Falling for the Billionaire's Daughter (Sutton Billionaires Book 6)

by Lori Ryan

Kaeden was dumbstruck. This was the kind of backup he’d foolishly thought he might get from his buddies in the Marine Corps years before. And he had from some of them. For a while, anyway. But when push came to shove, they hadn’t backed him or Alyssa when their platoon leader said they were making up the charges against him.

  Jane took over for him, standing.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking from Samantha to the men and back. “I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

  Kaeden could hear the shaking in her voice. She was as close to losing it as he was.

  And then there wasn’t time for the emotions anymore. They had to get to that flight so they could get to her mom. Nothing else mattered right now.

  Jack drove with Logan in the passenger seat and Chad in the middle row. Jane and Kaeden took the third row of the SUV and he pulled her to his side as soon as they were on the road.

  “We’ll get to her,” he said, speaking quietly, his mouth at her temple.

  She nodded her head and wove her fingers through his, holding his hand. He wanted to do more for her.

  “Tell me your story,” she said, her words low so that he could almost believe they were in their own little world in the back seat.

  Kaeden tensed, not wanting to share that part of his life with her. But he realized how ridiculous that was. Here he’d been this whole time pushing her to share her story, when he’d been holding back on opening up to her.

  He took a breath and started, giving her the quick and dirty version. “In the last few months of my last tour of duty, I walked in on my platoon leader and a fellow marine in the middle of him assaulting her. I stopped it in time, but …” He stopped. What did he say? That the damage was already done?

  It was. Alyssa had been traumatized and Kaeden’s faith in his platoon leader, a man he’d looked up to, was shot.

  “She pressed charges and I backed her. It wasn’t supposed to come out, but of course it did. I honestly thought the rest of our platoon would back her, too, or at least our squad.”

  “They didn’t?” she asked, running her free hand up and down his arm.

  He shook his head. “A few, but most of them wanted the problem to go away. They wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and her pressing charges went too far in their eyes.”

  “Let me guess, they said she asked for it?”

  “That, and worse. That it was consensual and she liked it rough. That she and I got caught together by our platoon leader and we’d made up the other story as a cover.”

  “What happened in the end?”

  Kaeden looked down at her, seeing eyes filled with nothing but kindness and sorrow. “She was abused all over again, tormented by the people who were supposed to be her brothers and sisters in arms. The people who should have had her back no matter what.”

  “And you were, too?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. With me it got physical. I ended up with a lot of black marks on my record there toward the end. Not enough to end up with a dishonorable discharge or anything, but it wasn’t good.”

  “What happened with her case?”

  “She dropped it in the end. Put in for a transfer and it was granted. The reputation followed her, though.”

  He was quiet. He didn’t want to tell her the rest of the story.

  She squeezed his hand.

  “She killed herself a year later,” he said, his words sounding hollow.

  She continued to rub his arm as if she could soothe away the ache that always came when he thought about how he’d let Alyssa down.

  Kaeden kept his eyes locked on her fingers where they were intertwined with his as he fought down the emotions that had roiled up to the surface at the retelling.

  “Hey,” Jane said.

  When he looked up to meet her eyes, she tilted her head toward the front of the car. “This team’s got your back.”

  Kaeden’s chest tightened at that. He nodded. She was right. The people at Sutton had his back. He still couldn’t believe these men were in the car with them leaving a vacation with their families to help Jane.

  It had been a no-brainer for him to leave with Jane to help her when she thought her mom might be in trouble. But when these men climbed into the car beside them, he knew he’d been wrong to keep his distance from them all these years. Wrong to let what had happened with Alyssa and his platoon and all the guys he’d served with convince him that he couldn’t trust the people around him.

  He’d seen plenty of examples of the people at Sutton having each other’s backs over the time he’d been there. He should have opened his eyes and seen the truth of what he’d found with them.

  They were family. He’d just been too damned stupid to see that before.

  Chapter 32

  Evan brushed the crumbs off his shirt as he climbed from the car. He had grabbed a pastry from the hotel coffee shop on the way out and ate it on the drive over.

  He should be getting on his flight instead of coming to see the Carson woman again. But he found he couldn’t walk away, no matter how much he needed to get home to his daughter.

  This time, instead of walking onto the back of the property and finding the woman in the gardens, he went to the front desk. He was going to flat out ask Mrs. Carson if she was in trouble. He had a bad feeling he had fucked up taking this case.

  The woman at the desk smiled as he entered the lobby. “Hello! Which one of our treasured members are you here to visit?”

  They laid it on thick at the home. He met her smile with one of his own, though. “I’m here to see Emma Lawson.”

  The woman lifted the phone on the desk off the receiver but looked at him. “Can I tell her who’s here for her?”

  He nodded and pulled identification out of his pocket. “My name is Evan Willows. I’m a private detective.”

  He didn’t know if Debra Carson would see him, but he hoped she would.

  He waited ten minutes after the woman at the desk said Emma Lawson was out in the garden and the staff was going to get her.

