The 100 Series: A Billionaire Romance Trilogy

by Adrian, Lara

  “She’s not well, Nick.” I swallow and shake my head. “Her cancer is back. I think she may be dying.”

  A tendon pulses in his jaw. “Kathryn’s health isn’t my concern. You are.”

  His right hand flexes at his side, unclenching the fist he’d been holding almost subconsciously. He glances down at the scars that twine around his forearm and down onto his fingers. A rueful smile twists his mouth.

  “She told you.”

  “I wish you had.” My voice is quiet, uncertainty making every fiber in my body ache with the dread of losing him, here and now. “I didn’t go there to dig into your past, Nick. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, or make things harder for you in any way.”

  “Then why?” He takes a step toward me finally, instead of continuing to pull away. His hands clamp around my biceps and I can feel the tension in him. He’s still vibrating with anger and struggling to keep it under control. “Why her, of all people? Why now?”

  “Because I didn’t see any other choice.” I press my lips together, stifling the raw sob that’s lodged in my throat. “I went to her because I needed the money.”

  Emotion flashes in his taut face—outrage, confusion, insult. “If you needed money all you had to do was ask me for it. You know that. Have I ever denied you anything?”

  “No, you haven’t. You’ve given me so much, Nick. More than I deserve.”

  “Then why?” He shakes me slightly, as if I’ve pushed him to the very edge of his reason. “Why go behind my back when all I ever asked from you was honesty? God damn it, Avery. I trusted you. I—” He bites off the thought with a low, muttered curse. “Just tell me why.”

  The tears I’ve been fighting spill over now, streaming down my cheeks. “I did something terrible, Nick. Something I haven’t told you.”

  I feel him go still as he holds me in that penetrating, inescapable gaze of his. “Something recently?”

  “No. A long time ago. Nine years ago.”

  His grip remains firm on my arms, but some of his combustibility fades as he searches my face. “Nine years ago. You’re talking about your stepfather . . . “

  He doesn’t finish the statement. We both know the reference well enough. The day of my rape at sixteen. The day my mother shot and killed her abusive husband in retaliation for what he’d done to both of us over the years, but specifically, finally, for what he’d done to me that day.

  “I haven’t been honest with you, Nick.” My voice falters over the words. “I haven’t told you everything. I haven’t told you what I did that day.”

  His reply is flat. Remote. “Tell me now.”

  His deep blue eyes take on a guardedness, impenetrable steel replacing the fathomless oceans that have always drawn me in like the tide. It hurts to see his walls going up in front of me, ready to seal me out. I won’t be able to bear it if I’ve ruined everything with this stupid mistake, with my secrets and lies.

  Even if he turns away from me in disgust after hearing how selfish and cowardly I’ve been all this time, I owe him the truth.

  All of it.

  “The day Martin Coyle raped me was a Monday, August twenty-first. I had a math test in the morning, but I accidentally slept past my alarm. Martin was on disability leave from his job at the school in the neighboring town, so to make some extra money, my mom had just started working the third shift at the big factory in Scranton. Usually she got home around seven—about an hour before I left for school—but on that day she called home to let us know she had a flat tire and would be home late because she was waiting for a tow to the shop.”

  I swallow, pushing past the bile that rises up my throat as I recall the events of that awful morning.

  I can still see my stepfather sitting in his recliner in front of the television, wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, drinking a can of beer at seven in the morning. Watching me with too much interest as I wolfed down a piece of toast over the sink, then cleaned up the mess of dirty breakfast dishes and the ashtray full of cigarette butts he’d left for my mom on the kitchen counter.

  “I hated being alone in the house with him. For a while before that day, he’d been making me uncomfortable with his staring and his persistent attempts to cozy up to me. He’d offer me liquor and cigarettes, neither of which I accepted. He’d volunteer to take me out for fast food or runs to the mall. I never said yes. He’d try to touch my hair or put his arm around me, even though I asked him not to. I made a point of avoiding him whenever I could, and that worked for a while. But that morning everything seemed different. I felt it instinctively. Something had changed, turned dangerous. I was too stupid to act on it before it was too late.”

