“He told you?” Smith asks, sounding shocked.
“Yeah. I think he wants me to hate him as much as he hates himself. Where did he go? I need to talk to him. Please call Blake.”
I don’t believe for a minute Ashley wants to be with Smith. Not now. I hope not ever. Right now, I need to make sure I keep her safe. If she decides I’m not right for her later, it will be her choice. I need to give her life and choices back to her. I walk to the back door then flip a switch I installed to make sure I could get in and out without notice. I exit before resealing the lock and arming the alarm system.
Once I’m outside, I have no intention of going far. Smith is no match for Mick. Blake Walker, yes. Smith, no. I locate Blake’s number and dial him now. “Coffee shop across from the house. I’m not leaving her alone.”
“Understood. I’m twenty minutes out.”
Exactly twenty minutes later, he joins me at a table. “I’ve got men covering the house,” he says. “You and I both know how dangerous Mick is and that he has good reason to kill you. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you myself.”
“I fucked up and didn’t do the recon right. I didn’t know about his family being there. I couldn’t stop it. I tried. So my answer is you should kill me. I deserve it, but wait until I save her. She can’t be another innocent who dies. Not her. Not Ashley.”
He inhales and lets out a breath, cutting his gaze before returning his attention to me. “I’ve made some painful mistakes in my past. I lost a fiancée to one of those mistakes, and I couldn’t save her. It becomes bearable, but it never goes away. Guilt is punishment in itself. Revenge is dangerous. Mick wants revenge the way I wanted revenge.”
“Mick doesn’t want revenge. Mick just doesn’t like anyone to take what’s his. It’s about power to him. He’s dirty, but more so, he’s a monster. I can kill and not blink, but I kill monsters like him. I don’t laugh when I kill, but that man would chop off your woman’s head and laugh at your torment. I hurt his reputation. I made him look like he was weak. The family was a cover. Spend some time researching him.”
“I have.”
“Not enough if you think this is about revenge. Dig deeper. You need to know who you’re dealing with. No. Never mind. I’ll kill him while you’re researching.” I stand up.
He stands up with me. “I know where he is. I know who he’s with. You need me. If he’s what you say he is, you need the kind of backup I can provide.”
“If Smith is that kind of backup, he’s not what I need.”
The door chimes and a giant of a man with a scar down his cheek walks in. Blake doesn’t look to the door, but his lips twitch. “That would be the man I propose as our third arm.”
I watch as the man saunters toward us, an evil smirk on his lips. He stops at the end of the table between me and Blake. “Who the fuck are we killing today? And please tell me we get to make them suffer.”
“This is Savage,” Blake says. “He likes to kill bad guys, but you should know that he’s pretty fucking bad at following rules.”
A prickle of unease slides through me that has nothing to do with Savage. My gaze jerks toward the house, and there’s a shadow that moves. Someone is there. “Tell me right now that’s your man,” I say, without looking at Blake.
“It’s not,” Blake says, and the three of us are already moving toward the door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ashley…
Smith and I sit in the living room with me on the couch and him on the coffee table in front of me. “I’m terrified for you with this man, Ashley,” he says. “I need you to listen to me, really listen to me.”
“He left so you could trash talk him. You know that, right? He hates himself. He thinks I should hate him.”
“And you should. You don’t know who he is.”
“Noah. Aaron. The names don’t matter. The man does.”
“You’re right, but his reason for changing names matters,” he argues.
“Yes,” I bite out. “It does. Do you know how he came to be in the CIA?”
“I know how he pissed off Mick.”
“Do you know how he came to be in the CIA?” I ask again.
“What story did he tell you, Ashley?”
I grimace. “It’s not a story. It’s the truth. He was an attorney, a public prosecutor. He went after a kingpin in a cartel at all costs and won. Except, he was in danger and the CIA recruited him.”
Now Smith grimaces. “He was a damn assassin for the CIA.”
