realized, my head sore, vision blurring into black.
The next thing I knew, I was being lifted off my feet. I screamed and struggled, and something came down over my head, another blow adding to the first. I felt my mind whirl away, tugged on seas of darkness.
Then I felt something cold on my neck.
I thought the feeling was part of my dream – a confused dream, full of conflict and screaming. I ignored it. I felt it again, more insistent this time. Cold and scratchy. I reached behind me and touched a wall.
I tensed.
Opening my eyes, I tried to look around. Pain like a knife blade seared though my head from the right side, and I closed my eyes again, shutting out the stabbing sensation. My head throbbed and I wondered why. I reached up and felt a lump, hot and angry. With my eyes still closed, I tried to focus.
Where am I?
I breathed in. I could smell dust, and damp. The peculiar but recognizable smell of concrete, moldy and loamy. I drew in another breath, trying to remember something, to make sense of everything. I remembered being in a car, then in a street, and then silence.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying on the floor. I could see a bare wall, a crack running down it and heading off just before it met the concrete floor. I breathed in again and sneezed, nearly passing out from the pain in my head. I could see a ceiling that had once been painted white, the paint flaking off. I could see no furniture. The room was badly lit, the sunlight falling in bars on the floor, as if a blind covered the window behind me.
Groaning, I tried to sit up. Every movement was an effort. My body felt bruised and my head hurt where the lump was. I leaned against the wall behind me – cold and jaggedly-plastered, it was the scrape of the bricks on the back of my neck that woke me. I swallowed, and my tongue felt thick and numb. My mouth was parched.
Leaning against the wall, my legs stretched out in front of me, I looked around. The room around me was completely empty and filthily dirty. Dust and the paint flakes falling from the ceiling coated the floor. A hole in the wall showed where a socket once was, but there was nothing there now. I twisted around. There was a window, somewhere to my right. I realized it had been boarded over; the light leaking through cracks between the boarding. It was dark otherwise.
I had to get out of there. Somebody had brought me there. Why?
I tried to stand. My legs were sore, but undamaged. I leaned on the wall, my head pounding. Little white lights flashed through my vision. I felt impossibly tired.
I feel like I have the worst hangover in the world. But I didn’t drink.
I reached up and touched my head. My fingers traced the lump, which was tender and heated. I stroked it gently, glad that I could feel no blood.
I remembered being in my car, when suddenly I’d careened forward, my head thumping the steering wheel in front of me.
I must have passed out from the headwound sustained during the crash. I couldn’t remember much after that.
A vivid flash of memory came back to me. Leaning against the back of the seat, my hands reaching for my sore head. I had tried to sit up, but then hands had reached for me from behind, grabbing my waist and pulling me backwards.
There had been other men there, I recalled suddenly. The ones who’d tailgated me, I thought. They had been arguing amongst themselves, and then things had gone silent and the pain in my head had gotten worse. I remembered feeling something sting my arm and falling forward.
I rubbed my shoulder, where the pain I remembered had been. It felt bruised. I rolled up the sleeve of the t-shirt. When I looked at it, there was a needle mark.
“Damn it!” they’d drugged me.
I felt myself start to panic. My back slid along the wall as I hit the floor, sitting down, exhausted. I was dazed. I couldn’t believe it. I had been targeted, drugged and brought here.
“I need to escape.”
I felt really scared now, but I looked round the room, forcing myself to be calm, to think of something that would help me. I swallowed hard, trying not to let the fear get in the way. I had to think logically. How was I going to escape?
The window. I struggled up. It was just too high for me to reach, and in any case, it was covered with boards. I hit one, experimentally. Hard and dense, it was new wood. I had no chance of breaking my way out.
“Damn.”
I tugged on one of the wooden boards. It didn’t budge. I could see the ends of screws sticking out – screws, not nails. Whoever had put these up intended them to stay.
“Damn it.”
I ran to the door. I pounded on it. It was solid wood.
“Help?” I called. My throat was dry, and I couldn’t find my voice. I looked around again, feeling the drive to escape sink slowly to despair.
The room I was in was perhaps five paces long, and two wide. It was bare plaster, the floor concrete, littered with little stones and flaking paint. I looked up at the high ceiling. It was plasterboard, the paint long ago starting to peel off.
“I will not die here,” I whispered to mys
elf in assurance.
There were no taps, no pieces of furniture, no source of anything except the chinks in the boarding that let in heat, air, and light. Not quite enough of any, however.
I had to get out.
I ran to the door and kicked it, hitting it with my fists.
“Help?” I screamed. “Help! Is there anybody there?”
Nothing.
I let my legs sink under me and sat on the floor again, more afraid and desperate than I had ever felt before.
Each option I ran through in my head seemed more implausible than the last. I started sobbing. My arms gripped my knees, my bare feet cold on the floor beneath me. I was still wearing the t-shirt and shorts I had grabbed, and it was cold in the room.
Oh, Adam, I thought sadly. I wish you were here. I wish I hadn’t left. I wish I could have talked to you and cleared this up.
I bit my lip, trying to stifle my sobs. They were coming thick and fast – fear, regret, and sorrow. I sniffed, drawing a deep breath.
Just as I did, I heard a key, turning in the lock.
I went stiff.
“Hello?” I whispered.
My heart was thudding in my chest. Whoever this was, I had to try and escape. I had to make them let me go, or take them by surprise and run.
“Stop hollering,” a man said. “No one can hear you.”
I stood up and turned around.
In the doorway, obscured by the partially open door, stood a man.
He was about my height, with a lean face and hard eyes. He was wearing a gray jacket and jeans, a plain shirt underneath. Not overly built. I took in any details about him that I could file away in case it would help me later. The thing that held my gaze was his face. He was looking at me with an expression that chilled my blood.
Utter indifference.
“Please,” I croaked. “Tell me what this is about?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Please!” I begged.
He reached forward, moving to shut the door.
“No!” I screamed.
I ran to it, grabbing the edge, jamming it with my foot.