Ruthless (Fractured Farrells: A Damaged Billionaire Series Book 1)

by Mallory Crowe

  “It’s fair. First chance I had, I joined up with the army. Bounced around for a few years until there was a team I found that I really went well with. Was doing good, making a difference, and getting noticed. Until Walter noticed me and pulled me out.”

  “He pulled you out?”

  “He had friends in high places. He put in an order for a well-trained operative without much education outside the service and no family.”

  “That sounds...”

  “Sounds like he picked me out of a catalogue. I wasn’t too happy at first, but the money was good. I mean, there were times in school when I’d break into lockers to steal lunches. I’ve never had money.”

  Jean glanced around the dark room. It wasn’t a large apartment, but she knew enough about New York to recognize that this section of Manhattan was one of the most expensive places to live in the entire country. And this was from a man who wasn’t getting a paycheck anymore.

  He’d also bought them first-class plane tickets and some rather posh hotel rooms. “So Walter at least compensated you well.”

  “He paid good enough. But not as much as he promised.”

  Ahh, yes. The inheritance. “So he had you do things you didn’t want to do?”

  She could feel Colin tense behind her. “I didn’t want to do any of it. I didn’t go to serve the damn country just to get stuck working as some rich guy’s gruntman. And every time I tried to quit, Walter promised I’d be taken care of. That while I might be a gruntman, he was the only person I’d ever have to do grunt work for.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. She knew all too well how it felt to be trapped in a situation that was impossible to get out of. In a life that you never wanted and couldn’t see any escape from.

  “It’s not your fault. Besides, you’re the one who’s helping me to get out of it.”

  It was nice to know she was helping in some way. Maybe it was time to change the subject. “So...you aren’t just putting on a show? You really are as scary as you act?”

  He laughed. “The first time you met me, I broke a guy’s hand. What do you think?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I grew up around men who acted tougher than they were. So is this place all booby-trapped to keep people out?”

  “Jean, I am the booby trap.” He pulled her tighter against him. “The wire on the door is just to give me warning if someone comes in when I’m not paying attention. Is that what you’re asking about?”

  “I don’t think I’m asking about anything. Just trying to figure you out a bit more.”

  “Lord help you if you ever get inside my head, Jean.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  The sound of a phone ringing cut through the silence of the apartment. Colin pushed himself off the bed and grabbed his phone out of his pocket and answered it with a simple, “Yeah.” A few seconds passed and Jean turned over to look at him.

  “Okay. I’ll let her know. Thanks.” Colin hung up the phone and met Jean’s eyes. “DNA test went through. You’re officially a Farrell.”

  Colin hooked his shoulder holster over his t-shirt and adjusted the strap so it wouldn’t show through his jacket. Once it was fitted, he holstered the loaded Glock 17 and put the two extra magazines in the other side of the holster.

  Right then, Jean came out of the bathroom, ready to go meet with her brothers. She halted when she saw him. “Whoa. You’re packing today?”

  He picked up a brown leather jacket and slid it on over the holster so no one looking at him would even know there was a gun tucked under the leather. “I’m always packing.”

  “So are you one of those people who’s getting ready for the apocalypse and is always expecting a war?”

  He raised a brow. “I’m someone who’s discharged a weapon in self-defense before,” he said simply. He’d discharged a weapon in non-defensive situations too, but she didn’t need to know that. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Yep. I just have to—”

  Colin’s phone rang, and he looked down to see that Smith was calling. He clenched his jaw and headed for the bathroom. “I need to take this,” he said simply before he left Jean out of sight and shut the door.

  “I’ll just wait here,” she called from the other side of the door, a not-so-subtle annoyance in her voice. She’d just have to be annoyed for now. He was willing to admit that she had the right to be kept informed about where this investigation was going, but he would still be the one to determine how she got the information. Namely not while she bent over his shoulder to hear what Smith was saying.

  “Colin here. What did you find?”

  “You know, a little foreplay wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” said Smith on the other end before a crunching noise came over the line.

  “Any dinner I bought you would be ruined by the chips you’re eating anyway. I don’t have time for foreplay—I’m trying to figure out who is paying to have a friend of mine killed.”

  There was a pause. Then, “This girl is a friend now? I thought she was a client.”

  “Does it make a difference?” bit out Colin.

  “Well, you don’t have friends, so...”

  He didn’t have time for this. “I’m assuming you called because you had something to say besides berating my personal life.”

  “There is something, but you’re not going to like it.”

  “So you don’t have who paid Tony Marsh yet?”

  “I found the account the money came out of, but the name it’s set up in is a ghost. Whoever it was, they fabricated this identity for this account, probably because they’re doing shady shit like hiring assassins.”

  “So you’re telling me you have nothing?”

  “No, I’m still digging. Just because I hit a dead end doesn’t mean I don’t have any other trails to follow. But I’ve been keeping an eye on this account and tracking any activity in and out and there was a sizable transfer into a New York City account this morning.”

  “Sizable?”

