“Kohl, Kinley. Bride-to-be. 4325510996.”
Her name, rank, and serial number. Well, her Neiman Marcus credit card number. It was the only number she knew by heart. If they wanted to steal it and buy high-end shoes…well, they were in for a shock because she was at her limit after buying wedding clothes.
She wasn’t going to give them anything else, especially answers to questions she didn’t know.
“Are you even going to look at the files?” Dominic asked. He stood over her, placing his hands flat on the table. He was a gorgeous man, even when he frowned, though now that she thought about it, she’d never seen him smile. In fact, no one was smiling now.
“There’s no point. I don’t know what you think is going on, but someone took funds out of my charity. They didn’t use it to launder money. My accountant would have alerted me to that or any abnormalities.” But why hadn’t Steve told her about all the missing funds…unless he had something to do with it. Come to think of it, he’d been quiet lately. God, none of this made sense, but she wasn’t going to look at these reports when they’d only try to use them to hang her.
“Then why is all that money missing? And when did you get in bed with Third World manufacturers?”
She thought about answering, but when she couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, then what? They kept claiming that they didn’t intend to hurt her, and some hopeful part of her wanted to believe that. They’d probably sent Law/Mike in earlier to butter her up. But she wasn’t falling for it. When it became apparent that she couldn’t fill in the gaps in their information, would they kill her? Or would they extract everything out of her they could, no matter how minute, then off her? Either way, her best shot was to say nothing.
“Kohl, Kinley. Bride-to-be. 43255—”
“Do you know what RICO means?” Riley asked.
“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. And the grand jury cleared him.” Greg had explained that there were corrupt people in the government trying to help his competition. After her kidnappers’ accusations that Greg was a criminal, she might at least think it over. Or not. Greg was a pillar of the financial community. The men who kidnapped her were…well, kidnappers. Yes, Greg had been hauled in front of a grand jury, but there wasn’t an indictment. Even more compelling, one of the prosecutors who had tried to indict Greg had been found guilty of fraud himself not a year later.
Dominic shook his head. “No, the grand jury doesn’t clear anyone. They simply didn’t have enough evidence to move to trial. Do you know why?”
“Because he’s not guilty.” From what she understood, the grand jury had convened two years before and had found nothing since. The FBI had given up because there was nothing to find.
“Because the prosecution’s primary witness against him was brutally murdered three days before he was scheduled to appear. The man was an accountant. He had three kids. They all died in a house fire. Arson.”
A chill went through her, but she tried to maintain her logic. “I’m sorry for that family, but timing alone doesn’t prove that Greg set their house on fire. It could have been anyone, a pyromaniac out looking for a kick. In the months I’ve known Greg, he’s never been less than a gentleman. I’ve seen no evidence that he’s done any of what you claim. I know you want to take him down because you think that will avenge your sister, but this seems like a witch-hunt. Honestly…” she teared up. “I wish I could bring Carrie back for you. But I can’t.”
Dominic slapped a hand down on the table, making the whole surface shake. Gigi whimpered and huddled on her lap. “I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to keep everything to business and leave your personal connections out of this, but apparently you don’t give a shit who your fiancé kills or if he robs your charity blind.”
“He’s not a murderer,” she insisted, trying to calm down her dog.
“Is charity work just something that rich women do to fill the long, dull hours between Botox treatments?” Riley growled.
It was harder to look at them now that she knew Mike was really Law. He’d probably told the other men the stories she’d told him in confidence—some of her innermost secrets. But he’d also told her stories about his brothers. Dominic was obviously the idealist. Dominic fought for what was right, even when it cost him. The younger brother, Riley, he’d characterized as the brilliant prankster.
Law had humanized them, given her a basic knowledge of them. So while they fumed and paced, snarled and clenched their fists, she wasn’t quite as afraid as she’d been this morning. Kinley knew that Dominic loved justice, that Riley worried they would never find a woman who wanted them all because they’d had bad luck before.