“I know who he was, who he is. He still is that man. I know he’s killed. I know he can kill. I know.”
“He killed Mick’s wife and two kids.”
“He didn’t know the wife and kids would be there.”
“You believe that shit?” he challenges.
“I do, Smith, and if you gave him a chance, if you got to know him, you would, too.”
“Ashley—”
“You left me in a hellish life alone. Why do you even care, Smith?”
He sucks in a breath and stands up, walking around the coffee table to stand at the fireplace, his back to me, his shoulders tense. “Ashley—”
“It’s okay,” I say, standing up as he turns to face me. “We were friends, not lovers. We weren’t in love, Smith. I couldn’t love anyone but him, and you knew it.”
“I should have changed that.” He steps to the opposite side of the table again. “I regret—”
“Don’t. I’m not the one for you, but I am your friend. Please be mine.”
“Damn it, that’s what I’m trying to be. A good friend and friends don’t always say what you want to hear.”
“Is there nothing in your military career, or even your career with Walker, that you regret?”
He cuts his stare, swallows hard before he looks at me again. “We aren’t talking about me.”
“Why? Why are you different than Aaron?”
“Aaron or Noah?”
“He can’t be Noah. It’s dangerous.”
“And yet he told you his name was Noah. Doesn’t that sound strange?”
“Look him up. Call your people. The Noah story is true.”
“He’s not even in the CIA database,” he snaps.
“Because they’re trying to kill him!” I argue. “Adam told us all that he was setup.”
“Mick is trying to kill him,” he says, ignoring my comments about Adam.
“Mick is in the CIA,” I remind him.
“Mick doesn’t control the higher-ups.”
“You know this how?” I challenge.
“I’ve seen a lot of dirty CIA agents.”
“You were military. You weren’t even CIA.”
“I was a lot of things you don’t know or understand.” He scrubs his jaw. “Want a beer? I damn sure need one.”
He was a lot of things I don’t know? Smith doesn’t wait for my reply. He turns and walks away. I sit back down and start to replay those moments with Aaron before he left. He doesn’t want me near Smith and yet he called him. I don’t understand. What is this man, Aaron, not Smith, doing to me?
Smith returns and sits down next to me, offering me a cold beer. I take it from him. “What don’t I know?”
“Too much,” he says, slugging back his beer. “And that’s the problem.” He motions to my bottle. “Drink.”
I do. I’m confused and tired, and I just want Aaron to come back. “What if he doesn’t come back? What if that’s why he called you?” I ask, voicing my fears.
“Then he’s a better man than I expect him to be.”
I set my bottle down and turn on him. “Stop. Stop already. I love him. Either tell me why I shouldn’t or stop attacking him.”
He takes another long drink and then sets his beer down and faces me. “You’re being hunted because of him. He should have called me when he knew you were in danger, not come to hell to get you himself.”
“He didn’t trust you to protect me.”
“And yet, here I am, protecting you. And he
re we are with you living in hell because of him.”
“Obviously, you’ve never been in love, because hell was being without him.”
He inhales and stands up, downing his beer in several long swallows. “I need another.” He glances at me. “You need another yet?” He rounds the island and walks back to the kitchen.
Clearly, I hit a nerve with the love stuff. I pick up my bottle, and I can feel the biting sensation of fear inside me, and it’s not fear for me. It’s fear for Aaron. It’s fear he’ll never come back. I shouldn’t have let him leave. And what about Cole and Lori? What if Mick tries to use my old boss and his wife to get to me.
“Smith?!” I call out, twisting around as he exits the kitchen with another bottle in his hand. “Are we sure Cole and Lori are safe? Is someone watching them to be sure?” I stand up as he steps to the opposite side of the island again. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I add.
“We have a man watching them, but they don’t know it,” he says. “We don’t want to freak them out for nothing.”
His cellphone rings, and he grimaces, setting down his beer, snaking the phone from the front of his jeans, and answering the call immediately. He listens for two seconds and then points at me. “Get down. On your knees.”
