A Tangled Web

by A. Claire Everward

  A. CLAIRE EVERWARD

  A TANGLED WEB

  THE FIRST IN THE

  BLACKWELL SERIES

  .

  Copyright © 2019 A. Claire Everward

  The right of A. Claire Everward to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales, or organizations, institutions, agencies or any other such entities, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Author & Sister

  www.authorandsister.net

  eBook ISBN 978-965-92584-4-4

  Print ISBN 978-965-92584-5-1

  Cover design by Piers Tilbury

  .

  .

  This one is for you, my sister. I will write them as long as you want me to.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter One

  Twelve years. More than twelve, spring was already here and her count began in the dead of winter.

  That was a long time. Still, even now she couldn’t bring herself to think she might be safe. It never even began to feel that way, safe that is, but then she hadn’t expected it to. That was why she still lived as she had back then, had never really made a home for herself. Home was something that would be hers, that could never truly be taken from her. She didn’t believe she could have that. Not anymore. Not since. Not all considering.

  Too much, considering.

  Still, she had begun to think that this was where she would stay. At least she had a friend here. And her job, which she liked. She was good at it, too, one of the best. And she knew everything and everyone around her. That counted for a lot, it counted toward her ability to correctly assess the people she met, their intentions. Situations she encountered. To maybe be safe, even if she could never truly feel safe.

  She read the email again. Monday, nine-thirty in the morning, at the office of the transition team’s screening and vetting officer.

  The one who had been tasked with conducting the background checks that would thoroughly comb through all their lives before the security clearance would be granted and the company’s takeover—and their relocation—would be completed.

  She had until Monday morning to find a way to disappear.

  “You’re out of your mind.” Robert Ashton fell back into the chair, slack-jawed. “This is madness.”

  The man sitting behind the heavy desk leaned back and looked at his friend and attorney with no humor in his eyes.

  “Why on earth would you choose to do this?” Robert couldn’t wrap his mind around the request.

  “Freedom,” was the answer.

  “Freedom? You?”

  They were sitting on the top floor of Blackwell Tower, the building that housed the San Francisco headquarters of Ian Blackwell Holdings. And the man behind the desk was Ian Blackwell himself.

  “You’re rich, you’re powerful, you’re respected, you’re one of the most sought-after bachelors in the country. In the world!” Robert said. “What more do you want?”

  “That last one is becoming rather annoying. At least the more publicly visible part of it.” Ian stood up and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass that spanned the wall to the left of his desk, overlooking the great city. As he neared it, its tint lightened just enough to allow him a clear view to the outside in the bright midday sun. “Robert, I can’t go anywhere without someone blabbing about it on some snooping media, social or otherwise, and it seems that every single woman I encounter nowadays wants to be the one who snared Ian Blackwell, the coveted bachelor.”

  “That’s not new.”

  “No,” Ian conceded, and turned to Robert. “But ever since that gossipmonger Cecilia Heart put me at the top of her Pounce-For Bachelors list, my social life has been nothing short of a circus. My public relations department is constantly finding photos and videos of me, taken everywhere I go. My administrative assistant gets emails and letters with proposals for me. And so do her administrative assistants.” He turned back to the spectacular view outside. “Some peace and quiet on the women front would be nice.”

  “Yes, it’s very tiring to be chased by gorgeous actresses and models and whatnots. You never know who you’ll have in your bed in the morning, and trying to remember all their names, it’s absolutely exhausting.”

  A frown passed over Ian’s face, and Robert looked at him with interest. Maybe he really was getting tired of his way of life.

  “I like to choose for myself who I sleep with,” Ian said. “And I very much like my sexual endeavors to start and end at my own leisure.”

  Or maybe not. Robert sighed. “And you think this crazy idea of yours will divert the unwanted attention away from your social life.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you just do what everyone else does? Go out on real dates with women you have genuine interest in. Who knows, you just might fall in love. Get married. Live until you’re old and creaky with the same woman, if you’re lucky.”

  “That was more of a possibility a decade ago. It’s far less feasible now that I am . . .” Ian indicated the office around him.

  “Ian Blackwell,” Robert completed the thought.

  The man himself nodded. “And after all the women I’ve been with, face it, Robert, I have yet to encounter one I cared to stay with. Nor am I likely to. People like me, they stay alone and get heckled by the Cecilia Hearts and the wannabe billionaire wives of this world. Or worse, they marry and divorce the latter in a tiring row. And that is not who I am.”

  No, he wasn’t, despite appearances. Robert contemplated him. “So what you want is the freedom to continue sleeping with whomever you want to, but without cameras following you around because everyone will believe you really are married. Cameras will always follow you around, Ian.”