  When she was wheeled into the lobby and saw his face, her expression fell. He was lucky that no one else saw the flash of terror in her eyes. She knew she’d been found.

  Still, this woman wasn’t weak by any stretch of the imagination. She might not be in any position to run from him or her husband, but she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders.

  “We should talk, ma’am,” Evan said.

  She kept her gaze locked to his as she nodded. “We can go to my room.”

  “Ms. Lawson, wouldn’t you rather I bring you to the day room?” the orderly pushing her chair asked, eyeing Evan with something less than friendly ease.

  She reached up and patted the man’s hand like a mother might to her son. “No, we’re fine, Mitchell. Mr. Willows here can push my chair.”

  The orderly looked uneasy, but he shifted her chair so Evan could take over pushing her and she directed him down the hall and around two bends to her room.

  It was actually more than a room. It was a bedroom and sitting room with small bathroom and kitchenette. It was small by any standards, but she had filled it with paintings of bright flowers and birds that she had clearly painted herself. She was remarkably talented.

  That was something that hadn’t shown up in his research of the woman.

  He was beginning to realize there was a lot missing from his research.

  “Put me by the window, there,” she said, pointing to an empty space with an arm chair across from it.

  He did as she asked and then sank into the armchair himself.

  “My husband sent you,” she said and though her eyes were filled with terror, her words were strong.

  “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Carson.”

  She seemed to flinch at his words and he didn’t know if it was the confirmation or the fact he’d used her real name.

  “Has he found my daughter yet?” Her eyes were panicked at the mention of the daughter.

  Evan shook his head. From what he’d gathered, the l
ead Turner was chasing on the daughter hadn’t panned out at all.

  He saw her relax a hair.

  “Mrs. Carson, can you tell me, will you be in danger if your husband finds you here?”

  She looked out the window.

  He tried to explain himself. “I’m careful, ma’am. Real careful. I always check into the background of any man who asks me to find a wife or girlfriend who’s left them. If there’s even a hint of abuse, I don’t take that case. Someone else might find the woman, but it won’t be me.”

  She gave him a sad smile now. “There wouldn’t be any record of abuse where Turner is concerned.”

  Dread pooled in his gut and he pressed his lips together to hold back the string of curses he wanted to let loose.

  She looked at the chair. “The accident that did this to me wasn’t an accident.”

  Evan shook his head. No way.

  She nodded. “I was going to leave him. But you don’t leave a man like Turner Carson. I thought I was so blessed when I met this charming handsome man. I won’t tell you I wasn’t taken in by the money because who wouldn’t be swept off their feet by a man who could take you on a vacation or buy you a car on a whim. But for me, it was so much more. He was a widower and he seemed so broken by the loss of his wife.

  “She killed herself, you see.” She looked at him. “I’ve sometimes wondered at that. If she really did or if… Well, anyway. We were happy for a time, but he started to let me see the real him after the wedding. He didn’t hit me, didn’t beat me. But he was abusive. Controlling. Manipulating.”

  She was looking back out the window now and he wondered if she was watching for the sight of this man who’d tormented her to return or if she was looking out at the freedom she’d enjoyed for these last two years knowing it was all going to come to an end.

  “By the time I got up the nerve to leave him, I was completely isolated. I had no friends, my daughter hardly visited me. I felt completely alone. I knew the whole town thought he was a prince but I never thought the lawyer I went to see would tell him I was planning to leave him.”

  Evan didn’t speak for fear of stopping her. He was calculating in his head how much time they might have before Turner Carson got there. He didn’t know how close the man was.

  “If I wasn’t going to be with him, I wasn’t going to be anywhere,” she said, her words holding the haunted quality of someone reliving a nightmare. “He reached over and unclipped my seatbelt as he slammed the car into a tree.”

  “Jesus,” Evan whispered, sorry he hadn’t been able to hold back the word.

  She nodded, though she didn’t look at him. “He was injured, of course, which made it all the more difficult for anyone to believe he could have tried to hurt me. He needed some stitches and had a broken wrist, but he was there by my side the whole time I was in the coma, waiting like the dutiful husband to nurse me back to health.

  “I told a doctor but Turner convinced him I was delirious. Later he told me he hadn’t killed me in that hospital room because he decided he would make damned sure I never left him. If that meant crippling me, so be it. I was supposed to go to physical therapy but he’d cancel sessions most of the time saying I was too depressed to go. He took me to just enough appointments to keep the doctors from getting suspicious.

  “If my daughter hadn’t come and gotten me out of there, I don’t know…” She didn’t finish as her voice broke and he could see tears wetting her cheeks.

  “Ma’am,” Evan said, sitting forward. “Will you let me get you out of here? I’ve got my car outside. It’s not too late for us to leave. I’ll get us to a hotel and then we can figure out a plan from there.”

  Now she turned to him, shock on her face. “But my husband hired you.”

  Evan hated that the people this woman had reached out to in the past hadn’t tried to help her, had betrayed her in the worst ways. “That doesn’t matter.”

