Billion Dollar Man

by Ali Parker

  David’s phone beeped, and he checked it.

  When he looked up at me, his face was serious.

  “What is it?” I asked

  “I have more guys that work for me. I had someone follow these Mafiosos, keeping tabs on their every move.”

  “Okay? What of it?” I asked.

  David swallowed hard.

  “Victor Brantley and two of his henchmen just arrived in Portland.”

  Chapter 47

  Ben

  As long as I knew that everyone back home was safe, I wasn’t going to let myself freak out. Victor Brantley, my new worst enemy, had been seen in Portland with two of his henchmen. David Thomas, my PI, had been keeping tabs on them for me after I realized that my father had run into serious debt with the Mafia. My father had been killed because of it. So had Uncle Dean.

  The Mafia was the reason I had to run back to New York, again, leaving a friendship, a relationship and a family behind in Portland. I blamed my father’s debts and what the Mafia was doing for ruining my relationships, too.

  But I wasn’t bitter. I was far too busy trying to fix his mess to be bitter. I was only worried sick that something was going to happen to Mila or to Jerrod or any of the other people that I cared so much about.

  That was one of the things they had threatened my father with – picking off the people he loved, one by one. So far, they had proven they weren’t playing games.

  My plan was to pay them the money they were owed so that this nasty business could go away before anyone else got hurt. I had already lost so much.

  And I wasn’t only referring to my dad, stepmom and later, Uncle Dean dying. I’d given up a relationship with the most perfect woman I had ever met so that she would be safe. I had left Mila, breaking up with her and leaving Portland so that she wouldn’t be dragged into this.

  So, if those fuckers left her the hell alone while they were in Portland, everything would be okay, and we could deal with shit the way I’d planned to. I didn’t know what I would do if they hurt her. I wouldn’t be able to cope with losing her.

  So far, so good.

  I was in the office on Monday, as usual. But my mind was on the other side of the world with the people I loved, distracted because I was stressed about their safety. Life moved on, though, and I had a company to run.

  A company I wouldn’t hesitate to give up if that was what it came down to. The money wasn’t an issue – I was already a billionaire thanks to the inheritance from Dad and Uncle Dean. I had thought about it long and hard from the moment I had learned that the mafia was in Portland. I had never wanted the company anyway. I was running it only because I had felt obligated to take over and carry on with my dad’s legacy.

  But if my dad’s legacy was all about doing the wrong shit, pissing people off and not paying them, I wasn’t sure this was a worthy pursuit, anyway.

  David had told me that my dad had employed Victor Brantley. He was Donny Pirelli’s right-hand man. A big shot with the mafia. And exactly the kind of man you didn’t fuck with. My dad had obviously not gotten the memo because not only had he fired Brantley, but he’d also refused to pay him the money that was still owed.

  Ten point five million dollars. Which grew to a hundred million because my dad didn’t know how to swallow his pride and pay up like a good boy.

  Now that I knew more about what was going on, I was pissed off at my dad. I had worked as the CEO of this company for seven years after he’d died, not knowing that there were people out there who needed to be paid, that there were wrongs that had to be righted.

  My dad had gone down as a hero in that plane crash, and he was sorely missed. But it turned out he might have been a colossal dick.

  When my phone rang, I jumped. I had been so caught up in my thoughts, anger swirling inside me.

  “Atwood,” I said, answering. The number was unknown.

  “It’s me,” David said. “I’m calling from a payphone. I couldn’t get in contact otherwise.”

  I didn’t even ask. David got himself into all kinds of weird situations while he went undercover to find out what I paid him to find out.

  “My boys reported back to me five minutes ago,” David carried on. “They’ve been watching Mila, checking up on her every move. Her routine is fairly stable despite her irregular shifts.”

  I nodded even though David couldn’t see me. He was telling me nothing I didn’t already know. I wanted to snap at him and tell him to get to the point. I was in a shitty mood.

  “Mila didn’t show up to work this morning,” David said.

  The blood drained from my face.

  “It’s not just a day off that you missed?” I asked. But I knew the answer already. David and his men didn’t miss anything.

  “I had my guy go in and ask one of her little nurse friends. They confirmed it. She should have been in at seven this morning. And she’s never late.”

  “I know,” I said. Mila was very serious about her job and punctuality was a strong point. Shit.

  “See what you can do to find her,” I said.

  I gave him Skylar and Jerrod’s numbers in case he needed to call them. I told him where he could look for her. I hoped to God that nothing had happened to her but that Mila had merely gone rogue, deciding to take the day off and go for a drive without telling anyone. Or possibly she was sick in bed and slept through her alarm. Even though I knew that she would never do either of those things. Mila was the most driven woman I knew, and her career and patients at the hospital meant everything to her. She put others before herself on so many occasions, just taking off was uncharacteristically selfish so she would never do that.

  “I’ll contact you the moment I know something,” David said. The line went dead without a goodbye. Either his cash had run out on the payphone or he’d had nothing else to say. David didn’t exactly stand on formality.

