“Yep. I’m guessing your little girlfriend is related?”
“If I wanted to talk about this, I would’ve told you. Now, have you found us some five-star hotel to stay at yet?”
“You mean you’re not going to jam me in the car for another mystery road trip halfway across the country?”
“Denver isn’t that far from LA.”
“I’m half surprised you even told me we were leaving. Oh wait, you didn’t. You just wandered off and two minutes later you’re dragging me away from Jeffery.”
He frowned. “Who the hell is Jeffery?”
“My new friend. The one dancing with me.”
“The loser dancing around you?”
She drew back from him. “Do you have a problem with Jeffery?”
“Yeah. He’s a shitty dancer.”
“You’re jealous.”
“Fuck, Julie. We don’t have time for this. Do you have a hotel for us to go to or not? I think I saw one up the road we can go to.”
“You’re jealous and you can’t even admit it.”
“What the hell? Are you drunk?”
She snorted. “Please. You were gone for five minutes. It takes longer than that to get drunk. I’m pissed, Logan. You’ve been keeping things from me ever since we’ve met and now it’s becoming more and more of a pain in my ass. So excuse me for not bending over backward for you at the moment. Now, that annoying drunk guy was much more pleasant to hang out with, thank you.”
She continued up the stairs, leaving him speechless in the landing. So...she knew he killed a man. He figured she’d find out eventually, but he never knew what to expect. She was mad, but not...not in the way he would’ve thought. She wasn’t slapping him or telling him he was a horrible person. She hadn’t jumped in the car and left him without a backward glance. She was just pissed.
He ran up the stairs to catch up with her as she walked out of the building and to where the car was parked. “So we’re trying the place down the street then?”
“I’m not driving. You just tell me where we’re going.”
He slid into the driver’s seat and backed out. Julie was leaned back in her seat and looking out the window, avoiding his glance completely. “Are you okay with this still?”
“Okay with you dragging me everywhere while telling me nothing? Of course not. I haven’t been okay with it.”
“Not that. Knowing what I did.”
“What you did? I have no idea what happened. All I have is one tabloid journalist telling me you killed a guard. Is that what happened? What would make a playboy who’d been wrongfully convicted do that? Why was it swept under the rug when your father so obviously didn’t care what happened to you? Why don’t any of your brothers know? Why didn’t you tell them? Trust me—I don’t know anything.”
He saw the tall hotel in front of them and tried to figure out the best way to navigate the city streets to get there. “Well, what do you want to know?”
“Am I allowed to ask questions now? I thought you weren’t telling me anything.”
“Are you pissed because I didn’t tell you I’m a murderer? I’m sorry! It’s not something I go around advertising.”
“Well, the entire world might find out now. If you’d told me, we could’ve gotten a jump on this.”
“But the fact that I killed a man isn’t what’s bothering you.”
That got her attention as she looked over at him. “I’ve been in a car with you for days. Did you expect me to be afraid of you now?”
“I—” He shook his head. He didn’t think he was capable of having this conversation right now. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
She scoffed.
Apparently that apology wasn’t accepted. But it was going to have to do. He wasn’t going to explain himself right now, and she would just have to get over it or book a plane back home. He found the hotel and parked in the area for guests to temporarily put their cars during check-in.
“This place is going to need ID,” she said. “Hold on and I’ll book the room.”
“Don’t you mean the rooms?”
“There’s still people who might want you dead and a media circus who could show up any day. One room, two beds. Think you’re adult enough to keep your hands to yourself?”
“Think you’re adult enough to not ask me to put my hands on you?” He almost apologized for being out of line, but a blush crept up her cheeks and she averted her gaze. She might be pissed, but she was still into him. The thought shouldn’t have made him happy, but it was a strange relief. She found out about Brandon Willis and she could still look in his direction. Not only look but—
“I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” she warned.
Before he could say anything else, she was walking into the nice lobby. While she was gone, Logan took out his new phone. He dug around in his email until he could find out what his own address was. While he was there, he realized he had new emails. It looked as if it was from Alex. Logan scrolled past it so he could copy his email address, and then he had to figure out how to text it to Alecia’s phone. She would be working until late, so he probably wouldn’t hear back from her until tomorrow. He’d been waiting years to meet up with her, and he was going to get some closure.
Julie came out with a bellboy right behind her. “Okay. I booked a room for the night. Harry here,” she motioned to the bellboy, “is going to take our bags up while we go park.” Julie walked around and got into the passenger’s side of the car. “Parking is ridiculously expensive. Here is the ticket for the structure on the east side of the building. The parking is going to be on the room bill.”
Still grumpy apparently. He got out and helped Harry with the bags. After a really inconvenient turn into the parking garage, they found a spot. The elevator in the garage opened into the hotel and Julie gave him a copy of their room key. It was on the fortieth floor. While walking down the hallway, Logan realized that the doors seemed farther apart than normal. His suspicions were confirmed when he put his key into the door and opened it into a lavish suite. “What the hell is this?”