  “You were only sixteen,” Nick says, his voice low and tight. “Don’t ever blame yourself for this. You were just a kid, for crissake.”

  I nod, some part of me acknowledging that he’s right—I was a child, not yet equipped to deal with the very adult, very real problem of my stepfather.

  Unfortunately, I wouldn’t learn how to deal with him until after the assault had occurred.

  “I was just out of the shower and getting dressed for school when he came into my bedroom. My door was locked, but he somehow picked it. All I had on was my bra and underwear. He stood there, leering at me. He accused me of trying to turn him on. He said he was tired of me teasing him then running away.” I close my eyes, struggling to push the rest of the story out. “He said . . . he said he wanted me to suck his dick or he was going to give my mom a black eye when she got home. I knew he meant it. He’d hit her more than a few times by then. But she always made excuses for him. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want us to be alone again.”

  “Baby, I’m sorry.” Nick frowns as he reaches up to wipe a tear from my chin. A dark kind of rage smolders in his eyes. “You don’t have to tell me any more. You don’t have to relive that bastard’s abuse just to make me understand it.”

  “Yes, I do.” I draw in a fortifying breath. As much as his compassion touches me, I do have to tell him everything. “You need to understand, Nick. And I need to let this go, even if you never look at me the same way ever again.”

  His face stills, then he gives me the faintest nod. “All right.”

  “He lunged for me. He overpowered me so easily. I thought I was strong, but I couldn’t break out of his hold. I couldn’t move his heavy weight when he knocked me to the floor on my stomach. I don’t know how he managed to get his pants down so quickly. He ripped my panties off from behind me. And then he pushed inside me. It hurt. God, how it hurt.” My voice is threadbare now. “I was a virgin. He stole that from me. He shoved inside me and he pumped and grunted and groaned until he came, splattering my back with his foulness.”

  Nick’s face is a study in animal fury now. His lips are peeled back in a grimace, his nostrils flaring as he listens in barely restrained silence.

  “I don’t know how long I lay there. He had gone back to the TV. I could hear it in the background as I got up and cleaned myself off with a tissue. I don’t remember getting dressed, but I walked out of my room sometime later in my clothes for school. But I didn’t leave for school. I went downstairs to the basement, to the gun cabinet he never bothered to lock. Then I came back up and put a bullet in his chest.”

  Nick doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t so much as blink.

  “I shot him,” I confess—at last, finally. “I shot him and then I sat across from him and watched him bleed. I don’t know why I didn’t shoot him again. Shock, I guess. I remember looking at him as he slumped out of his chair and onto the floor, wheezing and sputtering, trying to drag himself toward me. I moved across the room and I just . . . watched him. I waited for him to die, but he didn’t.”

  “What happened with your mom?”

  “She came home a while later. Martin was still alive, but barely.” I exhale, picturing the whole incident as if I were looking in from outside myself. “She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She didn’t ask me what happened. She knew. Just by lookin
g at me . . . she knew what he’d done.”

  Nick draws me against him, holding me close.

  “She walked right past him on the blood-soaked floor to carefully take the gun out of my hands and set it aside. Then she wrapped me in her arms and told me to go take a shower. She told me she would clean up the mess and that I should go to my grandparents’ house down the street. She told me that she would take of everything.”

  “The second gunshot wound,” Nick says. “The police reports and court evidence stated that it wasn’t the first bullet that killed him. It was the second one, fired sometime between one to two hours afterward.”

  He’s obviously been reading up on the case, since these are details I haven’t yet shared with him. No doubt, he and his lawyer, Andrew Beckham, have been poring over all of the documents in my mother’s case in preparation of securing that new legal team Nick has mentioned.

  “According to the file, you weren’t home that morning,” he points out. “Your mother told police that you were at your grandparents’ house all day, that you stayed home sick from school. Your grandmother corroborated the story.”

  I nod, finding it strange to hear Nick recite the old lie that Mom and Gran had drilled into me for weeks after the killing. I feel lighter now that it’s out in the open.