  “Fifteen grand. Same as the amount that was paid for Tony Marsh.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll keep on the alert.”

  “No problem, Carter. You know I owe you.”

  “And here I thought I had no friends.”

  “Just because I owe you doesn’t mean I like you.” With that, Smith hung up.

  “Fuck,” said Colin again as he hung up and rubbed his temples. Who the hell would want Jean killed that bad? It would have to be the brothers. No one back in Arkansas had thirty grand lying around to go hiring these kinds of scumballs.

  But the brothers wouldn’t get any money from her dying. However, there were other reasons to kill. Jean had been born during Walter’s third marriage. That was Nathan’s mother. Maybe he was a little upset daddy dearest wasn’t like the dads on TV. It was a stretch, but he was running out of motives.

  Unless these guys were after him. That made a hell of a lot more sense, and there were thousands of motives. For now, he’d work under the assumption that Jean was the target. He brought her into this mess. It was his responsibility to keep her safe. Besides, he’d been watching his own ass for thirty-five years. By now it was second nature.

  He came out of the bathroom, expecting to see Jean pissed off and waiting for him, but what he saw was worse. She was hunched over in front of his closet, looking into his still open gun safe.

  “See something you like?” He crossed the room to shut the safe.

  Jean backed away and pulled the shoulder strap of her purse on. “I see lots of things I like. You know I can fire a gun, right? If you really think I’m in danger...”

  “You’re not getting one of my guns. Now let’s go.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I would’ve thought last night would’ve made you less bossy.”

  He didn’t reply as he followed her out and locked the deadbolts on his door. If anything, he was going to be more bossy now. It w
as easy to keep a disconnect between them before. But even if this was a casual thing, for now she was his woman. He’d instinctively felt protective of her when he’d first walked into that diner she worked at. Now that protective instinct was on overdrive.

  But considering how she felt about those protective instincts, he’d keep that change of attitude to himself. “That was my tech guy who called.”

  She paused on the stairs. “I’m not sure what surprises me more. That you have a tech guy or that you’re actually telling me what the phone call was about.”

  Well, at least sex hadn’t changed Jean into the mushy type. He stared her down. “I knew Smith back in my army days.”

  “And what exactly does this ‘Smith’ do now, if that is in fact his real name?” There was a joking tone to her voice, but Colin could tell she was serious about both parts of the question.

  “Smith,” which was his real name, “now works a desk job for the government. But I think he gets bored, so the few times I’ve asked him for help, he’s always been willing.” A willing pain in his ass.

  Jean nodded, a smile covering her face. Damn, she looked pretty when she smiled. “I love this new honest relationship we’re having! Now what did Smith say when he called you?”

  “Smith thinks someone else is going to try to kill you really soon.”

  And that smile was gone. “What?”

  “The account that paid Tony Marsh, the guy from the hotel, paid someone else today.”

  Jean started to take a step back before she remembered they were on the stairwell and she was effectively trapped. “So what am I supposed to do? Maybe we should just stay inside. They don’t know I’m with you, do they?”

  Colin clenched his fists. These were questions he should’ve had the answers to. “I’m going to be your shadow today. As long as you’re with me, you’re safe. Do you trust me?”

  Jean eyed him warily. “You know I don’t.”

  Fuck. “Do you at least believe that I’ll protect you?”

  She paused for a moment, as though considering it. She finally answered, “I think that anyone who gets through you probably wouldn’t have been stopped by anything.”

  That would have to be good enough. “Let’s go meet Nathan then. We’ll try to keep it short and to the point.”

  “If he’s anything like Robert, that won’t be a problem.”

  Colin scoffed. Well, Nathan certainly wasn’t anything like Robert, but he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  Jean wasn’t sure what to expect with the youngest of the Farrell brothers. She’d done a quick Wikipedia search on her phone while Colin and she had been on the subway but didn’t feel as though she knew him any better.

  He was the youngest of the four and had a different mother than the other three. His hair was a lighter brown than the rest of the brothers in his more recent pictures, which made her wonder whether he used to color it in that first picture she’d seen or whether he spent a lot of time in the sun and had gotten natural highlights like the guys who worked construction in town.

  Not that he was the type to work construction. From what she’d seen online, he spent a lot of time on beaches, with many beautiful bikini-clad ladies on his arm. In fact, every picture she saw of him in her image search was either him with a girl on his arm or a drink in hand. Sometimes both.

  So she assumed he was going to be the “fun” brother. Though from what she’d gotten from Colin, no one in this family was fun, so she didn’t know what to expect.

  Colin led her into Farrell Tower and gave security their names before he showed the guard photo ID. Jean had widened her eyes at the harsh security measure but handed over her license. Back home, usually you just walked in and said “hey” before going back. Of course, the one “professional” place she’d worked at had folded, so what did she know?

  The guard let them through and told them which elevator to go to. Which she thought was extra strange until they reached the bay of elevators and she realized they didn’t all go to all levels. There was a group for the first twenty floors, the middle twenty floors, and the highest levels of the building.

