In Bed With the Billionaire

by Jackie Ashenden

  “He could be in custody then.”

  “He could be.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  What could she say? No, she didn’t believe it. There’s always hope, she’d told him, because hope had been the thing that had kept her going through the last seven years. Rage had propelled her, but hope had given her direction. Hope that somewhere, somehow, her sister was still alive.

  And Thalia was alive. That hope had been realized. Which should have made her hold onto the one remaining shred that Theo was okay. That he’d listened to her.

  But it didn’t. She felt as if everything was slipping through her fingers. Like water, no matter how hard she tried to hold onto it, it drained away. Leaving her with nothing.

  Maybe he’d been right all along. There was no hope for him and never had been.

  “I believe I will find my sister,” she said thickly. “Any more fucking questions?”

  Another small pause. “Only that I’m canceling our contract. If Jericho proves to be alive and has eluded the law, you are under no obligation to take action.”

  She said nothing. If Theo was alive she wouldn’t be taking action anyway. There was no action to take.

  “Oh and Ms. Cross?”

  “What?”

  “If you need anything, let me know.”

  Like she needed anything. The only thing she needed was Theo, and she wasn’t going to be getting that. Not ever.

  Don’t you want to know if he’s even alive?

  She looked out into the driving rain though the window, the outside world looking like it was underwater. And she was drowning.

  You have to know.

  Oh fuck. Looked like her stupid heart couldn’t let go that last shred, that last spark of hope. She’d been living with it too long, hoping for too many years.

  “I do need something.” Her voice was a mere scrape. “I need to know if he’s alive.”

  * * *

  He never thought he’d end up here, in a featureless basement in some featureless building. He thought he’d be long gone, long dead.

  At least that what he’d always planned.

  Seemed like nothing went to plan these days.

  Jericho took another look around the room he’d ended up in. Walls painted in a kind of dingy white. A fluorescent light on the ceiling with one of the bulbs flickering. A worn wooden table in the middle with a chair on either side of it.

  The kind of room straight out of a police procedural or some thriller.

  The kind of room people were taken to before they disappeared.

  It was a vaguely disturbing thought, which was strange because being disappeared was exactly what he wanted. Or it had been since they’d taken him from his Parisian garden. He wasn’t sure how long ago that had been since he’d lost track of the time.

  The police hadn’t been gentle when they’d pushed him facedown into the mud, right on top of the lines he’d drawn and stuck a gun into his back. They hadn’t been gentle when they’d cuffed him and thrown him into the back of a police van either. There were bruises where they wouldn’t be seen and it was likely that one of his ribs was broken.

  He didn’t care. Pain was something he’d long accepted was his due. Yet, as the police had taken out their displeasure on him—not a few of them probably worried for their own hides since the names of police who’d looked the other way had been in those emails he’d sent too—he’d found he had to make himself lie there and take it, had to quell the urge to defend himself, to fight back.

  Apparently now that he’d made the choice to live, dying wasn’t something he wanted to do.

  Shitty timing, especially now he was looking down the barrel of a life sentence.

  He shifted on the chair he’d been cuffed to. The metal around his wrists had left welts, and his cheekbone hurt like hell, courtesy of a toe of a size eleven boot to the face. Fuck, maybe they’d broken that too.

  He hadn’t been charged with anything, but it was only a matter of time before they found out his real identity. Before they realized that Theodore Fitzgerald hadn’t died after all. Before they realized who Jericho was. What he was.

  There was a door in front of him, and he thought he heard footsteps outside it. Then again, he’d thought he’d heard footsteps before, and nothing had happened. The door had remained closed.

  Jesus, how long had he been here? He didn’t know. Felt like days. Felt like forever.

  Without warning, the door opened suddenly, and a man came in. He looked to be in his late fifties, early sixties, and was dressed beautifully in a formal black suit. Under one arm was a thick folder, which he threw down on the table, before turning to shut the door very firmly behind him.

  “Mr. Fitzgerald,” the man said in English, his accent American. “Or is it Jericho? Which would you prefer?”

  Jericho leaned back in his chair, studying the other man. He had a sharp face, a narrow mouth, and sharp, assessing blue eyes. A man not to be fucked with in other words.

  “You can call me whatever you like,” he said, “Mr.…?”

  The man’s narrow mouth quirked. “MacDonald.”

  “Mr. MacDonald.”

  “MacDonald is fine.” He pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. “You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?”

  Jericho sighed. His cheekbone hurt. His ribs hurt. He was exhausted. And for some reason all he kept thinking about was the look in Temple’s eyes just before Dmitri had taken her away. The desperation in them.

  “Promise me, Theo.”

  “If you’re expecting me to deny my involvement in any of this, I’m not going to,” he said wearily. “Ask me anything. I’ll tell you. Names, dates … You name it, I’ve got it.”

  MacDonald, who had to be CIA surely, narrowed his blue eyes, studying him for a long moment. Then he glanced down at the folder on the table and pushed it in Theo’s direction. “I’ve been chasing you a long time, did you know that? In fact, that’s just one of the folders we have on all the disappearances, the murders, the drug deals, and all kinds of other evidence we’ve managed to compile on your little trafficking ring. You’ve led us on quite a dance.”

