Redeemed: A Billionaire Second Chance Romance (Lost Love Book 1)

by Marcella Swann

  Cynthia answered the door looking wide-awake; she was dressed in pajamas with her dark hair down. For a second or two, she looked almost too much like she’d been when we were dating. It was like I’d somehow managed to go back in time. All too clearly I had a flashback to the sight of her in bed with me, the morning after our first time together. She’d looked so sweet and innocent, curled up on her side next to me in the bed, pajamas thrown on to cover the fact that we’d spent a good part of the previous night naked--just in case someone came in. She usually kept her hair in braids back then, but she’d let it down before we’d started fooling around, and the sight of it tumbling to her shoulders was erotic in a way I never would have expected. I could tell that there was a bit of a chill in the apartment and that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath her pajama top. But the impression left me as she realized it was me standing on the other side of her door.

  “I was just about to call you,” she said.

  “You were?” I frowned; that was the last thing I’d expected her to say.

  “Yeah. I just got a hell of a phone call,” Cynthia replied.

  “It can’t possibly beat the one I just got about twenty minutes ago,” I told her.

  “Come in,” Cynthia suggested, opening the door wider to let me in. As she turned away from me, I saw that the hand she’d had on the other side of the door had a knife in it, and I was torn between respect and amusement.

  “Glad you checked who it was first,” I said, gesturing to the knife. Cynthia looked sheepish for a moment and then put the weapon down on the pass-through between the living room and the kitchen. She had a nice apartment, clean without being spotless and decorated in neutral colors, dark blue curtains and a black-and-white throw on the tan-colored couch. She had some kind of abstract painting hanging on one wall; it looked like a real painting, not a print.

  “What was the call you just got?” She sat down on the couch and I took the chair next to it, sitting down.

  “It was a threat,” I said, quoting back as much of it as I could remember. Cynthia nodded, looking a little worried.

  “I got the same one, or close to it, I think,” Cynthia said. She picked up her phone from the coffee table and played it back for me. I wished I’d had the presence of mind to record the call I’d gotten, but I hadn’t been expecting it.

  “Good thing you have some kind of record other than the incoming call log,” I pointed out.

  “I have the phone set to record all calls from any number not in my contact book,” Cynthia explained. “Nate helped me set it up.”

  “I take it that this isn’t the first time you’ve been threatened, then,” I said. Cynthia shook her head.

  “It’s more for the sake of dealing with auto-callers or informants, keeping anonymous reports,” she said. “But yeah, I’ve been threatened before. Not everyone is a fan of my work.”

  “Think I can get whatever program you’ve got?” Cynthia nodded again.

  “Probably a good idea.” She took a deep breath and I couldn’t help but notice the fact that she definitely wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “So are you good with this?” I tried not to look at her chest too obviously. “I mean, I was even shaken up by the call a bit.” Cynthia shrugged.

  “It shook me up a bit, but the fact that you got a call too, that means twice the chances to trace it, even with a blocked number,” Claire pointed out.

  “Some of these guys are pretty good at covering their tracks,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, I would assume that whoever framed your dad digitally is pretty clever,” she agreed. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Does that make you think of anyone in particular on that list your Dad and you gave me?” I thought about it for a moment.

  “It depends on if it’s someone doing it themselves or not,” I said. “If it’s someone working alone, there are only a few people I think could even have the skills to do it.” Cynthia raised an eyebrow.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know more than one person who can do something like this,” she said.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think Dad has had someone do some...shady transfers in the past,” I explained. “Nothing like this though; he hasn’t done fraud or embezzlement, but timing things to make the most of a stock sale, creating glitches so that it looks like the stock is sold when it isn’t, things like that.” Cynthia stared at me.

  “Just how shady are we talking about here?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know all the details, but it isn’t like the industry is squeaky clean in general,” I told her. “I’ve even organized a few trades and sales that weren’t really trades or sales.” Cynthia sighed.

  “It is going to take an act of God to get your father’s name cleared,” Cynthia said. She shook her head, looked down at her phone and then at me again. “I’m going to look into security arrangements moving forward.”

  “I can put my own into place. Do you need any help with that?” Cynthia shook her head and rose to let me out of her apartment.

  “I’ve got my own people to call on,” she said. “I just want to focus on getting to the bottom of this, and getting your father’s name cleared, if that’s even remotely possible.”

  “Thanks, Cyn,” I said. I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek before I left, glancing over my shoulder just long enough to see the surprise on her face.

  Chapter Five

  I had managed to act confident enough when Shawn had been with me; I had a reputation to maintain. But I’d been shaken by the call. It wasn’t the first threatening message I’d ever gotten, but I’d been a defense lawyer for long enough at that point to know when a threat was serious, and to know when to take precautions. So by Monday morning, when I headed to work, I had a bodyguard to watch over me.

  Jack had worked for me before, and I was glad to have him around, even if that just meant that he followed at a relatively sedate pace as I drove from my apartment to the office. Just knowing he was there, that he was watching, made me feel better. But I had to admit, I still worried about Shawn, even if I didn’t want to. Just because he’s a jerk who dumped you as a teenager, and is following in his father’s footsteps as a shady businessman, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have some natural, human concern for him as a person, I thought, as I got into my office. Jack would be hanging out nearby, not in my office itself, but no more than a quick text away.

  When I’d called him, the morning after the threatening call, Jack had picked up immediately.

  “You must be doing your job right if you need me again,” he said as soon as the line had connected. I hadn’t been able to help myself and I laughed.

  “Right, or very wrong,” I countered, and explained the situation in broad strokes, that I’d taken on a high-profile felony case, that apparently there were certain people who wanted me to abandon it, and that I’d gotten a threatening phone call the night before.

