Legacy of Lies (Empire of Lies Book 3)

by Whitney G.

  Legacy of Lies

  Whitney G.

  Contents

  —

  Legacy Of Lies

  Also By Whitney G.

  Preface

  Prologue

  Meredith

  Michael

  Michael

  Meredith

  Meredith

  Meredith

  Meredith

  Michael

  Meredith

  Michael

  Michael

  Michael

  Michael

  Michael

  Meredith

  Meredith

  Michael

  Meredith

  Michael

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also By Whitney G.

  —

  LEGACY OF LIES

  WHITNEY G.

  Legacy Of Lies

  Book 3 in the Empire of Lies Series

  Whitney G.

  Copyright © 2020 by Whitney G.

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Najla Qamber of Najla Qamber Designs.

  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 prior permission of the author.

  Visit my website at

  http://www.whitneygbooks.com/

  Also By Whitney G.

  THE FIRM

  Filthy Lawyer

  (April 2020)

  Sinful Witness

  Dirty Judge

  Empire of Lies Series

  King of Lies

  Queen of Lies

  Legacy of Lies

  Empire of Lies: Full Series

  Steamy Coffee Reads Collection (Volume 1)

  Naughty Boss

  Dirty Doctor

  Cocky Client

  Steamy Coffee Reads Collection (Volume 2)

  Selfish Suit

  Wolfish Player

  Devilish Stranger

  Reasonable Doubt Series

  Reasonable Doubt #1

  Reasonable Doubt #2

  Reasonable Doubt #3

  Falling for Mr. Statham Series

  Resisting the Boss

  Loving the Boss

  The One Week Series

  On a Tuesday

  On a Wednesday

  On a Thursday

  On a Friday

  On a Saturday

  On a Sunday

  On a Monday

  Sincerely, Carter

  Forget You, Ethan

  Turbulence

  Over Us, Over You

  Two Weeks’ Notice

  The Fine Print

  The Layover

  About Legacy Of Lies

  From the New York Times bestselling author of Reasonable Doubt & Turbulence, comes part three of a sexy and thrilling serial.

  We’re in this together—lie for lie, truth for truth.

  We’ve both been damaged by our pasts, both terrified of building a future…

  Still, there’s a sliver of hope for the both of us—if one of us is willing to fold first.

  He’s the king of lies, I’m the queen, and together we’re going to build one hell of a legacy...

  This is the final installment in the Empire of Lies trilogy.

  For myself.

  I wrote this story just for myself.

  Preface

  Dear Awesome Reader,

  Thank you for downloading the third & final installment in the Empire of Lies trilogy.

  If you missed book 1, King of Lies, you can download it for FREE by tapping here.

  This book is the conclusion of Michael & Meredith’s story, and I hope you’ll love it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Also, please be forewarned, that this is still a departure from my typical books.

  If you’re waiting for a steamy, contemporary romance, stay tuned for the upcoming releases of On a Wednesday & The Fine Print.

  I truly enjoyed writing something a bit different for this trilogy, and I hope you enjoy all the twists and turns in this detour.

  F.L.Y.

  (Effin Love You)

  Whitney G.

  Prologue

  Michael

  You really are hopeless.

  You’re reading this book in your bedroom right now—coffee or tea in one hand, fully charged vibrator in the other. Wistfully defiant and shamelessly hopeful, you think that this final part of the story will be everything you want. Everything you need.

  Despite the fact that I’ve shown you my hand for over two hundred pages and told you exactly what to expect, I can sense that you’re still waiting for the complete opposite to unfold.

  You want me to soften, to be “fixed” with a series of conversations that drag on long enough for you to believe them. You want the open wounds of my past to be bandaged and sutured with the soft threads of sex, with the soothing balm of whispered, sexy promises.

  And because all of the novels you’ve read before have trained you to believe that years of emotional terror can be healed with a few pages of passionate fucking, you think I’ll turn into a “hero” worthy of rooting for. Someone you won’t be ashamed to tell your other hopeless, romance-reading friends about.

  Please know, right now, that none of that shit will happen. And that isn’t a spoiler.

  I told you how this story was going to end when we first met.

  I warned you from the very beginning…

  Meredith

  NOW

  Foolish, foolish girl…

  I stare at the road ahead as Michael’s car crosses a bridge in the distance. The taillights flash faintly under the dark sky, and a hopeless part of me actually believes that he’ll come to his senses and hit the brakes. That within seconds, he’ll speed in reverse and apologize for leaving me here alone. That maybe—just maybe, he’ll come back to help pick up the emotional shrapnel from all of the bombshells he’s dropped.

