Billionaire Rides: The Complete Series (MC Alpha Billionaire Romance Love Story)

by Claire Adams

  “What are you saying?” he asked, seemingly genuinely confused.

  “I am saying that until Marjorie is no longer part of your life, until she no longer has the right to call herself ‘Mrs. Hanson,’ I am finished with you and I. Talk to me when you’re done with her and we’ll see where we can go from there.”

  Adam’s face was a mixture of anger and disbelief. “You act like I want to live with this crazy woman. She is making my life a living hell. I’ve been in meetings with oil barons and politicians all day to boot. I’m being portrayed in the media as a pariah for taking on this case, and now the one good thing in my life is about to walk away. Nice.”

  I had been holding my temper back all day, but I finally couldn’t take it any longer. “Me, me, me! That is all I ever hear from you, Adam! What about me? What about what I went through last night knowing you were spending the night with your ‘wife?’ What about what I went through just now enduring that woman’s nastiness? At least you bear some responsibility for what is happening in your life. Mine is falling apart as collateral damage. You act like I just gave up on us. I have stuck this out for nearly a year, feeling like the other woman when in truth, I was doing nothing wrong. And now, nearly a year later, I am truly the other woman because here you are living with your wife all over again!”

  Adam sighed and rubbed his temples. “I can’t just let her have it all. I can’t.”

  “Then you keep fighting, Adam. You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to. Right now, what I really need to do is get to work on my case at hand. There is a young man depending on me and I will not throw his life away because I am too wrapped up in my personal issues to do the best job possible for him.”

  Adam nodded and left, just like that. I wasn’t sure what I expected. He was headstrong and arrogant. I had known that from the start. I didn’t really blame him for not wanting to give Marjorie what was rightfully his, what he had earned. I just honestly didn’t have the strength to be a part of it any longer. I had a horrible thought then, one that I pulled right back down into that dark, dusty box in the corner of my brain that I rarely allowed open.

  “I wish the bitch would just disappear off the face of the earth.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ADAM

  I had the worst day that I remembered having in a very long time. I stayed late at the office not because I had so much work to do, but because I hated the idea of being alone with Marjorie. When I finally forced myself out of the building, I was assaulted right outside on the sidewalk by the bright flash of a camera and a microphone in my face.

  “Mr. Hanson, do you have any statements regarding the death of the President’s campaign manager and his link to Miles Brigham IV?”

  My breath caught in my throat – Vick Landon dead? I had no idea what the reporter was talking about. Vick couldn’t be dead. He’s young and healthy…unless there was an accident. Why would he be asking me, anyways? Vick was more Alex’s friend from the start. Or maybe it was more about our common associates. It suddenly dawned on me that he was asking me because of my association with Brigham Oil and their association with Vick and this political campaign. Shit.

  Realizing that I was surrounded by reporters and they were all yelling questions at once, I held up a palm to silence them. I saw Alicia leave the building out of the corner of my eye. She stopped at the edge of the crowd. I wanted to go to her and make her understand this bullshit with Marjorie, but that would have to wait until later. I addressed the reporters as soon as they were quiet.

  “I’m afraid, first of all, that you are talking to the wrong person here. Yes, I am the attorney of record for the Oil Company, and yes, we are connected to the President’s campaign financially. However, I didn’t know Vick very well and I’m not sure how I can help you here. I didn’t even know he had died, and so I have no idea how it happened.”

  “He was murdered,” one of them called out.

  “He was bludgeoned to death,” another one said.

  Before I opened my mouth again Mac, my partner and my personal attorney, stepped out of the building. He leaned in close to my ear and said, “You know better than to talk to these vultures. Miles is here, let’s go.”

  Before I even knew what was happening, I was ushered into Miles Brigham’s smoke gray limousine, the door was slammed shut, and we were pulling away from the curb. The last thing I saw outside the building was Alicia still standing there and looking confused. I didn’t blame her. I was confused myself.

  ********

  I asked my assistant Mary to send Alicia into my office as soon as Alicia got in the next morning. I was working on a brief when I heard a tap on the door and it was pushed open. “Mary said you wanted to see me,” Alicia said. I could tell by the red in her eyes that she hadn’t had much rest. The look on her face also told me I was probably the last person she wanted to see this morning. I knew I was dangling precariously close to losing her; I just wasn’t sure I knew how to fix it.

  “Yes, thanks for coming,” I said, trying to go into boss mode and forget for a few minutes how much I loved her and how badly I wanted her. “Please, sit.” I stood and motioned at a chair, and instead of sitting back down behind my desk I sat in the other wing-backed chair opposite her.

  “I suppose you heard what happened last night?”

  “Yes, I couldn’t miss it. It’s all over the news, and there are reporters all over outside. It’s still hard to believe.”

  “There are also federal agents here, unfortunately,” I told her.

  “FBI?” she asked.

  “Yes. They are with Mac right now. They believe that Brigham had something to do with Vick’s murder. Mac is trying to get out of them exactly what we have, but I don’t think he’ll have much luck. Our only goal in being here is to make sure his attorneys are aware he is a person of interest, so our case doesn’t fall apart somewhere along the line for not following the letter of the law.”

