by Allie Hayden
“It’s flirty! Molly, flaunt your body while you’re still young. I’m sure your fiancé would love to see you in something like that. Oh—and don’t forget to wear your engagement ring,” she says with a wink.
My hair stands on end. She knows. Of course she does! She’s our housekeeper, she knows everything.
I shake my head. “Who told you?”
“I’m not dumb, dear Mollykins. I clean your dresser, you know. I noticed your ring ages ago.”
The dress Cassandra suggests clings to my body and shows off my figure, in the front and in the back. I’m usually one to play down my assets, but Cassandra always gets me to play them up. I don’t forget to text my fiancé letting him know I accept. I even toss in a winky face. He’ll be getting a treat tonight. Cassandra spends the day getting me ready. I can tell she’s curious to know who I’m engaged to, but she doesn’t once ask me who it is.
When the clock strikes five exactly, I get a text.
“Is he here?” Cassandra flutters her hands in excitement.
“He’s downstairs.”
We walk toward the balcony of the stairs. She waits there while I go downstairs, then looks over the railing when I’m at the bottom. As quiet as she can be, she mouths the words, “Have fun.” I wave and out the door I go.
It’s getting much hotter outside. Carlyle’s already waiting for me, leaning against his car, in a James Dean white tee and sunglasses sort of getup. He’s got to have the cutest dimples, and that smile could make any girl fall for him. He seems more lighthearted than usual. I’m starting to wonder if he can wear anything that doesn’t accentuate his massive arms.
Knowing we’re about to go out together gives me the jitters.
“You look nice.” He smiles as he walks over to my side of the car.
I blush.
Suddenly, butterflies are fluttering around in my stomach. There’s a feeling of newness from not seeing him for so long. It’s like the first time we ever hung out. These feelings might never go away, and that’s why I’m so confused as to why I keep getting them. His engagement band shimmers under the sun when it catches a ray of light.
“Are we all set?” He looks at me and then down at my hand. “Looks like you’re wearing yours too.”
It’s impossible not to fall for him. He’s otherworldly. We get into his car and he says the night is going to be a surprise. He doesn’t want to reveal what he has in store for me. We round a sharp bend like he’s testing out the car’s traction, and I keep bumping my shoulder into him.
I sink into my seat. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise. Do you really want to know, or do you just want to see when we get there?”
“Surprises are nice. I can deal with surprises.”
He gives me a suave, “I know what I’m doing” kind of look, and I can’t help but smile at his expression. Our friendship is turning out to become a little more than just friends. It feels like he wants to get to know me more, on different levels.
The area we find ourselves in is at the city limits, way up in the mountains. I can’t tell where we are at all. The windy road we take is densely packed with trees lined up on either side. For someone who grew up in California, I’ve never been on this road before, and I’ve been on road trips in the state many times. Whenever I look over to check if Carlyle knows where he’s going, he looks confident that he has everything under control.
After an endless stream of bushes, we finally arrive in a clearing in the trees. They create a circle and surround a building in the middle. We drive up the path all alone for a few miles. The road is completely quiet without a trace of so much as an animal.
When we drive up in front of the building, from up close, I can tell what it really is. It looks like an abandoned observatory. Without a doubt, it’s the same one from the stacks of paperwork I sent to Xander a while ago.
Carlyle turns off the car engine. The vehicle hums to a stop.
“This is it,” he says, looking at me. “Should we go check it out?”
“Let’s do it.”
We get out of the car and walk up to the observatory. The ground is soft with fresh dirt. Behind the building, I see a set of stairs leading to the top. It must be an entrance for something. There’s a big chain and lock on the stairs that block us from getting in. He holds up a key and unlocks it, and the chain falls to the ground.
I follow his lead and stay close to him. The door opens with a massive creak. The observatory is amazing inside. I’ve never seen anything like it. The whole place is made of metal, from the door frames to the refurbished floors. It’s stunning.
We ascend the stairs to the next floor. There’s a spiral staircase with windows that, for a split second, show me a scene of a breathtaking cityscape view. The metal clanks underneath our feet while we keep climbing. Each time we round another bend, the view comes back for a moment, and then disappears again. The top, I’m sure, will be amazing.
We get to the top level, which is just an open area. There’s a big chunk of the observatory missing, which makes for an extraordinary view to see the entire city. I lift my arms up in happiness. It’s just Carlyle and me now staring off into the trees. The sun is coming down, making the sky turn different colors. I turn around and watch him. I watch the glimmer in his eyes and the way he holds himself up. It’s been a while since I last saw him, and now I realize why I missed him so much.
“Hey, so this engagement thing,” I say. “We haven’t really gotten a chance to talk about it. Maybe we should now.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Maybe about how when this whole thing is over, we’ll be going back to our normal lives. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me up until now. But you know, at the end of the day, we’re pretty much living a lie now.”
“Is it taking a toll on your conscience?”