  “It’s your fucking father. You’ve been crying all these tears about him, but he’s not interested in seeing or hearing from you again…” “I never told you that I was a fucking hero...” “This is the end of us, Meredith...”

  His words play in my mind, on an endless loop, and I can feel my heart breaking a bit more with each rewind.

  Holding my ground, I stand in the middle of the road until I can’t see anything more, until my brain finally strangles my heart and forces me to see the truth.

  Your husband is a murderer-for-hire, and your father hired him to kill you…Everything you know about both of them is a goddamn lie.

  He’s gone, and we’re over.

  Fucking over.

  I was insane enough to be willing to look over him kidnapping and holding me hostage in an abandoned mansion, more than willing to listen to whatever the hell burned him so badly in the past—to better understand him, but this?

  This is the final play of our game, and I’ll never allow a rematch.

  Ignoring the tears that are falling down my face, I pick up my duffle bag and walk toward the bed and breakfast’s entrance. By the time I make it onto the front porch, I stop and look over my shoulder.

  This small town is completely quiet. There’s no one around, and Michael’s final instructions don’t seem to make much sense to me anymore.

  “Eight o’clock check out. Cab to Naco. Pay in cash and show the Harriet passport. Check into the Rio Grande Hotel, and tell them you’re meeting someone named Benny…”

  I decide not to check into the bed and breakfast at all. Instead, I ask them if they can help me get a cab to a different resort. One that’s far away from h
ere.

  Since Michael wants to walk out of my life, he no longer has any say in the decisions that I make.

  Fuck him.

  Michael

  Now

  The Meredith Foundation to open in Leonardo Thatchwood’s newly purchased building

  Law & Order: SVU to air thinly-veiled episode about Meredith Thatchwood’s Disappearance

  The Thatchwood Effect: Why Did We Sympathize with a Billionaire Heiress?

  Breaking News: NYC College Student, Daughter of Former Mayor, Reported Missing

  Former Mayor’s Award-Winning Daughter Reported Missing: Search Party to Start Today

  I let out a long sigh after reading the last headline on my iPad.

  It’s official now.

  Meredith’s disappearance and “suspected murder” are old news to the mainstream media.

  There’s a brand new missing woman to exploit, and her story is far more compelling, far more sick and twisted. Or, so they think. (They have no idea that she’s arranged her own fucking kidnapping, and Trevor is handling that job. I refused.)

  In the few days since I’ve left Meredith in Mexico, she’s become old news to me as well. I’ve handled four people on my list—three on the same night, and I’m closer to being free from all the painful nights I’ve suffered in my life.

  Sure, she’s crossed my mind a few times, and I can’t deny that I’ve taken multiple cold showers with her beautiful face and sexy body in mind, but that’s it. I may have also been tempted to call the resort or open my tracker app, to make sure that she’s okay, but that doesn’t count. I didn’t do it.

  I couldn’t.

  The last time I broke up with a woman—over a decade ago, I felt absolutely nothing when we said our final goodbyes. She meant nothing to me and it was a dead-end relationship from the very beginning; I was only getting close to her to deliver some delayed karma to her sick and perverted landlord.

  Although I can still feel several hard, uncomfortable pangs in my chest, and a painful twinge in my heart that I can’t quite explain, I know it’ll all go away eventually.

  She’s no different She has to stay in the past. Forever…

  Picking up my iPad again, I type in the last name of my current target—Phil Nielson, a Wall Street suit. I start to re-watch all of the short videos I shot of his daily routine yesterday, but I stop halfway through and close the file.

  Sighing, I pull up the video of me and Meredith’s wedding, and then I re-watch that instead.

  One more time doesn’t mean anything…

  Michael

  Now

  Three weeks later

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I’m standing in front of my latest job, a hairbrush that I need to take from a target’s hotel room. It’s a much-needed piece for a DNA test Trevor has to run by the end of the day, and I’ve been staring at it for the past four hours.

  I vow to pick it up and bag it within the next fifteen minutes, to get the hell out of here, but I know that’s easier said than done. It’s ten times harder because I’m not standing in just any hotel room.

  It’s the penthouse suite at The Four Seasons.

  All I can do is stand still and think about the passionate night of fucking Meredith and I shared when we were here several months ago. The first time I fucked up and never truly recovered.

