Evergreen: An Alpha Billionaire Romance

by Michelle Love

  ‘Me too, sweetie. Well, at least we know his intentions.’

  Flynt kissed her hand. ‘Darlin’ this ends now. We’re sweeping the city. Jared Podesta is going to wish he had never been born. I have six – yes, six – men outside your door. No-one is getting in, so this is the safest place for you.’

  Zea looked up at him and saw the determination in his eyes. ‘What are you going to do, baby?’

  Flynt’s expression was set. ‘What I should have done a long time ago, my love. A long time.’

  Jesse looked over at Ethan as they arrived at Auburn. They noticed the new security arrangements at the school. ‘Hey, man, you okay?’

  Ethan was pale, and Jesse remembered that this was his first time back in the school since he was shot. ‘Hey, you’re doing great, buddy.’

  Ethan gave him a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, man.’

  His features grew pensive. ‘Damn it.’ He sighed.

  Jesse smiled. ‘It’s just a row, Jesse, you’ll get past it.’

  Ethan hesitated for a moment. ‘It’s kind of…our first row. We’ve never argued. I know that sounds…but truly, apart from the obvious, we’ve never had an argument before, not like that, we usually just bust each other’s chops, kid around, you know?’

  He looked upset. They rounded the corner and arrived at the headmaster’s office. A receptionist greeted them and asked them to wait while she notified their headmaster of their arrival.

  The two men stood about the reception, Ethan deep in thought, Jesse watching him.

  ‘Do you want to go straight home?’ Jesse asked. Ethan thought for a moment and shook his head.

  ‘No. No. I’m gonna call her after we’re done here and…I’ll take care of it.’

  The receptionist came back then and led them into the office.

  The next morning, Ethan ignored the pounding on the door. Face down on the pillow, his head throbbed with pain. Jesus, how much had he drunk? He opened a gummy eye. Ouch. No, not a good idea.

  The pounding on the door continued. ‘Fuck off,’ he muttered into the pillow and then groaned as he heard Jesse calling him.

  ‘Ethan? Ethan! Wake up buddy.’

  Ethan rolled over onto his back and by some miracle, managed to get himself into a sitting position. He took a moment, his head spinning with sleep, and then, blowing out his breath in a whoosh, got up.

  ‘Ethan.'

  ‘Yeah, yeah, coming.’

  He yanked the door open. Jesse stood before him, groomed and seemingly not sharing the hangover with him.

  Jesse smiled. ‘You okay, buddy?

  Ethan rolled his eyes, then immediately regretted it.

  ‘I feel like crap; how much did we drink?’ He motioned for Jesse to come in and wandered back into the room. He glanced behind him at his brother.

  ‘And how do you look that good - do you have a lead lined stomach?’

  Jesse laughed. ‘It’s all a façade. My head’s pounding some. I thought I’d better wake you, we probably should head home soon.’

  Ethan went into the bathroom and started to brush his teeth. ‘What time is it?’ he said through a mouthful of foam.

  ‘About a quarter of four.’

  Ethan stuck his head out of the bathroom in shock. ‘What the hell? Aww, hell man, Kizzie’s gonna kill me.’ He spat the toothpaste into the sink and rinsed his mouth. He grabbed his jacket and started to look for his cell phone. Jesse picked it up from the table and handed it to him.

  ‘I did try to call her at home earlier,’ Ethan said, guilt all over his face, ‘But there was no answer.’

  ‘Sure, buddy,’ Jesse chuckled, ‘Look, I’ll be downstairs. Take your time.’

  Kizzie answered on the first ring. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey baby, look, I’m sorry it’s late, I got wasted last night and Kiz, look, I’m sorry. I should have thought.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’m sorry too…of course, I want to do the gig, I was just…I’ll do it.’

  Ethan sighed. ‘You don’t have to. I shouldn’t have tried to guilt you into it.’

  ‘You didn’t. Ethan?’

  ‘Yeah, babe?’

  ‘I love you. Come home to me.’

  Ethan smiled. ‘I’m already on my way. See you soon.’