  “I’m used to cameras, to the mainstream media. It’s the gossip chasers I want gone.”

  “They will still chase you and the woman you marry.”

  “To a more controllable extent. With the bachelor part of it off the table, much of that unwanted attention will be gone.”

  “So, no more bedmates of your choice?” Robert asked innocently. He still couldn’t believe his friend was serious. “Like that brunette last night?”

  “She was boring,” Ian said absently. She was fine in bed, and ultimately it was her body he had wanted, but still, she had bored the hell out of him. “No, I will still sleep with whomever I want to. The arrangement I have in mind will allow it. I’ll just have to be discreet about it.”

  “Damn, you’re serious. You want me to
find you a wife.”

  “I want you to hire me a wife,” Ian corrected him. He walked back to his desk, a towering man with thick black hair and dark gray eyes that were forever calculating, more ice in them than warmth. Even without his habit of wearing black, a black suit, a black shirt with its top button open as if to mislead an onlooker into thinking there was anything even remotely off-guard about him, he was a formidable man.

  Robert shook his head. He didn’t like this one bit. Not because he didn’t think it would work. Ian had made things work his way long before they had first met. But Robert cared about his friend and didn’t like the idea of him sinking even deeper into the personal—or rather impersonal—life he was already leading.

  He himself was married, had been for a little more than ten years now, and had two kids, a boy and a girl, both in elementary school. Five years older than Ian, he was a young attorney in his father’s modest law firm back when he had drawn the first business contract for the ambitious man when Ian was barely twenty-one, doing so pro bono, and had continued to stand by his side after that day without asking for anything in return, believing in him, in his relentless drive. Twelve and a half years later, he was still Ian’s best friend and his personal attorney.

  He was also the general counsel for what had since become Ian Blackwell’s multinational conglomerate.

  “Fine,” he finally said. “What am I looking for?”

  Ian considered him. “A socially adept woman. Tasteful. Intelligent—it would be nice if she could hold an at least coherent conversation when I entertain a business associate, as it would obviously reflect on me. And keep in mind that I would necessarily have to spend at least some of my time with her, since we would be living in the same house.” His brow furrowed. That unavoidable proximity, in fact, was one of the main reasons it had taken him this long to make the final decision to go forward with the idea.

  “And you have no patience for stupidity,” Robert remarked dryly.

  Ian raised an eyebrow.

  “Sorry. Yes, I understand what you mean. Looks, I suppose, are a requirement?”

  Ian forced patience into his voice. He could understand Robert’s frustration, but that didn’t mean he intended to let it influence his decision. “Only to the extent that she needs to be presentable, as would be expected of my wife. I don’t need beauty to represent me.”

  “And if you want it for other purposes, you’ll just get it elsewhere.”

  “Yes.” The eyes that came to rest on Robert’s were impassive.

  “Come on, Ian. You should have better. You deserve better.”

  “You’re a good friend, Robert. But we are not the same, and we are not meant to have the same.” Ian turned his attention back to the Alster report on his dual computer screen. “I have no time for this. You deal with it.”

  “You mean you want me to choose by myself?”

  “You know me better than anyone. Draft the contract, choose the woman.”

  “And you’ll abide by my choice?”

  Ian didn’t bother to answer.

  Robert looked at him with exasperation, but said nothing. Despite his misgivings, he would not hesitate to do as he was asked. He was one of a rare few who knew the man behind the carefully cultivated image, and he would follow Ian Blackwell to the end of the world.

  He got up to leave.

  “By the way, you’re flying with me to Denver tomorrow,” Ian said, still not looking at him.

  “Denver. InSyn?”

  “Yes. I want to have a look at the damn thing myself before I tear it apart.”

  Ian raised his eyes to the door as it closed behind the attorney. It was, indeed, enough if Robert dealt with the matter. After all, it wasn’t as if this woman would be his wife in the true sense of the word. She would, in essence, be nothing more than a business partner who would be sharing with him the more personal aspects of his life. All barring the physical, of course—he had no intention of sleeping with her, in any sense of the word. That would cause complications he did not intend to allow, since the arrangement he had in mind would be expected to last for some time. As long as its purpose would serve him, to be exact.

  He didn’t have to be told that his was an unusual plan, all the more so in this day and age. But it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment idea. In fact, it had been forming in his mind for quite some time now. Nor was it purely the result of his irritation at the outside disruptions to his social life, as he had told Robert, although that was certainly enough of a reason. No, the fact was that at his age he had never been in a long-term relationship, or had even been seen with the same woman for a duration, and Heart and too many others were using this to depict him as a playboy, a womanizer who wasn’t likely to ever settle down. Which he wouldn’t give a damn about, except that he wasn’t only a billionaire who could do whatever he wanted. He also headed a multinational company of a considerable size, one that he himself had built, and as such he was acutely aware that he was responsible for tens of thousands of jobs, both in his company and in others that depended on its business. Families depended on him for their livelihood, and that mattered.