  From where I sat in my office in New York, I couldn’t do anything about Mila being missing. I felt helpless, and I hated it. I tried to focus on work again, but there was no way I could concentrate when I knew that something was wrong.

  I felt like I was going to burst out of my skin. So, I left the office. I didn’t know what I was going to do once I went back home, but I couldn’t just sit here and pretend nothing was wrong.

  My phone rang when I walked out of the building. Another unknown number. Maybe David had managed to reconnect.

  “We have your girl,” a voice said on the other side of the line when I answered. The voice was deep, gravelly, and my stomach clenched. “If you don’t do what we say, you’re not going to have a girl anymore.”

  I should have been terrified for Mila’s life. And somewhere deep down inside, I was. But I was angry. In fact, I was pissed off in a way I hadn’t been in a very long time. Who the fuck were they to go to my hometown and take Mila, threatening me with her life? It was so damn cliché.

  “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen,” I said. I sounded as pissed off as I felt.

  “You think you’re a big boy, don’t you?” the raspy voice said with a chuckle. “You’re not scared. I admire that. Pity, it won’t last long.”

  I sighed. “Listen, you son of a bitch. Name your price, and you’ll have it.”

  “Come now, there’s no need for name-calling. We can keep this civil.”

  “The hell we can. Civil is hardly kidnapping people and holding them for ransom.”

  The voice chuckled again. “When you say it like that, anything will sound stupid. I have to say, you have taste. She’s beautiful. Curvy, intelligent. The perfect combo. My favorite part is that she’s tied up, but I’ve always had a thing for ropes and chains.”

  The fear that had settled at the pit of my stomach was starting to push through the anger.

  “If you hurt her, I’ll –”

  “You’ll what?” he interrupted me. “Come on, Ben. I want to know what you were going to say. I’ll even give you motivation.”

  A scream sounded over the phone.
There was no doubting that it was Mila’s voice. It was muffled, and it was in the background, but I heard more than enough.

  “Stop it!” I shouted.

  The raspy voice laughed at me.

  “There it is,” he said. “Not so big now, are you?”

  “What do you want?” I asked. All the anger had left me now, and I sounded defeated. I felt it, too. They had Mila. This wasn’t a bluff. I had hoped and prayed that there was some logical reason for Mila’s disappearance, that she had us all in a panic searching for her when she’d only gone shopping or something silly like that.

  This was the last thing I’d wanted to happen to her. I could imagine her fear, how scared she had to be, how alone. And they’d hurt her. Fuck. I tried not to picture her bruised and bleeding. Or worse.

  “Meet me at the Rat & Parrot at seven tonight,” he said. “And do your girlfriend a favor and don’t get the police involved. She’ll die if there are signs of foul play.”

  I wanted to scream at him that kidnapping someone for money was the epitome of foul play, but I was hardly in a position to tell him that he was full of shit.

  “How will I find you?” I asked.

  “I’ll find you.”

  The line went dead. I stood in front of my building, my contact with the man who had Mila cut off, and there was nothing I could.

  I should never have left Portland. If I’d been there, with Mila, I could have kept her safe. But I had left because I’d thought it would make a difference, that going away would keep her out of the mess that my life had become. Now she was right in the middle of it, and in danger.

  My mind frantically ran through every option I could think of to get to her. I walked to my car on auto-pilot, feverishly considering even the most heinous things to ensure she walked away from this with her life intact.

  Before I pulled out of my parking space, I made a couple of calls. I wasn’t a ruthless killer or a man that broke kneecaps to get what I wanted, but when push came to shove, I could do this. I could do what I needed to do to ensure that everyone I cared for was safe, even though this was different than running a billion-dollar corporation. Brantley – whom I assumed had called me himself – had made his move. Now, it was my turn.

  Once I had taken care of my calls, putting everything in place, I drove home. There was work to be done, meetings to attend, but I wasn’t going to do that. I had other things on my mind. I had done everything I could do. All that remained was to go to that meeting tonight, face Brantley and make sure that the ball stayed in my court.

  Chapter 48

  Mila

  When I opened my eyes, the concrete floor was at eye-level, cold against my cheek. Even though I’d been on it for a while.

  A long while, judging by how my body hurt when I rolled over onto my back. My neck hurt when I tried to turn my head from side to side, and it felt like my whole body was going to seize up if I moved too fast.

  I lifted my hand to my cheek. The cut had stopped bleeding not long after it had been made but the skin was tender and on fire. Inflamed, I was sure. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. I had to stay calm. It was the only way I was going to get through this.

  How long had it been since I’d been taken? I had no way of knowing. There were no windows in the basement I had been put in, only a naked light bulb that was always on. Without the change from day to night and back again and with my phone taken away from me, I’d lost track of time completely. I didn’t even know if I’d slept for ten minutes or ten hours.

  It was on the longer side, judging by how cold I was and the aches in my body.

  As if my body hadn’t been aware of the cold when I was sleeping, I started trembling when I thought about it. The basement had a bare concrete floor and four brick walls. Some pipes ran overhead, but that was all there was. There wasn’t even a chair.

  I opened my mouth, moving my jaw a little, tentatively touching my cheek again.