  It did. He needed the money. His wife and daughter needed the money. But not at this woman’s expense. He went on. “I’ll worry about that later. I took a job to locate a woman who had some old watches her husband wanted back. I didn’t take a job to find someone so her husband could continue to abuse her. Or worse.”

  She hesitated, searching his gaze for long moments before nodding.

  He stood. “I’d like to say we can pack you a bag but your husband was in the state the last time I talked to him and I don’t know how far he might be. I think we should take your purse and go. We can worry about clothes and things later.”

  Hell, this woman needed round the clock care. There was a lot more to worry about here than clothes, but right now, he needed to get her away from here so her husband didn’t get his hands on her.

  She nodded. “My purse is there on the counter. There is a tray of medicines next to the refrigerator. Can you put those in them, please?”

  He hurried to do as she asked, not worrying about whether the bottles were tucked neatly into the bag.

  He didn’t carry a weapon on the job. He wasn’t really that kind of PI. The jobs he took weren’t normally the kind of thing that would land him in trouble like this.

  Hell, that just wasn’t him. He was overweight and out of shape.

  They were moving back down the hall in minutes and he was glad of it. He would feel a whole hell of a lot better if they were away from the home. Then they could see about talking to the police for some help.

  He paused by the front desk.

  “Jessica,” Mrs. Carson said, “I need to go see my daughter. She’s been in an accident and I need to go see her.”

  The woman’s features pinched. “Your daughter. I didn’t think she lived in the area.”

  “She doesn’t,” Evan said. “But she was on her way here when the accident happened. She’s been taken to a hospital an hour away. She sent me to bring her mother to her.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope she’s okay, Mrs. Lawson.”

  Debra thanked the woman and then Evan was wheeling her out the front doors of the building and around the side to where his car was. He would have to lift her into his car and then put the chair in the back.

  He was looking at the back of the chair as he rolled her, trying to see if there was a lever or something to fold it up so it would fit in his truck. He didn’t see Turner Carson coming. Didn’t feel the blow to the back of his head. Didn’t get more than a grunt out as he fell to the ground.

  Chapter 33

  “Sam put in a call to a friend in the FBI,” Logan called back from the front of the rental car they’d had waiting for them when they landed in New Jersey. “He’s got a friend on the police force in Berkeley Heights. He’s going to have the friend roll by to do a well check on your mom.”

  They were only minutes out from her mother’s care home, but Kaeden was glad Samantha had called in the favor. He knew it would make Jane feel better to know a police officer would be headed that way, too. As much as she hadn’t been able to rely on the police in her mother’s town to help them, having one on site when they arrived would be a good thing. Turner Carson didn’t have friends here the way he did back home.

  The silence in the car was thick and heavy as they drove the last ten miles and Kaeden kept his hand on Jane’s leg, letting her know he was there for her.

  “It’s just ahead on the right,” Jane said, directing Jack.

  They had no idea what they were headed into. They could find her mom sitting there perfectly safe knitting or something. Or they might find Turner Carson had beaten them there and her mother was in trouble.

  With any luck, there would at least be security he had to get through at the front desk. Surely her mother would be careful with who she allowed through to see her given her history with this man.

  They pulled into the lot and Kaeden scanned the front of the building. It was a nice place. Large enough that he felt sure they would have a front desk that required visitors to check in.

  Then he remembered the man who was visiting
Jane’s mother had somehow gotten in to see her without registering as a visitor on the tour, so there must not be security around the grounds.

  Jack parked in the second row from the front and they all got out of the car. Kaeden stayed close to Jane, wishing there was more he could do to support her. For now, holding her hand and being there by her side would have to be enough.

  He scanned the lot and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  But as they neared the front entrance, a scream turned his blood cold and turned all of their attention toward the side of the building. Logan and Kaeden were in the lead as they turned to run that way.

  Chad called out that he would go around the other side and Jack followed him.

  Kaeden and Logan pulled ahead of Jane as they came around the corner. No way did Kaeden want her coming face to face with her mother’s husband without one of them between them. Sure, it was a caveman mentality, but he wouldn’t apologize for it. It was what it was.

  Kaeden cursed when they saw what he had to assume was Jane’s mother and her husband a few yards away.

  They stood near a wheelchair and it looked as though Turner had just pulled the woman from it. He held her roughly and when he spotted them, he turned pulling the woman up against him, his large hand around her neck as he held her in front of him like a shield.

  Another man lay slumped by the wheelchair, not moving. They weren’t close enough to see if there was blood or how the man might be injured, but it didn’t look good.

  “Mom!” Jane cried out, but Kaeden caught her around the waist.

  Turner Carson looked like a man who hadn’t realized yet that he wasn’t going to be able to walk away from this unscathed. He looked at them like he fully expected them to walk away without helping the woman he so casually tossed around like a ragdoll.

  Kaeden didn’t think he’d ever seen such hate in anyone’s eyes. Not in his years in the military when they were in firefights overseas. Not when he was facing down his platoon leader when he stopped him from raping Alyssa. Not when he’d faced the men who were angry at him for daring to speak out against their platoon leader.