  Jared Podesta had gotten sloppy; in every sense of the word. The back of his rental car was full of drive-through burger wrappers which meant he spent a lot of time at said drive-throughs – which all had CCTV. CCTV which, for the right price, could be scanned and analyzed for patterns in a person’s behavior.

  Which is why, when Jared pulled into the Burger King drive through that night, they were waiting for him.

  The CCTV, that night, was turned off – also for a price.

  Jared struggled against his captors as they dragged him through the abandoned warehouse but fell silent when he saw Flynt Newlan waiting for him. Flynt leveled the gun at his forehead. Jared sneered and spat at his feet.

  ‘You should have stayed dead,’ Flynt said in a low but steady voice. ‘I’ve run out of patience now.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jared spat out. ‘When I get to her again, she’s dead, motherfucker.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Flynt, ‘and I was hoping this would go nicer.’

  He shot Jared in the shoulder, and the man screamed, his collarbone shattered. ‘Cocksucker.’

  Flynt, his eyes dangerous and amused at the same time, looked at the two men with him. ‘Ah, who am I kidding? I knew it would go like this.’ He leveled the gun at Jared’s head again. ‘Any last words, motherfucker?’

  Jared, knowing this was the end, laughed at him. ‘Sure that baby is yours? Or maybe it’s that cop who keeps sniffing around, huh? Doesn’t matter…it won’t live to be born once its mother is dead – ‘

  Flynt shot him through the head, once, and Jared dropped. The three men stood, all of them a little in shock.

  ‘Boss? You okay?’

  Flynt put his gun on the floor and stepped away for a second. Taking a person’s life – even a psycho like Jared – he never thought he would be faced with that decision but threatening Zea and his baby?

  ‘Give me a sec.’ He drew in a long breath. They’re safe now. For keeps. Forever. They had forever.

  He turned and nodded to the two men. Bill and Pete. They’d been with him for years. Pete had been his dad’s best assistant. He stepped forward now. ‘Go home, son. We’ll deal with this.’ He nodded toward Jared’s body. ‘Go home. Be with your lady.’

  Flynt shook his head. ‘No, this is my mess.’

  ‘No,’ Bill said firmly. ‘No one is going to miss this jackass. And we guarantee nobody but the three of us will ever know. We can clean the site, make sure he’s never found.’

  Flynt nodded, and the laughed softly. ‘It’s ironic…for years, people assumed this is what I did to my dad’s enemies. Truth is…I’ve never even fired a gun before.’

  ‘Self-preservation,’ Pete said, already pulling a tarp out of a bag. ‘Go, get out of here.’

  Emory woke stiff and cold, with the small kitten Dante had brought for her as company lodged on the top of her head. The afternoon had turned into a navy gloomy evening as she waited for Dante to come back. He’d gone to Seattle to speak to the police, find out the latest on the search for Ray. Because he had gone quiet, gone to ground. No-one had any idea where or when he would come to claim here.

  ‘I’m safe here,’ she repeated to herself but she was on edge the whole time she was alone, and it wasn’t like her. She had always been good at being alone but now…Dante was the bright star in her world. When she saw him, everything else fled away. She wanted so desperately to enjoy their love, make plans, and even in this idyllic place, she felt trapped. Until Ray was found or was killed, she would be in a prison of fear. She felt the terrible pinching in her chest again, more tears on the way. She cursed herself for being so weak, knowing in her heart that she was breaking.

  She lay on her back, trying to push away the dead weight of the depress
ion dogging her. She wanted to crawl under a rock and only emerge when all this was over. But it wouldn’t be over until either Ray was gone or…she was dead. At the moment, the latter didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Rather Ray killed her than touched anyone else, but…it would be a pyrrhic victory at best. Was that the best she could hope for? It seemed like, now, at this moment she knew what hopelessness felt like.

  The fantasy of killing him loomed large in her mind, and she smiled grimly. Was it an option? If push came to shove, could she kill another human being? She snorted at the idea of Ray being a mere human. She knew without a doubt she could do it if he tried to hurt Dante or Bree, Christ yes, she would do it without thinking twice. But to save her own life? Maybe.