  He had a solid image in the business world, that of a ruthless, yes, unrelenting, no doubt, but also fair and responsible man. His work had nothing to do with his personal life, and he had always been careful to keep the two apart. Yes, he had his choice of women. Obviously. And he slept with them. Sometimes he even dated them, albeit briefly. But that was it. No playboy life for him, no frivolous partying. His company, that was his sole focus, and he intended to keep it that way.

  But social media was a powerful thing, and social media didn’t care who Ian Blackwell really was. Its followers, at least those who had come to matter in his case, the ones who were proving to be a disruption for him, didn’t watch business news or listen to finance and economy journalists. They only followed the likes of Heart like a captive herd, and they knew nothing about him but what she chose to show them. And what she showed them was an irresistible—and irresponsible—playboy.

  She created interest, and in the era of smartphone cameras in everybody’s hands the attention quickly became a nuisance. He was photographed everywhere he went and with anyone he happened to be with at the time. Including with business associates. He found himself having to conduct all his meetings under a blanket of secrecy, even the ones that didn’t warrant it.

  And then the previous week a major real estate developer he had been considering a transaction with—he wanted to build a technology campus for one of his subsidiaries, Pythia Vision—had joked about a photo of him leaving a restaurant with a woman, which that damn Heart had posted in her unfortunately widely read blog and had spoken about with relish in a morning show that had her as a regular contributor, claiming the photo was proof of yet another fling he was supposedly having. Which brought on countless of snide responses within the hour, and it wasn’t even true. The woman was the chief operating officer of one of his foreign subsidiaries, a valuable asset who had flown to the United States to discuss with her colleagues at Ian Blackwell Holdings’ headquarters and finally with him her plans for the assimilation of a recently acquired startup, and who had almost quit because of what Heart had done.

  The real estate developer had, naturally, lost the deal and was already being taken over by his biggest competitor in a process initiated by Ian and that would end with his ousting from his company. But Ian was sick and tired of this. It was irritating and disruptive. He was getting fan mail, for heaven’s sake. Fan mail, women worldwide offering themselves to Ian Blackwell. And hate mail, of course, that went without saying. This had gotten ridiculously out of hand.

  He wanted it to stop.

  The gossip chasers didn’t seem to give a damn about the truth, so he would create a new one for them. He knew there would be rumors and speculations once he carried out his plan, but that didn’t matter. These would wane with the marriage lasting, and with the right wife, which Ian was certain Robert would choose. And when Ian
did decide to womanize some more, which he would, he would make sure no one knew about it. He would have his way—out of the public eye.

  Impatience surfaced again. He was overthinking this. The Alster acquisition, that was the only matter he should be giving his attention to right now. He leaned back in his chair, the frown on his face deepening as his thoughts turned to the troubling issue that had been plaguing him.

  Jeremy Alster was sixty-four, happily married to his high-school sweetheart, with no children or any other family members to whom he could pass his Oakland-based company, Alster Industries. The company was privately-held, like Ian’s was, but it was far smaller, nowhere near the size of Ian Blackwell Holdings. It was also highly inefficient. Alster kept subsidiaries that no longer had place in the fast-advancing industrial world alongside companies that could easily become industry leaders. There was no business sense behind this, but then Jeremy Alster was not a strategist. He was all about protecting his employees. He kept unprofitable subsidiaries running at the expense of profitable ones in order to keep the employees of the obsolete businesses from losing their jobs, and didn’t do nearly enough to try to turn around the failing subsidiaries. His was undue sentimentality combined with a business practice that was doomed to fail, and that was fast depleting the company’s resources.

  Now, finally, Alster was considering selling, but he had stated that if it came to that he would only sell Alster Industries as a whole, and only to the right buyer. He knew well that if he delayed much longer his company would run into the ground, and still he hung on, refusing to sell to a buyer he would not approve of.

  Ian wanted something Alster Industries had. A subsidiary that had originally been formed on the basis of an idea for a breakthrough virtual interface developed by an Alster employee who was also a gamer, and who had been fired for it—games had apparently been more important to him than getting to work on time. But the guy had been smart enough to approach Alster himself, and the latter had recognized the potential of the concept and had registered patents on it in his company’s name. Unfortunately for Alster, so far he hadn’t been successful in turning the idea into a viable technology. Alster Industries just wasn’t that type of a company, it didn’t have anywhere near the required set of skills or the necessary resources.