Unless it had all been a lie, like “Mike” himself had been. She was so confused. The only way to not fall into their traps was to refuse to engage them. She kept her mouth shut, concentrating on her dog. It didn’t matter what they thought of her. It just didn’t. They were the ones who had spied on her, taken her from her life, played with her head.
“I’m not answering your questions. If this was a legitimate investigation, I would be sitting in a police station or an FBI field office. Real law enforcement officials would be asking me questions. You three should think about that. Pretty soon, you’ll be the ones answering the questions, probably from behind bars.”
Dominic practically stared a hole through her. “So you don’t care about Jansen’s criminal activity. Maybe you give a shit who he’s sleeping with.”
He slapped a picture down in front of her. It wasn’t one of those grainy images, taken with a cheap telephoto lens. She didn’t have any trouble at all discerning the focus of the picture. Oh, no. Someone had expertise with a camera and had spent money on superior equipment and photo processing.
Kinley stared, blinking a few times, as if that would right her eyes somehow and clear the terrible image in front of her. It didn’t work. Every time she opened her eyes, the awful truth was still waiting. No mistaking what the two people in the picture were doing. No way could she fool herself into believing that Greg was just giving the woman in the photo a friendly hug. They were naked, and he was clearly touching her all over, especially inside. Greg had bent the blonde he screwed into what appeared to be a lounge chair by his pool. Kinley had laid in that very chair the last time Greg had invited her family over for a barbecue.
Nausea threatened to overtake her as she stared down at the damning photo because not only could she clearly see Greg’s face, the woman’s identity was impossible to miss.
Becks was sleeping with her fiancé.
She looked up at Law. He wasn’t shocked. Instead, he looked grim and closed off, with his arms crossed over his chest. Had he known the whole time he had followed and talked to her that she was being wretchedly deceived by two of the most important people in her life?
Tears welled up. Not for Greg’s betrayal. She wasn’t even sure she was crying about Becks’s. The truth was, she couldn’t stop berating herself. How stupid and naïve Law must think she was. In fact, all of them must think that. How had she not even suspected?
“How long?”
Law didn’t pretend to misunderstand, and she appreciated that. “As far as I can tell they were lovers about six months before he met you.”
“She introduced us.” Kinley hadn’t meant to admit that out loud. It probably made her sound even more naïve. But she supposed she was. She certainly felt that way.
Law’s right shoulder shrugged up in a negligent gesture. “Sounds about right. I believe they’ve been colluding together for a while.”
I have the perfect man for you, Kin. Don’t screw this up. This is important. This could be your future.
She’d been so insistent. Becks hadn’t taken no for an answer when Kinley had tried to get out of the date. Nope. Becks had come over to her apartment and helped style her hair and picked out her clothes. It had been nice for her sister to pay attention to her. She’d liked the thought they might grow closer. Becks had said she wan
ted that, too.
It had all been a lie.
“Your sister recently bought a multimillion-dollar life insurance policy on her husband.” Riley placed a photocopy of the paperwork in front of her. No disputing the evidence. Becks had taken out a three-million-dollar policy on her husband, naming herself the sole beneficiary. She would absolutely benefit from his death, just the way Greg would have benefitted from hers once they’d been married.
Kinley took a long breath, wishing this nasty position she found herself in—deceived by her sister and fiancé, and used in a vendetta by the three men around her—wasn’t real. But obviously, she’d been discounting the truth too often lately.
“Who would run Hope House if you die?” Dominic asked, his voice completely steady as though he wasn’t shattering her world.
She suspected they damn well knew the answer, but told them anyway. “Becks.”
“I’d bet every last dime I have that she’s already dipping into your funds. I have no doubt she’s the one who cashed those mystery checks from your charity’s account,” Law growled.