  But he isn’t the only one who knows the truth now.

  “My mother lied to protect me. She told the police she and Martin argued and she shot him twice. She told the story as if she had been the one to watch him suffer during the time between the first shot and the fatal one. She killed for me, Nick. And for the past nine years, she’s been living in a cell in order to keep me out of one.”

  Nick takes a step back from me now, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. “It was self-defense, Avery. For fuck’s sake, what you did—it was justified. Any reasonable judge would’ve agreed with that. Any competent lawyer would’ve made sure you never served a day behind bars.”

  I can’t say his logic is weak, or that I haven’t thought the same things myself these past nine years. But at sixteen, I was just a terrified, traumatized girl. And it wasn’t as if my mother gave me the choice in any of this.

  “She didn’t want to take that chance, Nick. She didn’t want me going to trial, even as a minor. She said she blamed herself for letting Martin get anywhere near me, and refused to let me speak up for her.” My heart aches to think of all my mother endured for me. And what she continues to endure. “If I could change places with her now, I would.”

  “No.” His reply is adamant. “I won’t stand for that. Don’t even think it, Avery.” He studies me, frowning. “Is your mother the reason you needed that money?”

  I shake my head. “No. Not the way you’re thinking.”

  “Then what?”

  “Someone knows what really happened, Nick. Martin Coyle’s son. My stepbrother, Rodney. He saw my car outside the house that day.”

  I tell him about the phone calls and texts, about Rodney’s threat to expose my lie to Nick, and, eventually, to the press and anyone else he might be able to profit from.

  I tell Nick how Rodney tracked me down from our photo that went viral on the Internet a few months ago, how he somehow arranged for my mother’s accident as a means of getting my attention and ensuring my cooperation with him. I tell him how Rodney’s harassment had recently escalated to an in-person confrontation here in the city.

  “That son of a bitch is in Manhattan?” he growls. “When did you see him? Where was I, and how did he manage to get close to you?”

  “It happened last week, at that Italian restaurant in East Harlem.”

  Nick’s expression hardens. “We were together there.”

  “Not when I went to ladies’ room.”

  He considers for a moment, then a sharp curse explodes off his tongue. “The smug asshole who strutted past our table as we were leaving. He got near you, alone, and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I couldn’t. Please understand, Nick. I was so scared. I still am.”

  “Of your stepbrother? Give me five minutes with the fucker and there’ll be nothing left of him to be afraid of.”

  Although he’s vibrating with rage, I brave a touch anyway. Reaching out to cradle his hard jaw in my hand, I hold his simmering gaze. “I’m more afraid of losing you than anything Rodney thinks he can do to me.”

  “Nothing you’ve told me changes how I feel about you.” Even still, he gently takes my hand away from his face and brings it down to my side. “Where is your stepbrother now?”

  “I’m not sure. The last time I saw him was yesterday morning, across the street from this building. You remember that wrong number call that came in on your cell when we were in the limo? I’m certain it was him sending me a message that he’s serious about this.” At Nick’s virulent curse, I add, “Rodney told me I have to be in touch with him by today to pay him ten thousand dollars for his silence.”

  “That won’t be enough.” Nick gives me a hard look. “Scum like that smell blood in the water and they’ll keep coming back for more. I won’t have it. Your stepbrother needs to go away permanently.”

  I’m not sure I want to know what he means. Without offering me an explanation, he presses a kiss to my forehead then walks into his home office and closes the door.

  Chapter 21

  Central Park is unusually quiet, thanks most likely to a recent drizzle that’s kept all but the most determined visitors indoors this afternoon. Only a handful of joggers and a few straggling tourists have passed me in the fifteen minutes I’ve been waiting. Not far from the bench I am sitting on, cheerful calliope music drifts out of the beige and red brick octagon that houses the park’s carousel, which is apparently closed for maintenance today.

  It is here that Rodney instructed me to meet him when I called to tell him I had the money.

