by Lexi Blake
PRAISE FOR THE LAWLESS NOVELS
“I love Lexi Blake. Read Ruthless and see why.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lee Child
“Smart, savvy, clever, and always entertaining. That’s true of Riley Lawless, the hero in Ruthless, and likewise for his creator, Lexi Blake. Both are way ahead of the pack.”
—New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry
“Ruthless is full of suspense, hot sex, and swoon-worthy characters—a must read! Lexi Blake is a master at sexy, thrilling romance!”
—New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst
“With Ruthless, Lexi Blake has set up shop on the intersection of suspenseful and sexy, and I never want to leave.”
—New York Times bestselling author Laurelin Paige
“An excellent combination of corporate intrigue and family drama—with good dose of seduction.”
—RT Book Reviews
PRAISE FOR THE PERFECT GENTLEMEN SERIES BY SHAYLA BLACK AND LEXI BLAKE
“Hot and edgy and laced with danger, the stories in the Perfect Gentlemen series are just that—perfect.”
—New York Times bestselling author J. Kenner
“While there are certainly incendiary sex scenes at the top of this series opener, the strength is in the underlying murder and political mystery.”
—RT Book Reviews
Titles by Lexi Blake
The Lawless Novels
RUTHLESS
SATISFACTION
REVENGE
The Perfect Gentlemen Novels
(with Shayla Black)
SCANDAL NEVER SLEEPS
SEDUCTION IN SESSION
BIG EASY TEMPTATION
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by DLZ Entertainment LLC
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Blake, Lexi, author.
Title: Revenge / Lexi Blake.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley Sensation, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016059325 (print) | LCCN 2017006110 (ebook) | ISBN
9780425283592 (trade paper) | ISBN 9780698410329 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.L3456 R48 2017 (print) | LCC PS3602.L3456 (ebook)
| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059325
First Edition: June 2017
Mirror reflection of the Texas Capital City © Roschetzky Productions / Shutterstock; Portrait of a young man with black shirt © Juan Silva / Getty Images
Cover design by Sandra Chiu
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise For The Lawless Novels
Titles by Lexi Blake
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Thanks to everyone who helped make writing this series such an amazing thing. To my editor at Berkley, Kate Seaver, and my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, at Writers House: I’m blessed to have both your guiding hands. To my assistant, Kim Guidroz, and my amazing mentor, Liz Berry. Thanks to my beta readers, Riane Holt, Stormy Pate, and Kori Smith. As always, thanks to my family for giving me the support I need.
Chapter One
This is a mistake.”
Like he hadn’t heard that before. Andrew Lawless tried to remember that Bill Hatchard was simply worried, and rightly so. Drew was worried, too. It was precisely why he’d decided on the course of action he was about to take. He turned to look out his office windows. All of Austin was laid out before him, the lights of the buildings around him coming on as the sun set over the Colorado River. He could remember the first time he’d looked out these windows ten years before. It had been the first time he felt successful and knew everything he’d worked for would finally come to fruition. He’d known that he would find the three people responsible for his parents’ deaths.
If only there hadn’t turned out to be a fourth . . .
“I told you I wasn’t sharing the information with anyone.” He glanced at the clock. Only another half hour to wait. He’d set the meeting after hours in order to keep things quiet. Perhaps he should have had the meeting at his house, but he never knew when his brothers or sister and their spouses would show up. They were getting ready to celebrate Riley and Ellie’s marriage with a blowout reception, and he didn’t want to tip them off until his plan was firmly in place.
He could hear Hatch moving, and knew exactly where he would go. There was the sound of a cork popping. Naturally Hatch went for the expensive Scotch. “You’re wrong about this.”
“So you’ve said.” About a million times since that terrible night when they’d discovered who the real villain was.
“Fine.” Hatch’s tone was short. “Explain it to me.”
How could he get Hatch to understand? He turned and looked to the man who had been his mentor his entire adult life. “Mia’s pregnant.”
That should suffice. It made sense to Drew. Mia was pregnant, and that meant he kept his mouth shut.
Hatch frowned. “What does that have to do with anything? That was inevitable the way she goes at it with that cowboy of hers. A pregnancy makes things worse. Now she’s even more vulnerable.”
Hatch wasn’t a sunny-side-of-life person, but then neither was Drew.