  She shifted, and the cat leaped from the bed in disgust. She got up and went to the bathroom. After, washing her hands, she looked into the mirror over the sink and looked away again quickly. She hated the look in her eyes, haunted and despairing. She would light a fire, she decided, anything to regain some comfort. She curled up in the armchair near the window sipping her drink.

  Come home soon, Dante, my love…

  He cut the motor of the dinghy a few feet from the shore. He smiled grimly to himself – the things you could get, the silence you could buy with money. The tide was with him, bringing him in. He felt the satisfying rasp of sand as the dinghy beached.

  So close, now. So close.

  So close to the kill.

  Luca made sure Bree got to her car okay then went back into the house. He’d been staying in the city apartment for so long, he’d forgotten what his life had been like on his estate. Tatiana had come to join him and Bree for dinner – Tat was spending more time here and Luca was comforted by her steady presence, her humor and her way of making him see the lighter side. Her friendship had helped his wounded heart and now Bree, regretful that things didn’t work out with Emory, was making unsubtle hints that maybe Tat was the one for him. Luca didn’t hate the idea – Tat was intelligent, kind and beautiful.

  He was smiling to himself when he walked back to the living room. He heard a noise, like someone crashing into something, a muffled cry. He looked up when Tat walked out of the living room, her hand over her belly, her face pale white.

  For a second, he couldn’t figure what was wrong with this picture.

  ‘Luca…’ She said in a weak voice then her legs collapsed under and as Luca rushed forward, he saw them.

  Two bullet holes. Blood. Luca shook his head, terrorized, confused. She had been shot. How…?

  ‘Good evening Luca.’

  Ray Grace walked out of the living room after Tat. Tatiana was gasping for air, the wounds in her abdomen gushing blood. ‘I’m sorry I had to kill your pretty friend, but she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, at least you won’t be alone.’

  Luca stared at him. ‘Why?’

  Tatiana moaned and Ray, merciless, pointed the gun and shot her again, the bullet slamming into her chest. Luca roared. ‘No!’ Tatiana went limp in his arms. ‘God, please, no….’

  Ray laughed. ‘This is what you get for touching my Emory, Saffran.’ He bent down and whispered in Luca’s ear. ‘Next to die will be your daughter.’

  ‘Fucker!’

  Luca placed Tat’s body on the floor and went for Ray – who shot him once, point-blank, in the chest. Luca staggered toward him, grabbed his jacket, but the bullet had torn his heart in two, and Luca Saffran sank to his knees.

  Ray laughed. ‘You got to see your new girlfriend die; Harper will see Emory die and then he’ll get my final bullet. You should never have put your hands on my wife.’

  Luca’s last living thought was of Bree and how no matter what he did now, he couldn’t save her…

  The news broke the next day. Luca Saffran and journalist Tatiana Mendelsohn gunned down in a home invasion.

  Clem screamed when she heard the news and collapsed as Maximo tried to comfort her. She looked up at him and said simply, ‘Bree.’ Maximo had them on a flight to Seattle within the hour.

  Bree was the first to know; the police had come to her house. She had only been back from her dad’s place for less than an hour, and at first, she didn’t believe them. It took Jesse, who saw from the police officer’s face, that it was no joke, to put his arms around her. She looked at him, at the expression in his eyes and she howled, a long, scream of heartbreak and grief that Jesse, nor the police officers, would ever forget.

  ‘We need to get you into protective custody…both of you.’

  Half a day later and Clementine arrived and was escorted to the safe house. ‘We’re taking you and Jesse back to Italy. It’s not safe here.’

  Jesse agreed, but Bree shook her head. ‘Mom…I don’t want to leave Dad alone.’

  Clem kissed her daughter’s forehead. ‘Breana, your dad is not here anymore. It’s just his body, and they will keep that for us until you are safe. We will honor him, I promise, my love but for now, as he would want, you need to be kept safe.’

  The Seattle police agreed and so Bree, Jesse, Clem and Maximo got on a private plane back to Rome. As Bree watched Seattle disappear below her, she thought about Emory and wondered how she was reacting. She was wondering if Dante Harper would keep his word to Luca and keep her safe. She touched the plane window and sent a prayer down to her friend. Whatever horrors her father and Tatiana had visited on them before they died, she knew they would be nothing to what Ray had planned for Emory.