Kinley hated to believe that her sister could be capable of stealing from her. Cheating on her husband, yes. Becks had all but admitted it just before the ill-fated wedding. Sleeping with Greg was crushing enough. But this… It felt like a poison-laced ice pick to the chest. But who else could it be? No one else knew where she kept the paperwork for Hope House. Becks was clever enough to forge her signature, too.
“Or I guess your dad could have taken the funds. After all, he has all those gambling debts to pay,” Law said matter-of-factly.
“Gambling debts?”
Dominic dropped a series of photos of her father at the race track and at a poker table, smoking and drinking, his face grim. “Riley took those. He had a camera in his hoodie.”
“Your father likes to play deep and he’s horrible at the card table,” Riley added. “He tugs on his ear or blinks a lot when he’s bluffing. They’re obvious tells.”
Kinley didn’t even know that her father liked playing cards. “Leave my dad out of this! He’s got cancer.”
Law knew that. She’d cried to “Mike” during a long conversation one night. She’d confessed how scared she was that she would lose her dad the way she’d lost her mom. She’d tearfully explained all the long nights she’d sat up with her mom and how she’d been forced to watch the woman who’d given birth to her waste away.
“Maybe this is a distraction for him,” Kinley spit at them. “If he needs the diversion to escape a possibly terminal illness, I can’t blame him. I’ll talk to him about not playing in high-stakes games when I get home, but for now, he’s off-limits.”
“After you told me about his illness over the phone, I had Riley check it out,” Law began. “He hacked into the patient records of the hospital your dad said he’d be going to. They have no record of him. Neither does a single oncologist on staff. Your dad doesn’t have cancer. It’s all a ruse to bilk you out of money.”
“That can’t possibly be true!” Of course it would be great news if her father wasn’t dying, but she could hardly believe that he would scam her for money.
Law’s face remained like granite, resolved and grim. She had a sudden feeling that the bad news wasn’t going to stop. She forced herself to meet his stare. “Please don’t do this to me.”
He gave her no mercy. “Your father has been coming to you for money so he can pay his bookies. He’s also run up all his credit cards. Someone, probably your sister, forged your name on his new applications as his cosigner.” He grabbed yet another of those seemingly never-ending photos and shoved it toward her.
Her father, Becks, and Greg were sitting in a swanky restaurant, looking like they were having a grand old time. There was a date and time stamp on the photograph.
“Kinley, this was taken four days ago. The night before you told me that your father had an oncology appointment at noon the next day. You confessed how worried you were that he wouldn’t let you go with him.”
“He said he didn’t want this to be a repeat of Mom’s illness. He said he couldn’t stand the thought of putting me through it again.” Had it all been a lie? “I begged him to let me go, but he convinced me to just write the check. Greg promised to help pay for Dad’s treatments after we were married. It’s why I agreed to bump the wedding up. Originally, I wanted to get married in the fall.”
But that hadn’t suited Greg’s or Becks’s plans. Kinley had been stubborn about it because she’d always dreamed of a fall wedding in New York. She had also wanted more time to get to know Greg…and to see if she could pull them out of their financial problems without being forced to marry.
And then her father had gotten sick. Supposedly. Now she didn’t know what to think.
Kinley tried to channel her anger toward Law, Dominic, and Riley for spying on her family and trying to crush her illusions. But she couldn’t quite get there. All the evidence pointed to her family and fiancé betraying her. Dominic, Law, and Riley were simply revealing it.
“Poor little rich girl,” Dominic drawled.
That voice grated on her nerves. She grasped at whatever straws she could find. “How do I know you’re not fabricating evidence?”
“Why would we do that?” Riley asked. “Think for two seconds. Give me one good reason we would.”
“Because you want revenge on Greg.”
“What kind of revenge would making evidence up give us, Kinley?” Dominic grilled her.
“You could release the pictures and cause a scandal. That would be a big story for a long time. He wants to make contacts with society people, businessmen who were close to my mother and grandparents. I have those contacts. If those people think of him as a cheating, swindling scumbag, or I publically malign Greg, they will have nothing to do with him. He won’t make the connections he wants to.”