“Yes, she is, but I suspect she’ll be safe enough. She’s going to try her hand at fiction for a while instead of wandering the globe looking for trouble.” His sister was a reporter and a ball of chaos. Rather like the woman he was about to meet. “Case and the rest of the Taggarts will look out for her.”
“And the Taggarts would be invaluable in finding our target,” Hatch insisted.
McKay-Taggart was the premier security and investigative company in the country. Drew knew he wouldn’t have taken down Steven Castalano and Patricia Cain without them. But he couldn’t hire them for this job, and Mia was the reason why. He couldn’t ask family to put up walls, to risk relationships for h
is revenge.
“Do you know what Mia said to me when she told me she was having a baby?”
“Hopefully she said, ‘Do everything in your power to ensure no one kills me or my baby because there’s a psychotic bitch running around out there who wants to do just that,’” Hatch insisted. “If she didn’t say that, then she missed the point.”
“She told me she wished our mother was here. She told me she wished she could hold our mom’s hand and ask her for advice. She cried because her mother is dead.” It had ripped his heart out. He couldn’t explain to her that the mother she longed for was alive and well and had killed at least five people.
The mother Mia missed had tried to kill them all.
Hatch came up beside him, holding out one of two crystal tumblers. “You don’t want Mia to know that Iris is alive and posing as Francine Wells. I get that. It’s no reason to cut out Taggart.”
“Ian Taggart would feel the need to tell his brother.” It was why he hadn’t already brought the man in. “He would tell Case and inevitably Case would tell his wife, and Mia would find out. Once Mia knows, she’ll start to research Iris herself.”
He couldn’t bring himself to call that woman mother. Not ever again.
“So tell her not to.”
“Have you met my sister?”
Hatch knocked back his Scotch in one long swallow before turning dark eyes on Drew. “You can’t allow Iris to walk around like nothing happened.”
“I have no intention of doing that, but she was quite clear in her instructions to Carly. She told us to back off or she would finish what she started all those years ago.” When she’d murdered their father and his apparent mistress, then locked all the doors and set the house on fire with her four children inside.
Was it any wonder he didn’t want to tell Mia the truth? She needed to think about her baby. Riley and Bran needed to concentrate on the future and their partners.
He’d promised them they would be free after they’d taken down Stratton, Castalano, and Cain. He meant to honor that promise. He would handle Iris Lawless on his own.
“Do you honestly believe she’ll leave them alone?”
He had to. “She has for years. Twenty, to be precise. And I believe she’ll leave Mia alone for the simple fact that she married into a vengeful barbarian horde. She won’t want to start a war with the Taggarts. She can’t win that one.”
“But you think she can beat you?”
“I don’t intend to announce the fact that we’re involved in a skirmish at all,” he replied. “I’ve ensured that there are no records of that sketch in the police file. I’ve also investigated the police computer systems. There were no attempts to hack in before I scrubbed the file.”
“But after?”
“I almost missed it,” Drew admitted. “It was subtle, but someone downloaded the report the police made the night of Patricia Cain’s overdose.”
“She was murdered.” Hatch could definitely state the obvious at times.
“I know that. You know that. The police in LA are calling it an accidental overdose.”
Hatch shook his head. “Why won’t they investigate?”
“Because I don’t want them to. Because I wrote a large check to ensure that they don’t.” Oh, it wasn’t anything so gauche as a bribe. It was simply the offer of a man grateful to the police for keeping his brother out of the limelight surrounding America’s most famous style maker’s rather scandalous death. It wasn’t anything new to the Los Angeles PD. They’d been happy to ensure Bran’s name had been kept out of the press and to quickly close the investigation. The tabloids had gone insane for a few days and then the reporters had moved on to different scandals.
All except one. And he intended to take care of her tonight.
Hatch swore under his breath. “I wondered about that. So if you’re not going to allow her to get away with it and you’re not going to use the police or your McKay-Taggart resources, I assume you’re going to do this all by yourself.”
“Not at all. I’m hiring an investigator, but one I can control.” One he also wanted to get into bed with, but then that was all a part of his plan.
“Another agency?”
“No, an individual.” There was a reason he hadn’t gone over this with Hatch, but if all went well, in a few hours he would know anyway. There was zero chance of Hatch buying the story he was going to sell to his family.
“So you hired a private investigator? I hope he’s also a bodyguard.”
“I intend to ensure that she’s discreet.”
Hatch went still beside him. “She? You hired a female PI?”