I blink, confused, and he’s already around the table, pulling me to the ground with him. “Where?” he asks. “Fuck. Got it.” He disconnects.
“Someone is lurking outside the house, but Blake and Aaron lost visual. We need to stay down while they clear the house.”
My heart is now pounding, and I start to think about the bomb that blew up Mick’s house and killed his family. “Bomb. Aaron used a bomb to try to kill Mick. Could there be a bomb?”
He curses and grabs his phone. “Blake,” he says, and that’s when something blasts through the window, glass flying everywhere. A man in black is standing in front of us, and to my shock, Smith somehow has a gun in his hand and shoots him dead. There’s movement behind us, and we whirl around as another man in black points a gun at us.
There’s another gunshot and the second man in black collapses. Aaron stands there behind him, a gun in his hand. He just saved our lives, but more glass shatters in what feels like all directions and flames erupt everywhere.
THE END…FOR NOW
***
Readers,
Thank you so much for picking up DIRTY RICH SECRETS:PART TWO! Ashley and Aaron’s story will conclude on September 24th DIRTY RICH SECRETS: PART THREE! You can pre-order on all retailers NOW!
PRE-ORDER AND LEARN MORE HERE:
https://dirtyrich.weebly.com/dirty-rich-secrets.html
***
What’s next for me? I’ll be releasing books two and three in my NAKED TRILOGY: One Woman (September 17th) and Two Together (November 12th)! And after that is my long-awaited SAVAGE TRILOGY which launches on December 17th with SAVAGE HUNGER!
Keep reading for chapter one from THE NAKED TRILOGY and more information about THE SAVAGE TRILOGY!
***
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THE NAKED TRILOGY
BOOK ONE, ONE MAN, IS AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE NOW! BOOKS TWO AND THREE ARE AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER AND WILL BE RELEASED THIS YEAR!
One man can change everything. That man can touch you and you tremble all over. That man can wake you up and allow you to breathe when life leaves you unable to catch your breath. For me that ONE MAN is Jax North. He's handsome, brutally so, and wealthy, money and power easily at his fingertips. He's dark, and yet, he can make me smile with a single look or word. He's a force when he walks into a room.
Our first encounter is intense, overwhelmingly intense. I go with it. I go with him and how can I not? He's that ONE MAN for me and what a ride it is. But there are things about me that he doesn't know, he can't know, so I say goodbye. Only you don't say goodbye to a man like Jax if he doesn't want you to. I've challenged him without trying. He wants me. I don't want to want him, and yet, I crave him. He tears me down, my resistance, my walls. But those walls protect me. They seal my secrets inside. And I forget that being alone is safe. I forget that there are reasons I can’t be with Jax North. I forget that once he knows, everything will change.
Because I need him.
Because he's my ONE MAN.
***
CHAPTER ONE OF ONE MAN
Jax...
The moon glows with white light and hangs low and round over the nearby ocean darkened by night as if it, like the hundreds of guests in the garden of one of the San Francisco Knight hotels, is watching the beautiful brunette and star of the night. Emma Knight, the twenty-eight-year-old heiress to the hotel chain’s worldwide empire, and who, in fact, lost her father one month ago. Now, her brother Chance rules their hotel empire and her mother has fled to Europe for reasons few, I suspect Emma included, knows.
But I know.
She stands next to Randall Montgomery, her brother's right-hand and confidant, a man who might be fit enough and decent enough looking if he didn’t act like he has a stick up his ass. A man on my radar for reasons he’ll soon regret. He wants Emma and her money. She is the furthest down the food chain of them all, and based on her history with her father, even further down than would be expected. No doubt, she inherited with her father’s death, but I wouldn’t be shocked to discover she was given a token instead of a goldmine.