Julie came from behind him to look for where Harry had set her bags. “This is what you get when you’re booking a room at a hotel that’s already at ninety-nine percent capacity. All they had left were suites.”
The room was large and had a living area with a couch and top-of-the-line television. Through a set of double doors, there was a large, oversized bed. One large, oversized bed. “There weren’t any rooms that had two beds?”
“Do I look like a woman who wants to share a bed with you right now?” she asked.
He didn’t need to look to confirm that she didn’t look as if she was in the mood for anything.
“Besides, the couch folds out to a sofa bed. I’m not actually sleeping with you.”
“Julie—”
“I’m going to shower. Do you need to use the bathroom?”
“I think we should talk about what happened.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “Oh, no. You had time to talk. And I’m sure I’ll take you up on that offer soon. But for now, right now, I don’t want to talk to you.” And then she disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.
Logan glanced around the room. It was by far the nicest suite they had stayed in so far, but something felt off. He understood why she was angry at him. Hell, he expected her to refuse to even speak to him. But something about this threw him. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was more annoyed than angry, but she wasn’t talking to him. But if she was annoyed that he wasn’t telling her everything, why wouldn’t she listen to him now?
If she were anyone else, he could see anger getting in the way. But this was Julie. She put his image, or rather, his family’s image, above everything else. Now she was in trouble because he hadn’t told her everything and she refused to listen?
No. Something was happening and he had no idea what.
He pulled out the computer Julie gave him a
nd sat on the couch. Once it was powered up, he checked his email, but there was still nothing from Alecia. He was about to shut the lid, but at the last second he stopped. Instead, he typed Julie Anne into the search engine.
Apparently the two first names were incredibly common. So instead he typed in Julie Anne and Nathan Farrell.
A few sites came up, but the images at the top were what really caught his attention. He clicked the button to see more, and an entire page came up. There were pictures of her and Nathan at lunch or drinking coffee together. A few of the images were at sites questioning whether they were together. Another one was an interview with her about her business. How she’d started as an intern with a prestigious firm and after a falling out, she branched out on her own. It didn’t say what the falling out was, though. Just a “disagreement.” It was probably a testament to her skills that there weren’t any articles about what the scandal had been.
Luckily, all the pictures of her and Nathan seemed innocent enough. Even in the ones where she was smiling, she wasn’t smiling in that way. Nathan was older now, but even as a teen he’d had plenty of admirers following him around. He was the youngest, so he received the least attention from Walter. Logan, Alex, and Robert had been able to shield the youngest from the full brunt of the man’s corruptive attentions.
Everything the man touched had turned into some sort of acidic gold. It would make lots of cash and destroy anything around it. Considering that Nathan had needed Julie in the first place, he was willing to bet that Walter had eventually turned on him too.
Figured.
Logan ran a hand over his eyes. He’d missed so much. Ten years of his brothers’ lives. For Nathan, that was almost half of his life. There was an email sitting on his account right now. His family reaching out. Wanting to reconnect. Maybe he should let this Brandon Willis thing go.
No. He’d at least see what Alecia sent him. Until then, Julie would probably start to feel better soon. Maybe there was something else going on with her, but she seemed determined to stay with him. And, no matter how annoyed she was, he knew on some level she liked him. Liked him a hell of a lot more than she wanted to, and that was one mark he had in his favor.
Tomorrow, things would be different. He’d tell her the whole truth and he’d let her in on what was really happening. And then she could decide to stay with him or run. He looked at the sofa where she’d said she was going to sleep. What were the chances he could convince her to take the big bed in the bedroom?
In a few days, there wouldn’t be that issue. Because he was going to work his damnedest to make sure they were going to be sharing a bed from now on.
The bathroom door slammed shut as she came out from her shower.
He’d work on the bed thing tomorrow.
Julie winced as the room key made a loud beeping noise in the door. She wanted to make sure Logan didn’t wake up, but it was getting late. She eased the door open and realized that ship had sailed. Logan was sitting on the sofa with the computer in front of him and the television on. It was as if he’d never missed the last ten years.
He sat up as she came in the room. “Early morning errands?” he asked.
She gently shut the door. “A few things. I ordered breakfast to be sent up to the room. I hope you haven’t eaten yet.”
“So did you not tell me where you were going because you’re hiding something from me, or are you still pissed?” His tone was casual, and Julie had a hard time getting a read on his mood.
They weren’t really together, but she’d felt incredibly guilty as she ran out that morning. Or maybe she just felt guilty because of what she was about to do to him.
No. She was helping him. He might not see it that way at first, but she could talk sense into his brothers. And, considering they were the ones paying her, that was the important part. And she’d need as much in her savings account as possible. This move was either going to save her career or end it.
Fortune favored the bold, they said, and right now she had boldness coming out of her ass. She just had to make sure Logan didn’t realize it until it was too late. “Did you sleep okay last night?”