  I can still taste her mouth, perfectly envision the way her body felt against mine, and remember exactly how my cock felt buried deep inside of her.

  It’s not just in this moment that I think about her, though. It’s every fucking day.

  Memories of her haunt me every few hours, and her face invades all of my dreams. The five hours of sleep that I’m used to getting every night are now down to two, and I wake up and reach for her every single time my eyes flutter open.

  My chessboards have remained completely untouched, since I let her go, which is a personal record for me. I can’t seem to set up a new game without thinking about how she’s the first person to hand me a loss. She’s made me too fucking stunned to play a game against my damn self.

  Like a lovesick sap, I’ve spent most of my latest days reminiscing about our better times, before marriage. I’ve reread her favorite essays—Goodbye to All That & Such, Such Were the Joys, too many times to bother counting. (I’ve even tried to read some of her favorite romances, but I drew the line once I read the phrase, “This alpha male of mine was strong enough to cry with me.” Did. Not. Finish.) I’ve flipped through the pages of her old journal, looking through the pictures she took while we were dating.

  I’m convinced she’ll always be the only woman capable of turning me on with a mere pouty-lipped picture, the only one who can make my cock hard without taking off a single piece of clothing.

  And no matter how hard I try to forget about her, there’s a certain set of words she said, when I dropped her off in Mexico, that keep playing in my head.

  “Who burned you this badly? Who fucked you up to the point where you can walk away from someone who loves you enough to be fucking okay with everything you’ve done?”

  She didn’t react much when I told her that I’d been hired to kill her, not in a way that I’d been expecting, anyway. She seemed accepting—at first, and I wasn’t sure if I was reading too much into it, but the look in her eyes before I shut down all her hopes wasn’t one of outrage or fear. It was intrigue.

  “I feel like there’s a reason for what you’ve done, and you can trust me enough to tell me…”

  I hadn’t paid too much attention to those words in the moment, but for the past few weeks, those were the ones that I harped on whenever I couldn’t sleep.

  “So, you’re struggling to bag fucking hairbrushes now?” The sound of Trevor’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts, and I realize that he’s now standing next to me, bagging the brush himself. “I literally gave you all the easiest underlings’ jobs this week, and you’re still fucking up?”

  “No.” I roll my eyes and follow him out of the room.

  “Let’s get a drink, shall we?” he says, leading me to the elevator.

  I say nothing as we take it down to the bar on the fifth floor, as Trevor slips the bartender a fistful of hundred dollar bills in exchange for “coming whenever we need you, and telling everyone else to get the hell out now.”

  We take a seat in a booth near the back, and as he checks his phone for messages, I check mine for any new media updates on Meredith.

  Something really is wrong with me…

  “Where are we on the Harrington job I gave you?” Trevor asks, looking at me. “Did you pick up the dry cleaning?”

  “I forgot about it,” I say, setting a key on the table. “But I did handle Mr. Ruth. You need to have one of the underlings retrieve his body from a barrel in a storage unit. Forsythe Street in New Jersey, unit 234.”

  “Okay, so you’re not completely off your shit this week…” He picks it up and places it into his wallet.

  He taps his fingers against the tabletop, signaling the bartender for the first round of beers. Then he orders four trays of bitter shots.

  He waits until we’re alone again before taking a long sip, narrowing his eyes at me.

  “Where are we on the research part of the Ware job?” he asks, finally. “Did you go to his apartment and set up the carbon monoxide gas to knock him out for the night?”

  “No, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “You can’t do it tomorrow.” He shakes his head. “I already have someone on it, though, since he has a flight to Japan, remember?”

  I honestly don’t, so I pick up a beer and take a few sips.

  Trevor stares at me for several minutes, not saying a word, and I don’t volunteer any conversation.

  “I knew that I should’ve gotten an underling to do the Thatchwood job from the very beginning,” he says finally, shaking his head. “The moment I knew it was going to be a conflict of interest for me, I should’ve never allowed you to do it. I should’ve never let yo
u get involved, and you would still be the halfway sane person you used to be.”

  “How the hell was it ever a conflict of interest for you?”

  “Numerous reasons,” he says. “For one, telling you who the client was, the pieces and the plans. We agreed that you would always be in the dark, and the moment I let you into the light, you lost your fucking mind.”

  I signal for the check. I’m not in the mood for this right now, and the sound of Meredith’s soft laughter is starting to play in my head.

  “Wait.” He pulls my hand down. “Wait…I’m not judging you at all.”