  ‘Be safe,’ she whispered and hoped in her heart she would be.

  Emory was numb. Dante sat with her, holding her hands until, finally, he said gently. ‘Sweetheart?’

  She looked at him with pain-filled eyes. ‘It’s not true.’

  But she knew it was. Luca was dead. No one had any doubt who killed him: Ray. Oh God.

  She got up and walked to the window. ‘Dante…you should leave me now. Go, find somewhere safe. I won’t let him hurt anyone else.’

  Dante said nothing, knowing she was venting, talking nonsense but Emory turned around. ‘Please.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  She wilted. ‘He will stop at nothing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked up at him. ‘He’ll kill you, Dante.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘No,’ she moaned, ‘no, no, no…this has to end.’ She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Dante smoothed her hair.

  ‘Em? We have to come up with a plan – with the police – to draw him out. Now, I know immediately what you’ll suggest, that we use you as bait. That’s not an option.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to be stopped,’ she said in a dull voice, ‘he needs to be killed. I’ll do it myself. Put me in a room with him, one on one. He might kill me, but I will definitely kill him.’

  Dante gave her a half-smile. ‘Again,’ he said gently, ‘not an option.’

  Emory made a disgusted noise. Greif was fueling her anger. ‘Where the hell was Luca’s protection? He had security. What the fuck?’

  ‘Ray killed them too. He got into the estate from the waterside.’

  Emory got up them and walked to the French doors, looking out onto the small beach at the bottom of their property. ‘Huh.’

  Dante frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Wait, I’m thinking.’

  He waited, watching her staring out at the water then she turned and came to sit by him. ‘We’re arrogant billionaires who think we can’t be touched.’

  Dante blinked. ‘Okay?’

  Emory half-smiled. ‘That’s what Ray thinks. All he has ever wanted is fame. He couldn’t get it as a professor, or as the ‘loving’ husband of a so-called heroine.’

  ‘Not ‘so-called’ – you saved some kids, remember?’ Dante said, but held up his hands when she groaned at him.

  ‘So, now he’s decided he’s going down as a serial killer. Why don’t we give him what he wants?’

  Dante was confused. ‘Which is?’

  ‘Fame. But not in the
way he thinks. We’ll go on television, tell the world he’s pathetic, deny he’s a killer just a sad old, middle-aged man who couldn’t hang onto his wife.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Dante was missing something, and Emory chuckled darkly.

  ‘We humiliate him. We ridicule him. You forget I was married to the man for five years. He hates being embarrassed, put down, laughed at. I learned that the hard way. Now we can use it against him.’

  Dante was still wondering. ‘How will that…?’

  ‘He’ll get angry, enraged,’ Emory was really warming up to the subject now, ‘he’ll be the desperate to show he is this big man, he is a killer. We lead him straight to me, play on his utter conviction that he can outsmart all of us.’

  Dante nodded slowly. ‘It could work.’

  Emory turned, jabbing her finger at the window, out at the water. ‘If he doesn’t already know we’re here, we make sure he does…then we leave that there,’ she jabbed again, ‘open for him. It’s Christmas come early. Because we’re arrogant billionaires, who think we can’t be touched.’

  Dante grinned suddenly. ‘It’s worth a shot, baby.’

  ‘Just one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  Emory turned to face him. ‘I don’t want the police involved.’

  Dante stood. ‘Are you crazy? Why the hell not?’

  Emory walked to him and kissed him softly. ‘Because, one day, I want to look Breana Saffran in the eye and tell her I killed the man who murdered her father.’

  The first interview with the local news station. Dante’s money made sure the interview was repeated and sent out as many affiliates as possible. Emory played her part beautifully, mocking Ray in every way she could think of. She even managed to persuade some of his ex-colleagues to join in - they were only too glad to play down the good professor’s reputation. They were careful with the words they used – standard, ordinary, unremarkable. Emory’s description of her husband – unimaginative, weak, impotent (Dante’s personal favorite) were equally as damning.