  Jericho didn’t look at the folder. Instead he kept his gaze on the man opposite him. “I’m sorry, but your file is now redundant. Those emails I sent should have all the evidence needed to bring those involved in the ring to justice.”

  “Including you?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t hesitate. “Including me.”

  MacDonald didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he murmured, “There’s lots of dangerous information in those files, Mr. Fitzgerald. Lots of important people named.”

  Jericho didn’t look away. “That was the general idea.”

  “The general idea of what?”

  “The general idea of taking the whole fucking thing down.”

  MacDonald’s gaze narrowed further. “Yes, tell me about that. Tell me about taking the whole fucking thing down.”

  So Jericho did. And he didn’t leave anything out. He told MacDonald the whole story, about his father, about faking his own death, about his descent into the crime world. Every single thing he’d done, every crime he’d committed. He even told him about the women he’d saved, not because he thought that would make any difference to the final outcome, but because he didn’t want to hide anything.

  MacDonald didn’t say a word, only looked at him with those impenetrable blue eyes, a slight frown on his face, not giving anything away. And when Jericho had finally finished and silence had settled in the room, MacDonald remained quiet, letting the silence deepen.

  Perhaps MacDonald didn’t believe him. That was fine. If so, it wasn’t as if belief was something Jericho needed. All the files, all the names—including the names of all the girls that had passed through the ring—were now with the authorities, with the media. And someone was doing something about them. That was all he needed.

  “So, let me get this straight,” MacDonald said after a while.
“You spent sixteen years gathering alliances, gathering information, and all so you could take as many of these guys down with you as you could.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you perpetrated some of these crimes. Deliberately.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t add anything, didn’t try to make it sound better, didn’t allow himself any more justifications.

  “All in the name of smashing the global ring eventually.”

  “Yes.”

  MacDonald leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “That’s one hell of an undercover operation, son.”

  Jericho lifted a shoulder, trying not to wince as the movement caused his ribs to shift and pain to lance through him. “It’s the truth. Not that I care whether you believe me or not. The evidence should speak for itself.”

  “Yeah, the evidence is pretty compelling, I’ll give you that,” MacDonald allowed.

  “So?” He shifted his chair surreptitiously, trying to find a position that wasn’t agonizing and failing. “Are you going to charge me or are we going to continue with this pointless conversation?”

  “Pretty impatient to get to that jail cell, aren’t you?”

  “No, it’s just that my bullshit threshold is getting progressively lower the longer this goes on.”

  McDonald stared at him for a long silent moment. “I got to say,” he said finally, “you sure have a lot of tenacity. Not many men would spend sixteen years carefully building up an empire of this magnitude only to bring it crashing down.”

  His side ached. His face ached. And he was so goddamn tired. He wanted this fucking conversation to be over. “I already told you my reasons.”

  “Because of your dad, huh? Because you wanted to take revenge on him?”

  If only it was that simple. But it wasn’t. “It wasn’t only to do with my father. I made some mistakes. And I wanted to fix them.”

  But the look in MacDonald’s eyes was shrewd. “You after redemption, son?”

  For some reason the words caught at him unexpectedly, a pain sharper than the others. Redemption. What a crock of shit. As if there was any redemption for a man like him.

  “I’m not your son,” he said coldly, letting the other man see who he actually was. Jericho not Theo. “And this fucking conversation is over. Charge me and be done with it.”

  MacDonald tilted his head. “No, you’re not my son at all, are you?” He let out a long breath and abruptly leaned forward, putting his hands flat on the table. “What you are, Jericho, is a man with a singular experience and very specific talents. You’re useful, in other words. Too useful, in fact, to waste.”

  Jericho went still. Something was going on, and he knew it. “You need to be clearer, Mr. MacDonald, because I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “We spend years on your tail, trying to track you down, but you managed to avoid every goddamn trap we laid for you. Now that takes brains. That takes guts. That takes tenacity. And we want those things, Jericho. We want your experience, your contacts. We want your ability to be someone else so seamlessly no one ever suspects who you are. In other words, we want you.”

  He stared at the other man. “What do you mean you want me?”

  “It’s very simple. I want you and you want a shot at redemption and don’t give me that denial shit. I know you’re lying. So here’s my offer. You can either spend the rest of your life in jail, wasting all those talents of yours. Or you work for us. Me specifically. We need a clean-up crew on this trafficking ring of yours. We need someone to make sure all that shit is actually mopped up, that no one’s filling the vacuum. And more important than anything else, we need to make sure the girls on the lists you sent us are freed.”

  For the first time in years, genuine shock held him completely still. This could not be what it seemed to be. An out. It just … couldn’t. “You’re not serious.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’m deadly serious. You’re a valuable commodity. The CIA wants you on our side.”

  Anger was slowly bubbling up inside him. Because he’d chosen his path. Back there in the garden he’d found his lines in the sand, and he’d accepted them. He wasn’t going to cross them. Life not death. Jail not freedom. It was his penance, his atonement, and he’d made peace with that.