  I try not to look anxious as I check the time on my phone and see that he is nearly ten minutes late. I just want this done. I want him gone from my life.

  I feel that wish intensify when I spot him sauntering up the sidewalk, heading my way. As he approaches the bench, he flicks his spent cigarette butt into the wet grass, exhaled smoke streaming out of his mouth and nostrils like dragon’s breath.

  I stand up, my skin crawling at the smug, satisfied look he gives me as he nears me. He’s wearing baggy jeans with a denim jacket over an “I Love New York” T-shirt today. He smooths his palms over the big red heart as he glances at me. “Never thought I’d be the city type, but I gotta say, baby girl, New York is growin’ on me. How do you like my souvenir?”

  “She doesn’t.” Nick’s deep voice sounds from behind Rodney.

  My stepbrother swivels his head, watching Nick stroll up to where we stand. To keep Rodney from panicking or canceling the meeting, I didn’t tell him that I wouldn’t be alone today. As far as Nick was concerned, my coming here without him wasn’t even an option.

  He’d been adamant about that, even though he had said little else to me about his feelings in the time since my secrets all came spilling out today and this unwanted, unwelcome rendezvous with Martin Coyle’s son.

  Rodney is unable to hide his surprised expression, even if his gravelly voice is low with disrespect. “Well, well. The famous Dominic Baine in the flesh. Avery didn’t mention I’d have the honor of meetin’ you today.”

  “She didn’t mention you either until very recently.” Nick’s reply is low, level. More lethal than Rodney realizes. “From what I understand, she’s not happy to see you. Neither am I, for that matter.”

  “Now, ain’t that an unfriendly way to greet me,” he replies, his lips thinning in a sneer. “Didn’t my sister tell you that you oughta be real nice to me?”

  “Don’t call me that,” I snap, unable to stomach anything about him. “You and your father are nothing to me.”

  Rodney chuckles now, but his predator’s gaze stays rooted on Nick. “Sharp tongue on this bitch, eh? ‘Course, maybe that’s how you like ‘em. Maybe you rich fucks like
your pussy with teeth and claws, that it?”

  Nick’s big body vibrates with menace beside me, but he stands utterly still. “Did you come here to get your ass kicked, or do you want to tell me what it’s going to take to make you go away?”

  “Get my ass kicked?” Rodney scoffs. “You’re not gonna touch me, Baine. If you do, it’s only gonna cost you more. See, I’m a businessman like you.”

  Nick doesn’t even blink. “Is that what you call this? Stalking Avery. Threatening her. Putting her mother in the prison hospital.”

  Rodney gives him a thin smile. “I’ll never admit to any of that.”

  “Then why am I standing here with ten grand in my pocket?”

  Rodney pauses. He glances at me only briefly, then his tongue snakes out to lick his lips. “Let me see it.”

  “Not until we get some things straight,” Nick says. “This stops right here. The second I put the cash in your hands, you stop, Rodney. You go away, and you don’t come back.”

  His chin lifts. His eyes narrow on Nick as a sneer twists his mouth. “You think I’m stupid? You think I’m some dumb jackass who don’t know my worth?”

  I swallow anxiously as Rodney’s voice rises. This is exactly what Nick predicted would happen—my stepbrother’s arrogance and greed being fed by the promise of easy money.

  “I don’t know your worth,” Nick says, his tone clipped but calm. “You say you’re a businessman. All right. Convince me. What do you think you’re worth?”

  “More than ten measly grand,” he bites off sharply. “Ten grand is only a down payment. What I know about her is worth a helluva lot more than that. Think about it, Baine. I go to the press with what I know? They’ll feed off the headlines for weeks. Dominic Baine’s girlfriend, a white trash slut who got away with murder.”

  I close my eyes at the grating, ugly words—all of them close enough to the truth that it won’t matter what Nick or I say to try to lessen their power. The damaging publicity for Nick will be inescapable. Unbearable.

  He seethes beside me, his body radiating a palpable and growing violence. “If Avery had been the one to kill your child rapist of a father, he’d have had it coming.”