"What are you saying?"
"Well, for years I've never had a relationship, certainly not one I acknowledged in public. I want you to be that. People will talk, and the press will write about it, so it won't be easy. Would you be willing to be my…"
"Girlfriend?" I asked.
"I suppose that's as good a term as any. I also want you to take the lead on this New England Tool Company takeover. It will be a good chance to use what you've learned. I have things to do tonight, otherwise I'd ask you to stay."
"That's okay, there'll be plenty of nights."
He walked over to the shelf of offerings and picked up my grandmother's vase, "You should take this back, consider it my first offering to you."
He sat back down on the couch and gave me a kiss. We held it longer than expected… it turned out he wasn't in such a hurry after all.
CHAPTER NINE
A few hours later I was back at my apartment, placing the replica vase back on my mantle… next to the identical original. I was too exhausted to sit and ponder my future; all I knew is that I was free. I went to bed, knowing tomorrow would be a busy day.
By 9:00AM the media was buzzing with news of Peter Drake's arrest on charges of larceny and stock fraud. The FBI refused to comment on the evidence, but promised it was quite damning.
My little vase full of audio and video surveillance equipment had done its job well, recording all the details of Drake's vicious and totally illegal takeover of the New England Tool Company. He'd manipulated the stock prices with the intent to defraud… a major felony.
David rang my buzzer a few minutes after nine. I had no choice but to let him in. After all you can't keep your FBI handler waiting. He'd been assigned to my case a year earlier when the FBI planted me in my old job as an informant.
I hadn't been lying to Drake about my arrest, but I had left out one key detail. Like an idiot I mailed some documents for the pyramid scheme people and that instantly made me guilty of mail fraud… a very serious charge. I licked one forty-nine cent stamp and became Ma Barker overnight. I got probation for the pyramid scheme but the FBI left the mail fraud hanging over my head to get my cooperation. The feds placed me at my old job to look for evidence of illegal trading. But when Drake suddenly contacted me the feds were over the moon. They'd been trying to get evidence of Drake's illegal activities for years. The FBI's lab even created a replica of my grandmother's vase overnight, believing that Drake's people might be scoping out my apartment. It sounds paranoid but they were probably right.
David came in, thrilled to have been part of a major bust. It was, in his words, a career maker.
I only cared about one thing, "Does this mean I'm free?"
"Probably," He said, "You did your job so any criminal record will be cleared and you can start over again. Of course you and I can still spend some time together," He added, putting his arm around me.
I pushed him away, When he came on to me a year ago I didn't have a choice, but that had just changed, "Now that I'm an honest woman are you going to invite me over to meet your wife?"
David looked angry, "You leave my wife out of this."
"No, I want to leave me out of it! I couldn't say no to you before, but I'm a free woman now… so why don't you get out of my apartment and my life."
"We'll see about that," David said, glaring at me, "Remember I'm the one who has the last word about your freedom!" He stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
I had endured so much shit from David, so why couldn't he just walk away and leave me alone?
A few hours later the SEC received an anonymous email informing them that one of the agent's working on the Drake investigation had purchased stock in the New England Tool Company. He was using confidential information for personal gain, intending to dump the stock right before Drake tanked the company. It was unethical for an agent to do that… almost as unethical as forcing your informant to sleep with you. David's days with the FBI were numbered. I always knew David was corrupt, which is why I feed him so much confidential information. His own greed did the rest. I didn't do it out of vengeance for his taking advantage of me… I just wanted him to leave me alone.
Around noon I placed a call to my grandmother. Being a newly retired woman she was almost always home.
"Have you seen the news Rebecca?" She asked, excited, "That billionaire Peter Drake guy was planning to ruin the tool company. If the FBI hadn't caught him I would have lost my pension! It's a miracle!"
"Well grandma," I said, "Sometimes miracles do happen."
THE END
My Second Chance Billionaire
Katrina Bliss
Copyright ©2016 by Katrina Bliss. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter 1
Sue had been rummaging through the desk drawer for the past hour and eventually, sank back in the leather armchair with a deep sigh. Vincent was giving her a run for her money, literally, and she was tired of trying to draw neat divides between what they had owned together as a couple for ten years. She didn’t want to have to sell the house, that is the last thing she wanted to do, but if Vincent’s lawyers got their way, she would have to do exactly that. Who was she kidding? The lawyers were working on Vincent’s biddings.
She sighed again and took a large gulp of whiskey from one of Vincent’s glasses, swirling the amber liquid around in her hand. She wasn’t being sentimental, she insisted on that to herself, but the room reminded her of him. The early days of their marriage, when they had just moved into this house, had still been good. Vincent had recently published his first novel and was working on his second, which meant that he spent nearly the whole day cooped up in this study. Sue would pop her head in around dinner time and he would look up at her, a dazed and confused expression on his face, and smile. That was until his second novel received no reviews, at least no positive ones, and it was all downhill from there.