  They had done this to me to make me scream. And it had worked, too. I wasn’t sure who they had been on the phone to, but I hadn’t wanted to give them a scream. I was upset that they’d managed to scare whoever they’d been talking to. The cut wasn’t very deep, but I was almost a hundred percent sure the knife hadn’t been sterile.

  My body complained when I pushed myself up to a seated position. My head throbbed with a headache that reminded me I had been knocked out. I was concussed –I was sure of it. I strained my ears, listening for movement above me, footfalls on the steps that led down here, anything. But I was completely alone.

  Where was I? I had no idea.

  I had parked in my spot at the hospital as usual on Monday – how long ago was that? I’d thought I’d seen movement in the rearview mirror, but when I’d checked, it had been clear. I’d climbed out and something, or someone, had cracked me over the head so hard, the world had tipped on its axis before going black.

  When I had woken up, I found myself tied up in the back of a van with a blindfold over my eyes. I had only been able to see a small amount through the material. Movement, sunlight through the back doors of the van. Someone had been talking into a phone, and a moment later, they had cut me. I’d seen the knife through the material very well. It had been close enough to my eyes that I hadn’t had to guess.

  I could still remember the feeling of the cold metal biting into my cheek, the warmth of my blood welling up and running down my face.

  Why was I here? What had I done to deserve this? I wasn’t a threat. I didn’t have very rich parents. I hadn’t done anything to anyone.

  Fear made an appearance as if it had taken a while to wake up. My stomach turned, and I felt cold. Colder than I already was.

  Footsteps on the stairs ramped up my fear, and I backed away from the door until my back was against the wall. As if that would help. I had nowhere I could go. What were they going to do to me?

  When the door opened, my heart was in my throat and I could taste my fear.

  “You’re awake,” he said with a raspy voice. He closed the door behind him and walked toward me. I was sitting on the floor so I already had to look up at him, but this guy was tall. I had to look way up. He was very thin so that his limbs looked even longer than they were, but he carried himself like he was the biggest man out there. I flinched when he crouched on the floor in front of me.

  “I’m Victor,” he said.

  I didn’t care. I wanted to get out of here.

  “It’s rude not to introduce yourself,” he said.

  “I’m sure you know who I am.”

  He smirked at me, and it made him look dangerous. Victor had a Scandinavian looking face with high cheekbones and a wide chin. His cheeks were hollow, and his hair was a dirty blond. His eyes were so dark, they looked black. And they promised all kinds of evil.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. It made my headache worse.

  Victor smiled at me, flashing long, narrow teeth. I shivered. I wished he would stop smiling at me.

  “You’re here because your boyfriend’s dad fucked with the wrong people.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said in a thin voice. My boyfriend? The only person that he could be talking about was Ben, but he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. And Ben’s father had been dead for a while, now.

  “You have the wrong person,” I said. It had to be.

  Victor laughed, and the sound was awful. He had to smoke a lot to sound like that. I wondered if he knew what would happen if he kept going. I’d seen patients die of emphysema. There was nothing pretty about it.

  “You better hope your boyfriend fixes this mess, or you’ll be the one I’m taking it out on.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said again. This time, it came out as a whimper. I was so scared, I couldn’t help it.

  Victor laughed again.

  “It doesn’t matter that you don’t know. All you need to know is that there will
be a lot of pain involved.”

  He lifted his hand and brought it to my good cheek. I pulled my head away. But there wasn’t far I could go, and Victor’s fingers made contact with my skin. I jerked, making my head throb, nausea churning in the pit of my stomach.

  “Do you know what we do to pretty girls like you?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to answer him.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Victor dragged a thumb over my lower lip, and I trembled. I thought about the women I had seen coming in after they had been assaulted. I knew what men could do. Without thinking twice, I opened my mouth and bit Victor on the thumb.

  He jerked his hand back.

  “Fucking bitch!” he shouted and wound his hand up to hit me. I fell to the ground before he could. It took a very evil kind of man to kick a woman when she was down on the floor, and Victor wasn’t that evil. Thank God. He let out a shout that bounced around off the bricks and came back at me. His thumb was bleeding. Good, I’d hurt him. Maybe he would understand that touching me wasn’t going to go down as well as he’d imagined.

  Victor kept shouting, and I cowered, covering my head with my hands. I couldn’t even focus on what he was saying.

  When his screaming fit was over, Victor spun around and marched back to the door.

  “Get in here and watch her,” he sneered at someone.

  A big, burly man stepped in. His head was shaved bald, and he had a beard. His chest was twice as wide as any other man I’d seen, and he was as tall as Victor, but he wore his height well.

  After Victor disappeared and the lock turned, my new guard leaned against the wall and folded his arms. I was scared he would try something, too. I could try to put up a fight, but this guy was about four times as big as Victor, and he would do as much damage.

  Luckily, it didn’t go there. He stood there, watching me as Victor had said and nothing more.

  After a while, I pushed myself up so that I was sitting again. My head spun. The cut on my cheek throbbed. The floor beneath me was so cold, I shivered.