  They went into the elevator directed to them, and without pressing a button, the 60th floor button lit up and the elevator started moving. “Umm...is that normal?” Jean inched a little closer to Colin. She was more grateful to have him here than she thought she’d be. At least one constant in this strange world she didn’t belong in.

  Colin pointed to a nondescript black box above the button bay. “That’s a security sensor. The employees all have badges they can wave in front of there before they tell the elevator what floor to go to. Since we don’t have a badge, security had to let us up.”

  “So all guests to the Farrell Company have to go through this?”

  “No. They have a main reception level that you don’t need security clearance to get to.”

  “So what level are we going to?”

  “The executive one.”

  The doors opened and Jean stared warily at them. They’d gone up sixty stories that fast? She’d never felt as much like a country girl as she did in this instant.

  Across from where they stood in the elevator was another three elevators that opened to this level. Colin led her out, and she took one last chance to check her appearance in the reflective doors in front of her.

  At least she didn’t look like a country bumpkin. She didn’t look like a New York heiress either, but she could only do so much. Today she was in her leggings and boots, but she wore a nicer green v-neck sweater. Even if she did have money to go shopping right now, it wasn’t as if she knew what she was supposed to wear.

  Was she expected to dress up for meetings with her “family”? Well, that would have to wait.

  It wasn’t as if Colin had worn anything nicer than normal. Today was his usual cargo pants and t-shirt. She was starting to learn that he always wore loose jeans or cargo pants and was willing to bet he had an ankle holster hiding in there.

  A few days ago, it had terrified her that he was always so armed, but after what she found out this morning, she felt comforted that he was there.

  Jean clenched her purse tighter as she followed Colin to a reception desk. There was no one there, which wasn’t too surprising considering this wasn’t the main level for people. Maybe the desk was just for show? Colin hit the little button on the top of the desk, and in a few seconds, Nathan Farrell appeared.

  Jean didn’t know why his appearance surprised her. She should’ve known by now what all the brothers looked like considering the number of times she’d looked them up. But Nathan Farrell exceeded any Internet search she’d done.

  It was no wonder the girls were all over him. He was probably the most classically handsome of all the brothers. His dark hair that she now saw was speckled with the natural highlights was pushed carelessly back in a way that showed off his amazing jawline and cheekbones. He looked as though he should be on a red carpet, starring in movies, not sitting in an office all day.

  But it also made sense with what Colin had told her about him. He was supposedly a star negotiator for the company. Figured...pretty people could convince people to do anything.

  He at least managed to look happier to see her than Robert had. “Jean?” He stepped forward.

  “That’s me,” she said, trying to keep the nerves from her voice.

  But Nathan didn’t have the problem of nerves. He came up to her and wrapped her up in a big hug. “Welcome to the family.” He gave her one tight squeeze.

  Jean’s eyes widened as she met Colin’s narrowed gaze over the man’s shoulder. What had Colin so angry? He wasn’t the one being hugged by a stranger.

  But if Nathan really was the party boy the press made him out to be, he was probably much more into touching and hugging than most.

  “Come on.” He let her go. “Let’s have some talks about where we go from here, and I want to introduce you to Julie.”

  Jean followed Nathan as he led them through th
e maze of hallways. He hadn’t said a thing to Colin, and she had to assume that was on purpose. Robert hadn’t seemed thrilled with Colin either. Was that a reflection of the brothers’ strained relationship with their father, or had Colin done something specifically to piss them off?

  Though, considering how easy it was for Colin to piss her off, she kind of had her answer.

  Nathan let them into a conference room with a long, black, shiny table in the middle; floor-to-ceiling windows gave a breathtaking view of the skyline.

  “Wow,” breathed Jean as she stepped inside, going straight past the table to look at the view. From here she could see all of Central Park and well past Manhattan into Jersey. Didn’t get views like this in Arkansas.

  “You really are a first-timer here,” said Nathan from behind her.

  His voice actually startled her from her admiration of the city as she turned around. “I’m sorry. I really try not to seem too touristy.”

  “You should’ve seen her at the airport.” Colin smiled at her. “It was like a theme park.”

  “Hey. It was cool.” She gave him a silent look as though to say, You better not talk about my little panic attack.

  But Colin stayed quiet as Nathan let out a laugh. “Hey, it’s a good thing. Sometimes I wish I took the time to remember how pretty the city is. I suppose I’m just too used to it.”

  Jean didn’t think she’d ever get used to it.

  “Do either of you want coffee or water?” Nathan opened up the mini fridge in the corner and pulled himself out a bottle of water.

  “We’re good.” Colin answered for both of them. Well, Jean could’ve gone for a water, but she supposed she wouldn’t contradict Colin in front of Nathan. He didn’t need to know about their strange up and down relationship.

  “Well, let’s get down to business.” Nathan took a seat next to the fridge. Jean sat down directly across from him at the table, and Colin took the seat next to her.