  And apart from anything else, he didn’t want to be a tool for anyone else. He didn’t want to be used the way his father had used him.

  “Why me?” he demanded, suddenly furious. “Why the fuck do you want me to do this?”

  If MacDonald found his tone offensive, he didn’t show it. “Like I said, no one else has your connections. No one else knows the lay of the land like you do. And no one else knows how these assholes think. You’ve been one of them, which means you can see things we might miss. You can get people to talk who won’t want to talk to us. You can go places we can’t.”

  But he was already shaking his head. “No. I’m not your goddamn tool to use however you see fit. And besides, I have debts to pay. I’ve accepted that prison is where I’m going to pay them.”

  “Uh huh. So, you’d rather sit in jail and rot, not lifting a fucking finger, instead of going out and actually freeing all those women you sold into slavery.” MacDonald’s words were level and flat and cold.

  Jericho hated every one of them. Because here he was again, having the choice he’d made taken from him.

  And like MacDonald knew exactly what Jericho was thinking, he went on, “I’m not forcing you to do anything. I’m not making you do this. All I’m giving you is a choice. It’s a shitty choice, but then that’s life isn’t it?” MacDonald’s blue eyes were hard. “You can play the noble criminal card, paying your debt to society for the next forty or so years, wasting all those God-given talents of yours in a prison cell. Or you can take action. Free those women yourself and make sure no other asshole starts setting themselves up to be the new king of the heap. Help us get the rest of those bastards. Because that’s your atonement right there.”

  All I’m giving you is a choice.

  Jericho stared at the other man. Yeah, it was a choice wasn’t it? In the same way life had been a choice. Sure, the guy wasn’t wrong, it was a shitty choice, but nevertheless, it was one he could make himself. One that he could make his own.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” he heard himself say, like a goddamn fool.

  “Nothing ever is,” MacDonald said. “So what’s it to be? This is a one-time offer. You take the prison option, you’re there for life, no coming back.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t right he’d been offered this chance. Perhaps it went against every idea of justice there was. And what he should be doing is accepting that and choosing jail. Paying his dues to society locked away.

  Or … he could make the life he’d led mean something. Use the experiences that had been forced on him, that had broken him, to help other people. Fix things in a real, practical way, not the big-picture, abstract goal that had ruled him for so long.

  Because MacDonald was right. No matter how he denied it, he did want redemption. He did want to make up for all the things he’d done.

  There’s always hope, Theo …

  His heart seized inside his chest. He hadn’t wanted to believe her. He hadn’t. Because he’d thought there was no hope for him. Had been certain right down to his bones. And yet right here, right now, MacDonald was offering him something more. A little sliver of hope.

  If he had the guts to take it.

  Because when it came down to it, that was the real choice, wasn’t it?

  To believe he was beyond redemption and accept his fate. Or to believe that he still had a chance. That there was still something good in him. Something worth saving.

  Temple had believed that. And she’d seen something in him worth loving. So could he really throw her choice away just because he was too afraid to hang onto that last shred of hope?

  He couldn’t. He had to be equal to her. He had to make her choice mean something too.

  “If I
do this, I’ll need a new identity.” His voice sounded rusty, not like himself. “I can’t be Theodore Fitzgerald anymore. He’ll have to stay dead.”

  MacDonald didn’t show any surprise whatsoever. As if it were already a done deal. “Already got that covered. We managed to keep your name and your involvement in your father’s empire out of the media too—don’t want them digging up old photos of you and plastering them all over the Internet.”

  A dizzying relief opened up inside him. So that was one less thing for Violet to contend with at least. “Good.” Less rust now, thank Christ. “I’m going to need help also.”

  “Help?”

  “There are a couple of people who helped me take down this ring, who know who I am. And who will go down with it because of me.” A certainty was running through him now, building slowly but surely. A new kind of determination. “They’re good men, with skills you’d find useful, I think. Plus they know this world like I do.” He looked the other man in the eye. “I want them exempt from any charges.”

  MacDonald’s brows rose. “You’re in no position to make demands.”

  Of course he wasn’t, but he would anyway. MacDonald needed to know exactly what type of guy he was taking on. “You want me doing this, then I need those men with me.”

  There was a pause.

  “Names,” MacDonald snapped.

  “Elijah Hunt and Dmitri Vodyanov.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” The other man’s gaze narrowed. “Any other demands?”

  There was a strange kind of strength filling him, not one that was physical because he still felt fucking exhausted, but another sort. A strength that came from hope, from belief. A strength that he knew in that moment had always been missing from him before.

  The kind of strength that he’d always seen in Temple, yet never understood where it came from. Well, he knew now.

  All this time, she’d been right. There was hope.

  He suddenly wanted her, longed for her more powerfully than he could remember wanting anything in his entire life. She loved him, God knew why, but she did. And he’d let her go. He’d made her hold a gun to his head for his own selfish reasons. She’d given him a gift and he’d flung it back in her face.