“This is about far more than scandal, Kinley. I firmly believe he’s using your charity as a front for some illegal venture. You should want to know if that’s true yourself.”
Her gaze strayed back to the pictures of her sister and her fiancé. Kinley’s whole world was crashing around her. Everything she’d thought she believed about her family and her future was now being called into question. She whimpered.
Kinley wanted to hate Dominic, but didn’t have the energy. Every bit of her strength right now went into keeping her chest from imploding and not crying in front of him and the other two.
“No one tells you the truth, do they?” Law said without any trace of the lover who had held her so tenderly just hours ago and given her a kiss she would dream of for the rest of her life.
He certainly hadn’t been honest with her. Greg hadn’t either. That rat bastard had told her that he thought she was lovely, that he couldn’t wait for their honeymoon. The whole time he’d been sleeping with her sister. Even her own father had been lying to her. As much as she’d tried to bend for the people in her life, to please them…it had been one giant waste. Apparently they saw her as a target to con.
All of her insecurities welled, a giant wave threatening to crash over her. Her father had always preferred Becks. Apparently, Greg did, too. Now that she really thought about it, all of the women he’d dated before had been slender and model-like. Had Greg been dreading the moment he had to touch her fat body? Had he put it off all this time until it was absolutely, positively necessary? But why marry her at all if he didn’t want her?
Ten million dollars. And Becks must have known about the scheme. It seemed far too coincidental that she’d taken out a three-million-dollar policy on her husband at roughly the same time. Which meant Becks and Greg were probably in this scheme together.
Her sister wouldn’t really let someone kill her…would she? She couldn’t possibly be that cold. The way money wasn’t mysteriously disappearing from her charity? The way Becks hadn’t been sleeping with Greg? Oh dear god. Was it possible Dominic, Law, and Riley were right about everything?
“You need to
start using your head, Kinley. Read over the accounting reports. Something is wrong at Hope House. Greg, Becks, and your dad have kept you too busy with the wedding for you to notice. Well, guess what, honey? We’ve made sure you have all the time in the world to figure it out now. So look at the fucking reports and tell me your fiancé is clean. Because either he’s dirty or you are. One way or another, whoever’s guilty is going to jail.” Dominic stormed out of the room.
The bulldog stayed, his eyes on Gigi.
Riley set the accounting paperwork in front of her. “Don’t bother trying to escape the kitchen. I’ll be right outside the door. The other entrance is locked. The windows don’t open in this room, and if I hear you trying to break one again, I’ll put you over my knee. No one will stop me from smacking your ass red.”
“I thought you were supposed to be the funny one,” she muttered under her breath.
Riley’s eyes strayed back to Law. “Is that what he said? Well, there’s nothing funny about this situation.”
He sent his brother a long look and left.
She didn’t understand what he meant at all. “Could you please leave, too? I’d like to be alone. I promise I’ll look at this stuff.”
“I’m staying in case you have some trick up your sleeve.”
She was beyond tired. “What would I try, Law? Everything I try fails. I try to be a good sister, and Becks sleeps with my fiancé. I try to be a good bride, and my fiancé plans on killing me once I’m his wife. I try to do good in the world, and apparently everyone just uses me, including my father. In fact, everyone I’ve loved and trusted just might be plotting to kill me. Hell, I even tried to make a friend, but it turned out that even you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you about anything except my name.”
“You told me you cared.” Why was she harping on this? She hurt so badly, and somehow the thought that Law had fabricated a bunch of crap to placate her only made her feel twenty times worse. Why?
His face softened for a moment. “Kinley, I…” His jaw firmed. Then he closed his eyes and pulled back, and she knew she’d lost him. “I did what I had to do.”
Their Virgin Hostage, Masters of Ménage, Book 5 Page 10