The announcer stands at a podium and begins lavishly speaking of Emma’s father with purpose. Tonight, with women in fancy gowns and men in tuxedos, ice carved into sculptures and champagne poured in glasses, Emma is here to accept a philanthropy award on his behalf while her brother is curiously absent. If he were here, I wouldn’t be here. Neither I nor any of the North family could stand her father, not that I find her brother any more palatable. Her father is gone, though, and now Emma is the proverbial queen of the hour. And the queen, unaware that she is, has had my attention for quite some time.
There’s irony in the fact that I, Jax North, the eldest now of the living North family offspring is, in fact, the man who watches her. An irony she’ll understand soon, but not too soon. For now, I stand at one of the rows of white-clothed tables, deep enough beyond in the crowd of people to be as good as in the shadows, a man whose family has done business with her family for decades, though l have been in the shadows in those endeavors just as I am here now. Present but unseen.
Emma steps to the podium, but not before I catch a glimpse of her pale pink floor-length dress that is elegant in its simplicity, in the way it highlights her slender but womanly figure. Her hands grip the sides of the podium and for a long moment, a full minute at least, she simply looks out across the crowd but doesn’t speak. There’s a charge of expectation in the room, a sense of the crowd pushing her to speak and when finally, her pink-painted lips part, the microphone crackles and squeaks. This seems to jolt her and she laughs nervously, a soft sweet laugh to match her sweet little ass. Perhaps the only sweet things about the Knight family.
“Thank you all for being here,” she finally says, and her voice is strained but suitably strong. “It’s emotional to be here tonight, among those honored who are living while my father is no longer with us. To be here at a hotel that was the center of the world for him.” She cuts her stare and I can almost feel her struggling for composure, the way I struggle when I speak of my older brother.
“I loved my father so very much,” Emma adds, and the pain in her voice is it for me. I run a hand over the silk of my light blue tie, barely contained impatience in the action, but tonight isn’t the time; it’s not when I’m meant to find Emma and Emma me. It’s a thought that has me turning away and disappearing into the gardens, entering the hotel by a side door. I’m here in this hotel for one reason: Emma. Sh
e’s here and it’s long past due that we meet. It’s long past due that she learns about the connection between her family and mine. I stroll a carpeted hallway with elegant chandeliers dipping low at strategic locations, about to turn into the bar when I come face to face with Eric Mitchell, a man who is quite literally a genius. He’s also vice president in one of the largest corporations in the world.
“Long time, man,” he greets, offering me his hand. It’s a strong hand, and when I look into his blue eyes, I see the man born a savant, the man who see numbers more than words. I see the man who helped Bennett Enterprises reach beyond a legal powerhouse to a conglomerate, even before acquiring an NFL team.
“Doesn’t Bennett own hotels, which would make you the Knights’ competition?”
His lips curve. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I went to school with Chance. Good guy.”
Good guy my fucking ass. “We should talk.”
“About?”
“All things green. How about lunch tomorrow?”
“I can make that happen. “
We setup the meeting and the ways this little encounter has inspired me are many. I cut right into a dimly lit bar that’s desolate at the moment and thank fuck for it. The damn hotel is filled to the rim for that awards ceremony. Alone suits me just fine right about now and I walk to the back of the bar and sit down in a red leather booth that overlooks a room with couches, cushy chairs, and dangling lights but also provides a curtain for privacy. The Knight name is all about luxury and comfort, but at its core, it’s about greed. At my core right now, I’m about that speech Emma was giving, about the pain at its core. That pain is why I’m here.
A waiter appears and I order whiskey, North Whiskey, my family’s whiskey, which is in every Knight hotel in the country and beyond. I don’t give a fuck if it stays or goes or I wouldn’t be here. “Bring the bottle.”
He’s just filled my glass, and the glass is at my lips when Emma walks into the bar. Alone. She’s done her time on stage and ran for cover. The hotel might be hosting the event, but she isn’t. She’s halfway into the bar when voices sound behind her. She peeks over her shoulder and then with a panicked look, darts in my direction.
Dirty Rich Secrets: Part Two Page 7