Sue took another large swig of the whiskey and decided she needed some distraction, at least for a few minutes. Their shared computer, the one neither of them used in the past few years when laptops were purchased individually, was lying neglected and dusty on the desk. Sue ran a finger over the keyboard, collecting brownish dust on her forefinger-tip, which she then scraped off on the edge of the table.
She pressed the Power button, which brought the computer back to life from its long slumber, and waited while the system updated itself. When the screen finally awoke, an old photograph of them greeted her as the wallpaper. Sue, her fawn colored hair flying to the side, her younger triangular smile had overtaken her face and she had her long skinny arms around the man she was about to marry. Vincent, with his flamboyant beard, smiled too. His smile looked genuine enough and he seemed content and happy to have Sue’s arms around his neck. She remembered the photograph, it was taken on their first and last vacation together, a few months before they married. She struggled to recognize the two people in the picture as she stared at it longer. Those two people looked happy, he looked happy and in love. Perhaps, he was happy now. Perhaps, he was happy now with the skinny arms of his new girlfriend around his neck.
Sue clicked furiously on the browser icon. She wanted his face out of her line of vision. However, the first thing she did was log into her social media page. She hadn’t bothered looking up Vincent’s profile before, to stalk his recent activity and maybe if she was lucky, catch a glimpse of the new girlfriend. But, she was in the mood today. The whiskey was making her lightheaded all right, but it made her feel a little invincible too. She wanted to take a peek into his new life.
He had removed her from his Friends-list. In fact, he had blocked her completely. Sue typed his name in frantically over and over again, hoping it had been some kind of technical glitch the first…ten times. She finally ga
ve up, after fifteen minutes of trying to dig up his profile. He had removed her from his social connections with a certain severity, with almost professional perfection. Surprisingly, rather than the grief she was expecting to feel to be rather rudely shown the door out of his personal life after more than ten years of sharing a life together, Sue was more angered by the fact that she hadn’t thought of it first. She should have shown him the door, blocked him out of her online presence. She banged the table with her fist in rage and immediately, picked up the glass again, to drain it of its contents.
She sank back in the chair and instinctively, started scrolling down her social media page, blankly staring at photographs of kids and smiling families, photographs of vacations, links to news articles, a few online eyesight test results that all her friends seemed to be taking these days. Sue laughed to herself, she knew she was being a maudlin bore, but there was no denying that she was pushing forty and alone all over again. The silly eyesight tests and photographs of grown up kids were proof enough that they were all getting old. She was too tired to start over again.
In the middle of her self-pitying thoughts, her attention fell on a news story that one of her old friends from college had shared. She read the title three times over, with rapt attention, her back straight as a lamp-post now, before she clicked on the link. ‘Newcastle Alumnus, Gerard Tate in this year’s Forbes Richest in America List’. The link opened up and the smiling, older face of Gerard Tate stared back at her. Graying hair, the same sparkling brown eyes, arms crossed over his chest and Sue didn’t miss the Steel Explorer Rolex on his wrist.
The link was an updated profile of him and Sue read every word of it. While she was vacationing in Mauritius with her fiancé, Gerard wrote the code for a hacking program and set up a company from his parents’ garage. When Sue married Vincent and they invested in a house they couldn’t afford, Gerard’s new company was shaking things up in the Silicon Valley. While Sue’s husband’s failing career and their inevitably doomed marriage sent her down a dizzying spiral of depression, Gerard’s company had begun to rake in millions; no tech-company in the Silicon Valley could afford to ignore the security services that he could provide them with. Now that she was officially divorced, sitting alone in a house she was going to have to sell, Gerard Tate was, perhaps, sitting in his living room, gazing at the city skyline from his penthouse, eating caviar and champagne, smiling proudly at his children while his gorgeous supermodel wife ran her fingers through his hair.
Sue stood up suddenly; she knew she was allowing her imagination to run wild, but she couldn’t control her anger, for some reason. She felt lonely, a failure and slightly drunk, and she paced around the study with her brows crossed. Every few minutes, she returned to the computer screen to take a look at Gerard’s smiling face again. She couldn’t believe how ridiculously cruel the joke was. The boy she had dated in college, the boy who she had given up because he locked himself in his garage for days together, was now a billionaire. So many bad choices, Sue said aloud, admonishing herself as she shook her head like a disappointed school principle.
The tears came soon, hot and uncontrollable. She plonked herself down on the couch as she cried loudly, in the empty house. She had been angry with Vincent, but Gerard’s success, his happy and fulfilled life made her sad, made her regret every decision she had ever made. The memory of Gerard’s smiling face filled her mind and she burst into tears again. She could see him standing in his Khaki pants and an old striped shirt, his backpack hung loosely from his back. He was waiting for her outside her class and she ran towards him, his smile grew. She remembered it like it was yesterday. She pressed her face against his chest as they embraced tightly. He smelled of coffee and doughnuts, probably all he ate in the past twenty-four hours.
“I hadn't seen you in a day. I missed you,” she heard him say and she looked up to stare at his handsome face.