  “Adam, do you think Brigham had anything to do with it?”

  I hesitated as I decided how to phrase my answer. I wasn’t trying to keep things from Alicia. I didn’t want to alarm her needlessly, either. Finally, I said, “He denies it, and we are his attorneys, so it really doesn’t matter anyways, does it?”

  “What do you need from me?” Alicia asked, knowing that I was leading somewhere by telling her this. I felt an ache in my chest. I wanted to tell her what I needed from her, on all levels. Instead, I made myself focus on the task at hand and said,

  “I need you to hand all of your open cases over to Kyla and Nico, and I need you to take on the criminal portion of this case. Mac and I will continue to represent the oil company, but I need you to represent Brigham, whether or not he ends up being arrested. There are going to be a lot of interviews with police and FBI, not to mention the press conferences. I need you on that; you can have as many of the junior associates and paralegals as you need to help.” Alicia looked dumbfounded. She knew how good I thought she was at her job, but she was also still new. I just hoped I wasn’t putting too much on her.

  “Why me?”

  “You have the most criminal experience of us all, Alicia. Our forte here was corporate and domestic before you, Nico, and Kyla came on board. You are all good, but I believe you are the best we have. Brigham is our number one client. We can’t afford to hand him over to someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing. Also,” I hesitated again before going on to say, “the authorities are bound to turn up some things in our investigation of Brigham that we would prefer the public and even some of our firm not know about. I believe I can trust you to do what needs to be done to keep certain things out of the press.”

  She nodded. I could tell that she wasn’t absolutely convinced that she was experienced enough to handle a case of this magnitude, but my mind was made up that she was the one I wanted. She finally said, “Okay, where do I start?”

  “You’re having breakfast with Miles Brigham IV in about two hours at his home. He can tell
you what he knows, and you, as his attorney can tell him what, if anything he can tell the authorities.”

  “Okay,” Alicia said as we both stood up. “I’ll get familiar with his file in the meantime.”

  “No, there’s no time for that now. Brigham’s estate is upstate. You will be going straight to the airport from here. His private jet will pick you up in about forty-five minutes, and you will be driven from the landing strip to his estate.”

  “My head is spinning a little bit here, Adam.”

  “I know it’s a lot to take in all at once, and I’m sorry. We have to be proactive here and get ahead of the press and the FBI, if possible.”

  She nodded. Her auburn hair shone underneath the fluorescent lights of my office, and I wanted to just bury my face in it and forget about everything. I knew there was no time for that – and there was also the chance that she might not want me to touch her right now.

  “Alicia.” She turned to look at me and the desire to touch her practically overwhelmed me. She locked those gorgeous hazel eyes into mine and waited. At last I said, “Marjorie and I go to court on Monday. Hopefully, that part of my life will be over soon. Please, don’t give up on me just yet.”

  She only nodded again. I was hoping for more than that, but the truth was, I knew it was more than I deserved after all I had put her through. She was much more patient than most women would have been and much more patient than myself. She closed the door behind her as she left, and I could only hope that she wouldn’t close the door on us just yet.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ALICIA

  I once again tucked away my thoughts about Adam and me and set out to meet the man that was the subject of every news brief in America right then. Brigham’s plane was extravagant, to say the least. I was the only passenger, yet the jet was fully staffed. I was offered food, coffee, juice, tea, and even a champagne mimosa. I chose the coffee, and then asked for a few moments of privacy so I could familiarize myself with Miles Brigham IV.

  His file was thick. Adam’s people had done their job well. Adam had investigators on staff whose only job was to gather as much background as possible on prospective clients. Adam believed that the more you knew about a person, the better you could represent them.

  Brigham’s file went all the way back to his birth. He was born to mega-wealthy parents, who had also been born to wealthy parents, and so on and so forth. The Petroleum Company had been in the family for over a hundred years. Miles IV had inherited it earlier than most of his predecessors. On the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday, his parents were both killed in a single engine plane accident. They had been flying out to New York from Texas for his birthday party. Miles IV was young, but his entire life had been spent in preparation for the day he would take over the company. He was what the financial community referred to as a “whiz kid,” taking the profits up and over where any other oil company had ever gone. There was speculation amongst Federal Authorities and financial wizards that all of Miles IV’s business dealings were not exactly legal, but if there were any hard evidence of that, it was yet to be found.

  Miles IV had been married four times. His most recent ex-wife had only been 22 years old when he married her. She was 23 when she divorced him. What brains the man had for business was lost when it came to love. At 54 years old, he had given hundreds of millions of dollars of his and his family’s fortune to ex-wives. His attorneys had always urged him to get a prenuptial agreement prior to marrying them, as did his children, both of whom were now grown and rightfully concerned that if their father continued his liaisons with these types of women, there would be no inheritance left for them.

  Miles began to get into politics about five years ago. From what I had read thus far, it seemed to me that his choice was based on a cross between boredom with his everyday activities and needing more places to put his money in order to keep the IRS from taking huge chunks.