I stay quiet.
He smiles. “Well, we’ve got a few months until that happens, right? So why don’t we enjoy what we have now and think about that stuff later?”
I guess he’s right. There’s no use thinking about it now. I only brought it up because I wanted to give him a chance to vent about it. He seems oddly nonchalant and carefree about it. I guess I should be that way too.
For now, there’s not much that could take my attention away from the amazing view we’re getting.
“What is this place?” I ask as I start walking around.
“It’s one of the properties I’m planning to buy. I wanted to bring you here to show you since we might never get it alone like this ever again.”
“Whoa. Can we see the sky from here?”
There’s a little booth at the end of the room we’re in, which I’d expect is where we could get a look into the telescope.
“Of course. That’s our next stop.”
He grabs my hand once again and we dance our way to the small booth. It honestly feels like a castle in here. And Carlyle feels like my prince. The room is dedicated to one thing: hosting a giant telescope.
Stars are one of my favorite things to look at. I walk up to the telescope and look into the hole. I cannot believe what I see. It’s not pointed to anything in particular, but what I see in the telescope is amazing. The starry night sky is so clear since there’s no light pollution. I can see the galaxies and the stars, and the other specks of space that can’t be made out with just the naked eye.
“It’s beautiful.”
“You are.”
I blush. Goddamn, I blush hard.
“I’ve got something amazing planned for after this. Are you hungry?”
My stomach is starting to growl at this point. As much as I love the stars, food sounds like a good idea right about now. He holds out his hand, and I look down at it. The engagement ring he has on reminds me that he is mine and I am his, at least for the time being.
We walk out of the observatory and back to his car. I zone out while watching the familiar city sights fly past me as we make it down t
he mountain. We’re back at his place. The engine rolls to a stop and then silence takes over.
“So come on, then.”
I walk into his familiar house, and there are rose petals leading up the steps. He’s leading me inside and we walk past the living room and right into the dining room, where two placements are set up for dinner.
“I’ve arranged to have dinner prepared for us.”
There on the table is an arrangement of sides and main dishes. Mashed potatoes, beans, chicken. It all looked professionally made. And impressively, still hot, as I can see the steam still seeping out into the air. It must be the work of one of his houseworkers who fixed everything up while we were gone.
From filling my stomach with food to sipping wine in between bites, I find myself warming up to Carlyle, feeling less shy around him.
“You know what’s crazy?” Carlyle takes a pause from eating and fixes his napkin. “I’ve known you since we were kids. This may sound weird, but I would’ve never imagined we would be having dinner together.”
“Is it that far-fetched?”
Carlyle puts his fork down and looks at me like he’s trying to find the right words. “Well, I just know this. I’ve always sort of liked you, Molly, always. Since day one. I remember the exact moment you walked into the house wearing your little fur jacket. I remember you holding hands with your mother. Your dad came and introduced your family to mine and I just remember staring at you. I just remember thinking, that girl has the prettiest eyes.
“We used to hang out a lot. But we lost touch after I had to move away to manage Dad’s New York office. After so long, our dads got back in touch and had a brief meeting. Your dad mentioned he wanted to marry you off. I had to find a way so you wouldn’t get married off to whoever he decided to approve of. But I guess, now that person is me, so I can’t really complain.”
I can’t help the giant geek smile flashing across my face.
He laughs. “Seriously. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
We find ourselves giggling into the night as the festivities take themselves onto the couch. He’s in close proximity and we’re sitting there watching each other’s facial’s expressions into the night. His finger is petting the top of my hand and I can’t help but just marvel at this beautiful creature’s jawline. He is impeccable, beautiful, handsome.
I wish this night could last forever.
16
Carlyle
“Hi Mr. Cartier, apologies for messaging you so early in the morning. Jeff wants you to check your email as soon as you can, preferably on a laptop.”
Sweat drips profusely from my body. I’d taken a break from my boxing routine to fix my glove. Seldom does my assistant bother me at this hour (knowing I’m working out), but when she does, it’s only for important business matters.
I put everything away and grab a towel, putting it over my shoulder as I go to the library. My laptop is open from the night before, and I quickly get to my inbox. There’s an email labeled Urgent from Jeff. And within the email is a link to a real estate website.
The article is titled “$10 BILLION Spent on Property This Weekend by Mysterious New Real Estate Player.”
I scroll through the article. It showcases multiple purchases across Beverly Hills and Malibu. All of them are homes right on the coast. They were undervalued properties. The oddest part is that all of the estates were on my want list.
I look around to where I keep that folder. It’s there right in the spot I left it: on top of the desk where it belongs. It doesn’t look tampered with in any way. I pick it up and flip through the pages.
The properties in the article are almost identical to those in this folder. No one should know about this folder. Not even my parents. How was it that this Mr. Hill, named in the article, knows anything about the contents within this folder?