“I wish you would make your breakthrough already, so we could spend some time together, finally,” Sue said, his eyes held her gaze confidently. She could see he worshipped her.
“Soon,” he said before he bent his head down to kiss her. Even now, as she sat alone on her couch, trying hard to hold back another volley of tears, she could feel his full lips on hers. He kissed her with an intensity she hadn’t experienced after him. That thought immediately led to the memory of Vincent returning home after a book tour. Sue opened the door for him and flung her arms around her husband.
“I missed you Vincent!” she squealed and showered his face with adoring kisses. Vincent only peeled her arms off him and hurried into the house past her.
“Vincent?” she called after him as she heard the sound of the door of his study shut behind him.
Chapter 2
Sue woke up in a dark room. She had clearly fallen drunkenly asleep a while ago. She sat up on the couch and wiped the crusted dribble from her mouth. Drawing the folds of her cardigan around her, she stood up from the couch, drawn towards the bright light from the computer screen. She didn’t have to check her watch to know that it was very late, way past midnight.
She sat down on the armchair again and saw her email inbox open on the screen. She had no recollection of her actions, after she had discovered Gerard’s news article. As her eyes adjusted to the glaring brightness of the screen, her heart stopped. The first unread email in her inbox was from the username Gerard.T. Panicked thoughts raced through her mind as she tried desperately to recall what she had emailed him. She could see her hands shaking as she clicked on the email and instead of reading his response, she scrolled down directly to her initial message to him.
Dear Gerard,
I have only recently discovered your immense success and would like to congratulate you on it. We should meet up!
Best wishes,
Sue
A soft moan escaped her lips as she read the message all over again, cringing the whole time. The fact that she was embarrassed by it, was to say the least. She used her fingers to roughly massage her throbbing temples as she scrolled up to read his response. He had apparently emailed her back in half an hour’s time. Polite and punctual as ever.
Dear Sue,
Great to hear from you after ages. Thank you for your well wishes. Yes, I would love to catch up. Friday at 5PM at Queen of Tarts?
Regards,
Gerard
Regards? Regards! The word seeped into her consciousness like poison. His entire message embarrassed her; she wondered if he could tell that she had written to him in a fit of rage and loneliness. That it had been a message of spite? Then again, she couldn’t be sure what her sentiments had been when she had emailed him. She shook her head and shut her eyes tightly. This was going to be a disaster, she was convinced of it. An ex-lover flaunting his success and happiness in her face was the opposite of what she needed in these lonely times and she was the one to blame for having brought this upon herself.
She hurriedly switched the computer off and caught a quick parting glimpse of their vacation photograph. She nearly spat on Vincent’s digital face.
•••
Sue was early, thankfully. This gave her a chance to survey the place and try to grow comfortable in her surroundings before Gerard joined her. She had spent the last three days trying to distract herself from the impending meeting. She tried to coach herself in front of the mirror to deliver the most casual and nonchalant greeting when she would finally meet him, but she knew she wasn’t prepared. How could she be prepared for this? They hadn’t met in twenty years, they had parted ways on unfriendly terms and now, she had foolishly gone and invited him for a meeting during the worst phase of her life. She was convinced she would make a fool of herself.
She had chosen a simple lilac knee-length dress after much deliberation. A dark purple shawl, the color of blackcurrants, was wrapped around her shoulders as she sat at a corner table, overlooking the fountain in the square. Her hair was still fawn, but she usually pinned it up in a chignon these days, instead of letting it fall
loosely around her shoulders as she used to. She sat with her legs crossed, her hands on her lap while her black strappy sandals peeped out from the sides of the tablecloth.
She had ordered a Chai Latte already, but she let it grow lukewarm as it remained untouched on the table before her. She regretted it, she regretted all of it. She wished she had replied to his email and made an excuse for not meeting him. The last thing she wanted was to feel any more feelings.
She heard someone clear his throat close to her and Sue jerked her head away from the French windows to find Gerard standing beside her. The smile on his face appeared to be despondent, rather than enthusiastic.
“Hello, Sue” His voice surprised her. It was exactly the way she remembered it; boyish and jovial. He looked the way he did in the photograph she had seen of him recently. His dark head of hair was graying, especially around his temples. His clean white shirt hung from his square shoulders and she noticed how he wasn’t as skinny as before. The same Rolex watch peeped out from the hem of his cuffs as he walked over to the chair opposite her and sat down noiselessly. She noticed how he had traded his usual Khaki pants for finely tailored trousers. She had only smiled at him weakly, without having verbally responded to his greeting earlier.
“How are you, Sue?” he asked her, the smile disappeared from his face.
“I’m well, Gerard. And you?” She smiled at him awkwardly. Surprisingly, he still smelled of coffee and it had a powerful nostalgic effect on her, which she couldn’t escape.
He nodded his head in response and turned to catch a waiter’s eye. They both sat in silence till the waiter appeared and Gerard ordered a black coffee and a Tuna sandwich for himself.
SCAR (LOST CREEK SHIFTERS NOVELLAS Book 2) Page 61