“She’s actually a reporter, but she’s a brilliant investigator.” After all, Shelby had realized something was seriously wrong with his parents’ case long before Drew had. She’d requested medical records, started digging in a way that led him to believe she knew something she shouldn’t. He’d stopped her at every turn, but only because he meant to control this investigation.
Shelby Gates would be allowed the keys to the kingdom, provided she was willing to sign the agreement he’d drawn up.
Then he would have her, and he would enjoy himself for as long as it lasted. Until the moment that she realized he was a manipulative asshole and walked away from him.
“Tell me it isn’t that redhead from LA. The one you got a hard-on around every time she walked in the damn room.” Hatch didn’t wait to sigh impatiently or for confirmation. “Damn it, Andrew, I thought I taught you not to think with your dick.”
Hatch had taught him many things. And then there were the lessons Drew hadn’t needed. Like how to protect the things and people he held closest to his heart. From the moment he’d felt the heat of the fire against his skin, seen his parents’ bodies and not been able to get to them, he’d known that he was responsible for his siblings. He’d done a piss-poor job at times, but this move was all about protecting them.
“Shelby can get into places I can’t. She’s also innocuous. Most people don’t see past her chest and hips and all that hair to the ambitious woman inside.” He intended to use that ambition against her. “Once I teach her how to be perfectly discreet, she’ll attract no attention to our family.”
“So you’re sending her out there like a sacrificial lamb,” Hatch mused as though the idea didn’t actually bother him. “She’ll send you information, but if Iris comes after someone, it won’t be our family.”
Hatch was very much a member of the Lawless clan. The boozy, obnoxious, brilliant uncle who fucked up but was always loyal. Hatch had been loyal to Benedict, and that fealty had switched to Drew when he came of age. Once Drew had sobered Hatch up, he’d proven to still have the business acumen he’d shown when he ran his father’s company. Hatch had applied it to 4L and they’d gone the distance. A few billion dollars later and they were still on top of the world.
And still had unfinished business.
“I don’t intend to get the girl killed.”
“But you’re willing to put her in danger. You saw what happened to the last few people who even hinted at getting in Iris’s way.”
Yes, he’d heard what the woman had told Carly. As Bran had lain there bleeding, Carly had listened to a recitation of Francine Wells’s crimes. Of course Carly hadn’t realized she was actually talking to Iris Lawless, but she knew the woman who stood before her had poisoned Phillip Stratton before he could potentially tell all, killed Steven Castalano in his hospital bed the day before he was scheduled to talk to police, and sent someone in to murder Patricia Cain.
He was well aware of the risks his black widow mother posed. “Better her than my family, and she’ll agree. She’ll do whatever it takes.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because I’ve done a study on her.” He knew all her data by heart, but he was intrigued at getting to know the real Shelby Gate
s. He wanted to see the woman inside the warrior goddess.
Did she fuck like she lived? Would she be a wildcat in bed, or sweet and soft after a man had given her everything he had? Would she curl up next to her lover and let him take care of her, let him adore her? Could he soften her with sex, with affection? Could he soften her so much that at the end she would consider forgiving him?
“So you think this woman is going to do your bidding because you offer her cash?” Hatch asked.
“Cash is the last thing I would offer her.”
“All right. What are you offering her?”
Drew knew the way to Shelby’s heart. “I’m offering her the story of a lifetime.”
Hatch frowned his way. “I’m confused, Drew. First you say you’re going to hide everything so Mia and the others never have to know what Iris has done. Now you’re turning it into a bestseller.”
“I’ll give her the story. I’ll even let her write it.”
“But you won’t let her publish it. You’re going to let her put her neck on the line and then take it all away from her. Damn, Drew. That’s cold. And it could work. You have her quietly find what you need. No one ever has to know you’re involved at all.”
“I thought about playing it that way, but I can’t. I need to be able to keep an eye on her until I’m sure I have all the research, and I can’t risk letting her tell this story. I’ll stick close to her and, when the time is right, I’ll take her notes, her research, and everything else.” He didn’t like how tight his tie suddenly felt. “And I’ll offer her something in return. I’ll get her any job in the world she could possibly want. She wants to work for the New York Times, I’ll make it happen. She needs cash to set herself up as a freelancer, consider me her personal bankroll.”
“And if all she wants is what you offered her in the first place?”
He shook his head. “She’ll be reasonable in the end. She’ll see that I can’t allow my family secrets out in the open.”
“So you’re going to leave things the way they are? You’re going to let everyone believe Benedict killed your mother and himself?”