It hasn’t been anywhere except with me, and on top of my desk, sitting in the library.
The hotels, the apartment communities, the office buildings, they’re all here. Even the dammed observatory is one of the properties listed in the article. And it appears that Mr. Hill undercut my numbers by a small margin. These numbers were calculated by my bookkeepers over a ridiculous number of spreadsheets.
Somehow, this Mr. Hill must’ve gotten inside information. I shake my head. There are some people with enough money for this. It’s not a figure completely unheard of. For all I know, this could be offshore money.
But that’s not the most intriguing part. No, not the amount that someone spent, no. It’s the choice of properties to buy. Were they looking at the same cities, in the same neighborhoods? Did they also do their homework?
Somehow, this whole thing seems a little too orchestrated.
A million things run through my head.
I’m not quite sure what this means. For all I know, I might be privy to an attack. I lay out all the papers in the folder across my desk. Fanned out, they lay over the top of my laptop and across to both ends of the desk. I stare down at them.
Upon careful inspection, there is one page that seems to be upside down. Especially if all the other pages are right side up, I know I would be annoyed if I left one in the wrong order. I look at the sheet to see if there might be any clues. The property ad seems to be for a house in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of the more plain places I decided on. When I double-check the article on my laptop, the house is part of the ones purchased in the bundle.
When you’ve got the money, real estate is an exuberant game of high-stakes poker. This is the kind of thrill I get from running this business. Instead of cards, you play with multimillion-dollar properties. Having someone purchase these assets feels like they stole my cards and cheated.
It really is quite amazing.
I laugh.
Maybe I’m losing it.
My sweat has dried and it’s tacky on my forehead and as I lean onto my forearms. The one thing I feel now is confusion. I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions. But I need guidance on how to handle this kind of thing. My dad’s in the hospital, and I have to call the only person who might have handled something like this in the past. Xander Stanley.
Before I can clean myself up, I have to get some insight. It’d at least put my mind at ease, or at least give me some sort of idea what I’m dealing with. I grab my phone and dial Xander’s number. After a few rings, he picks up. He sounds almost as surprised as I was only a few moments ago.
“Carlyle, why hello.”
“I could use some advice right now. Are you free?”
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Carlyle?”
“You’ve got more experience than me when it comes to business, which is something I’ve always admired about you. I need to ask you this. How can you tell who’s really, truly after you?”
“Wow, Carlyle. That is a specific and loaded question. I suppose my next question is, who do you think might be after you?”
My heart begins to race. I can hear the thudding right up against my chest. I make sure to choose my words carefully.
“How would you know that something is planned—and that something isn’t?”
There’s a pause on the line. I focus in, listening for his answer.
“For all you know, nothing is planned. For all you know, everything is. Maybe it’s both. But the one thing you know that is absolute, is that you don’t know which it is. So, what is this really about?”
“For someone of our caliber, to what extent do you think the things that happen around us are coincidences? And if they aren’t, then how would you know?”
“Humans are rational creatures. Even insane people have logic. I’d ask myself, if someone were out to get me right now, I’d want to know why. Then from there, you can retrace your steps.”
“Thank you for your advice, Xander. I appreciate it.”
We get off the phone. I can’t think of anyone who might possibly hold such a grudge against me that they’d want revenge for something.
I sort through it al
l again. Every enemy, every past business partner.
I pace around the house, going up the stairs and then down. Into the kitchen and then back. Letting things mull over isn’t my style; getting even just an inch closer to the solution is. The fate of the family business lies in my hands. I have to get to the bottom of this or I’d be letting a thief get away with stealing from my family name.
Xander has a good point. I have to think about who would do such a thing to me, and if so, if I deserved this kind of attack from them. Whatever I did, it has to merit enough motivation for backlash. With everything hitting me all at once, it’s taking a toll on my psyche and my entire life.
The only way I can solve this is if I start questioning those close to me.
Then it hits me.
The answer ignites me. It makes me mad.
I know who framed me. The one person who escaped this responsibility in the first place, binding me to the shackles of the corporate world. Someone so close to me with so much motive. All along, it was my own flesh and blood.
It has to be Phillip.
He was here at my place not too long ago. I’d left him unmonitored for hours alone. There’s nothing to suggest he didn’t snoop around the house. Whenever he comes into my life, he ruins it in some way. This time, he’s ruined it for himself too. Once I find him, there will be no forgiveness.
He threatened my relationship with Molly, her family, and my family as well. With the information he has on my fake engagement to Molly under his belt, he could buy a lot of news and media outlets. The information could spread rather fast.
My reputation can’t take a hit right now.
I have to stay clean. The future of my father’s business depends on it. I will fix this problem and go find Phillip. And when I do, he’ll pay.
17
Molly
Jesse slaps down the biggest tabloid magazine in all of Calabasas in front of me. The headline reads, “Billionaire Avoids Lawsuits While Father’s Health