  Vick Landon had approached him almost four years prior after meeting at a democratic rally and spoke to him about the benefits of investing in the American president. The President was just a hopeful at the time, but Vick had said that with the right financial backers, he could go all the way and do great things for this country. Alicia wasn’t certain if the country was Miles IV’s main concern or not, but it would seem he decided there was something great enough there for someone that he invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the president’s campaign. Thanks to that support, the presidential hopeful was able to put on a campaign that outdid all of his competition and convince the constituents that he was the right man to restore financial order to America once again.

  Vick shot to the top of political circles quickly after that. If not for him, the President may have never received enough funding to get where he was. Miles Brigham IV was always welcome at the White House, and to the chagrin of some of the President’s close advisers, he was perhaps more involved in policy making than he should have been.

  Adam’s good friend Alex Fritz was a close friend of Vick’s. They ran in the same circles, and it was through Alex that Adam had made the contact with Brigham, and our business relationship was born.

  As I read through the file, I made note that Mr. Brigham had also been implicated in many crimes over the years, none of which amounted to an arrest, much less a conviction. Being accused of things was one thing – proving it was something else entirely. Miles Brigham IV had the money and the connections to pay the best lawyers, and in some cases, evidence and even people just disappeared.

  Brigham’s most controversial problem had taken place almost ten years prior, when his third wife, thirty-two-year-old Kelly Brigham, a former topless dancer and self-proclaimed cosmetic surgery addict “fell” off of a cliff while hiking in the hills with her husband. Police and press were suspicious, due to the facts that for one, Kelly Brigham was not an outdoorsy type of girl, secondly, many people had overheard her and Miles IV arguing loudly earlier in the day, and finally, a busboy in the restaurant at the lodge where the couple had been staying had reportedly overheard Miles IV telling Kelly that she should “watch herself” because people “disappeared off the sides of cliffs in this place all the time.”

  The problem with their case was: Kelly’s family, who consisted only of her crack-addict mother and her drug dealer brother stood in Miles IV’s corner and told all who would listen what an amazing husband he had been to Kelly and how he had “turned her life around.” The police suspected a payoff there, You think?, but again, could prove nothing.

  The people that had said they heard the argument in the lobby of the lodge that day either recanted their stories, saying they “must have been mistaken” or left no forwarding addresses in which the police and district attorney could track them down. The busboy from the restaurant was one of the people who had “left town.” No one at the lodge knew where he may have gone, and the police had been unable to track him down.

  I sat the thick file down, yawned, and stretched out my legs. I poured myself a glass of water from the fresh pitcher the attendant had left me a bit ago and mulled over what I had just read. The biggest question on my mind was the one question I would never ask Mr. Brigham. “Is he a murderer?”

  I pictured Miles Brigham IV. I had met him once and had seen him coming and going many times at the office. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man. His gray hair was stylishly cut to just above the collar of his shirts. He rarely wore a suit. Instead, he wore famous brand shirts and designer jeans. I had not ever really noticed his shoes, but he struck me as a cowboy boot kind of man. I had a hard time picturing this man tossing his wife off of a cliff or bludgeoning a man to death. I knew, though, that looks are very often deceiving and recalled what Adam had said earlier about it not mattering if he was guilty or not. I knew that. My job was to give Miles IV the best defense possible. Innocence or guilt was for a jury to decide, not me.

  My plane landed on that thought, and I filed away my concerns about whether or not Mr. Brigham had killed his wife, t
ucking them away for later. When I stepped off the plane, I saw that the great man himself was waiting to meet me. He stood at the bottom of the steps of the ramp, his long, black limousine parked alongside him. He smiled a wide, welcoming smile as I descended.

  "Ms. Winston, I presume?" he asked as he offered a hand to help me down the last few steps. I smiled back and took his outstretched hand with my free one.

  "Yes, Mr. Brigham, thank you."

  "We have met before, haven't we?" He motioned to his driver to retrieve the bag I carried. “I recall seeing you several times afterwards. I regret that we never had time to get to know one another."

  "Well, I am looking forward to working with you," I told him as the driver held the door to the car open for us. "And, thank you for the amazing ride here. That had to be the smoothest flight I've ever been on."

  Brigham laughed and said, "I reckon I'm a bit spoiled. I can't even remember the last time I flew commercial."

  We both slid into the roomy backseat of the car. Brigham offered to pour me a drink as the driver began the journey. I wasn't much of a drinker and wanted a clear head for our work this evening so I declined and accepted a sparkling water, instead.

  "So, Mr. Brigham, if you don't mind, tell me what has happened thus far."

  Miles sighed loudly. "This is all so unnecessary. I have done many things, young lady, but I assure you, murder is not one of them."

  I gave him a reassuring smile and nodded, but I couldn't help remembering what I had read about his third wife. I shook that off and said,

  "Our goal here, Mr. Brigham, is to avoid your arrest completely. I need you to tell me anything and everything you know about Vick and whatever you may know about who or why someone would want to murder him. I also need to know why the police would think you would be involved in this."