He sat up and pushed the computer off his lap and onto the coffee table. “I slept fine. Can you sit down, Julie?”
She tightened her lips and wondered whether there was any way to get out of this. Normally, she considered herself a good liar. Well, in this case, omitter. But Logan had a way of seeing right through her. At least, it felt that way sometimes. The longer she stayed around him, the more she felt sure he was going to realize she was up to something. However, they were stuck in this hotel room together for the next hour at least, so she would need to talk to him at some point. And if her plan was going to work, she couldn’t pretend she was mad at him all day.
“Is everything okay?” she asked hesitantly as she sat down on the lounge chair next to the couch and crossed her legs.
Logan’s eyes fell to the expanse of legs exposed with the movement. She felt suddenly self-conscious but knew if she uncrossed her legs, it would just draw more attention.
“Is that a new dress?”
“I have three suitcases, Logan. Do you think I need to do any clothes shopping?” Yes. The dress was new. And it was damned hard to find a good dress at seven o’clock in the morning. But the white mini-dress was high-necked enough to be conservative, but the flared skirt was short enough while standing, let alone sitting.
He tore his gaze from her legs. “I want to tell you about Brandon Willis.”
She tried to keep her expression neutral but couldn’t help straightening up. This was the story she’d been dying to hear about last night, but she couldn’t ask. She needed time alone to plan a way out of the hole they were in.
“Logan, I want to hear this. I really do, but if you’re uncomfortable—”
“I’m uncomfortable as hell about it. But if the truth is going to get out, I’m going to need to talk to a lot more people than you about it. So I’m starting with you.”
“Okay. So this happened early into your—”
“Imprisonment,” he finished for her. “I had been at Ruthford Hills Correctional for one year, nine months, and thirteen days.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to impede his story in any way.
“It was a minimum security prison. Not as cushy as people like to claim, but not that bad either. The guards were nice. Food was bearable and you didn’t feel like your cellmate was going to kill you at any given time. There was some contraband, but the guards didn’t care and it wasn’t anything hard.”
Obviously something went terribly wrong at some point.
“Brandon Willis was a guard there. I had a job in the laundry room. I liked it because I could get clean sheets whenever I wanted. Even at a nice prison, the beds sucked and the sheets were one thing that made me feel like I had control. But there was a corner of the room with no cameras. Out of the blue, Brandon Willis attacked me. He pushed one of the shelves onto me. These were big ass shelves bolted to the wall, so he must’ve planned it ahead of time. Probably was trying to make it look like an accident. I was able to get out of the way so only my leg was hit by the shelves and Willis went after my head. I don’t even remember what he was using. Something metal and hard as fuck. I think it was one of the pans used to clean the tough stains, but I was so out of it, it could’ve been anything. But I’d rolled far enough to get out from the shelves and I pushed Willis off me. He hit the wall but came back, and I hit him again. One punch and that was it. Willis must’ve fell wrong because he didn’t get back up again.
“I didn’t know what to do. I knew how it looked and that this would fuck shit up for me, but the guy was dead and the cameras would show that I was the only one who left the room after it happened. So I called in a guard and told them what happened.”
“And they blamed you for it?”
“Not really.” He winced at the memory. “I was thrown into solitary for a week before I heard a thing.
Between prison politics and my father, I don’t know what happened. But I was never officially sanctioned for it. There were never any murder charges or anything. They just shipped me off to a prison across the country and never spoke about it again.”
Julie couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Why didn’t you ever tell your brothers about it?”
“How do you know that? Did you talk to them about it?”
There was a flash of panic in his voice, and Julie shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. I just figure they would’ve told me if they knew.”
He nodded as he breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I haven’t told anyone about it. Not even the guy who was hired to help get me out.”
“And why did you need to go straight to Denver to see Alecia?”
“Because about six months after it happened, I got a letter from her. She is Willis’s sister, and when she was going through some of his things, she found something. A blackmail letter. Apparently Willis had a wife and kids but he still liked to see women on the side. From what it sounded like, he fooled around a lot. The letter said that in order to keep his wife from finding out, he had to take care of me.”
“He’d kill someone to keep his affairs from being found out?”
Logan looked up and met her eyes. “People have been killed over a lot less.”
“Point taken.”
“Someone hired Brandon Willis to kill me that day, and I need to know who.”
“Are you trying to get revenge?”
“They made me a killer! And if the guilt wasn’t bad enough, I had to live in a maximum security prison for eight years. With the gang wars, drugs, and all that shit. I have always been one of the biggest guys in the room and suddenly I needed to prove myself. And if I didn’t prove myself to them, do you have any idea what would’ve happened to me?”
Julie averted her gaze. She’d seen her fair share of prison documentaries. Somehow she’d convinced herself that Logan’s experience had been different. He was rich, right? She’d told herself that gave him some benefit. And it probably did help in some respects, but it didn’t solve everything.
Remorseless (Fractured Farrells: A Damaged Billionaire Series Book 3) Page 9