  “Are you going to be paying me directly or billing it to your client?” I hadn’t even gotten to the point of asking him if he was available personally. I knew he had a handful of employees working for him, and I figured that he was good enough at his job. I knew from experience that I couldn’t just expect him to drop everything to guard me personally.

  “I’ll pay you directly. I can bill the client later,” I said, relieved that I was going to have Jack himself looking after me. He’d agreed to start work that night, once he’d cleared out a current “job” he was working on, and I made the transfer of the deposit as soon as I got off the phone. Jack insisted on charging me lesser than some of his other clients, and always had. According to him, the fact that I was doing criminal defense work, and was a woman, made a discount make sense as compared to some of his other clients. I’d never wanted to pry too much into his affairs outside of him guarding me, but I’d told him, more than once, that if he needed my help, I’d return the courtesy.

  So he met me that night, coming to my apartment in the cover of darkness. Immediatel
y I’d felt better; Jack was an absolute tree of a man, with the kind of legs that could probably crush skulls and hands big enough that I was pretty sure he could crush skulls with them, too. He was, somehow, the kind of guy who would blend in completely, in spite of how big he was; off-blond hair, blue eyes and bland facial features. I was never really attracted to him, but I didn’t think he ever wanted female company, either.

  I got into my office and immediately started in on the pile of documentation and information I had managed to compile between my own research and what Nate had been able to turn up, along with what one of the legal secretaries that worked at the firm had tracked down since I’d started working for Shawn and his father. Since I was bringing in so much money on one contract, Harrison had told me I could and should devote all my attention to it. It wasn’t the first time I’d been able to do that, but it was rare that I got to actually just throw myself into a single case alone.

  I started with the information that the legal secretaries had gotten together, comparing it with what I had managed to check out on my own. Jack texted me at eleven to check in and ask what my plans for lunch were, just as I was wrapping up with my own review. I’m ordering in--that just seemed safer, I replied. Do you want to join me? I can treat. Client’s paying. Jack replied that he had his own lunch taken care of, so I turned back into my research.

  I got into what Nate had managed to dig up so far, and a little while after I’d finished eating lunch at my desk, perusing the information, I got another text; this one was from Nate. Sending you something now. You’ll want to look at it right away. That kind of message had to mean something big, so I refreshed my inbox over and over again until it came up from him. Not only was it marked urgent, but it had the little symbol that told me that it had been encrypted, as well. Nathan clearly thought it was something not just big, but massive.

  I opened up the file and set the program that he’d given me a year before to the task of decrypting it, wondering what the hell Nathan could have found. As I started to read the information he’d sent me, my heart beat faster and faster in my chest. “Holy shit.”

  The threats that Shawn and I had gotten weren’t just a one-off thing. Nathan had, somehow, managed to intercept some stuff going around the different law enforcement niches, pointing towards pressure on the district attorney to come after Shawn as well, and to charge him with similar crimes as those his father had evidently been framed for. I made sure to save a copy to my hard drive, to put another copy on a USB drive that I shoved quickly into a safe in my office, hidden behind some books that I was pretty sure no one would look too much into, and then snagged another copy of the back-and-forth that Nathan had found to take to Shawn himself. I knew I needed to act fast.

  I texted Jack to let him know I was leaving the office, and told him to follow at a discreet distance. I hadn’t told Shawn about my bodyguard, but I figured he probably had security measures of his own going on, and I didn’t want to make things more confused than they already were. I hurried as fast as I could to the address I had for him. If we were going to act on what Nate had found out, it would have to be in the next few hours; it couldn’t even wait a day.

  It only occurred to me, as I was finally pulling onto the street where Shawn’s address was, that I didn’t even know if he would be home. It was the middle of a work day, so in theory he should be at the office, doing things in his father’s stead, shouldn’t he? But I figured that I was already there. If Shawn wasn’t at the house, I’d go to the office and find him there, or call his secretary, whoever she was, and figure it out from that point. I checked to make sure I still had the USB drive with the material to show him and hurried up the walkway towards the front door of the stately-looking townhouse that Shawn apparently lived in.

  He answered the door within a few minutes, and I saw his eyes widen at my sight. “I need to talk to you right now,” I said, holding up the USB drive. “It’s urgent.”

  “I would have guessed as much,” Shawn said, looking me over again. “Is it something about Dad’s case?”

  “It is, and it’s also about you,” I said. “Just let me in and I’ll explain.” Shawn opened the door wider for me to walk past him, and I tried to get my head on straight enough to be able to explain what was happening without sounding like I’d lost my mind. I made a quick mental list of the most important facts and handed Shawn the USB drive.

  “So what is this, exactly?”

  “Stuff that Nate tracked down, that you’re going to want to see,” I explained. I took a quick, deep breath. “The headline, the short version of this, is that the people who are after your father apparently are also trying to get you charged with the same crimes.”

  “Holy shit,” Shawn said, eyes widening slightly. I watched him plug the USB into his computer and open it up to look at the files. “You are not kidding, are you?”

  “No, I am definitely not kidding,” I said. “We need to act on this now.”

  “Let me look at what they’ve got first,” Shawn told me, and I waited impatiently as he looked at what Nate had managed to dig up. “Shit. They’ve already even gotten the DA involved?” He glanced at me, and I nodded.

  “Yeah, they do,” I confirmed. Shawn shook his head, looking not exactly scared, but definitely a bit startled, and I decided, that for a moment at least, I could sit down. We needed to move on the situation quickly, but I needed Shawn to understand what was going on, too. We were both going to have to figure out what to do to keep him out of jail.

  Chapter Six

  I had been a little surprised to see Cynthia at my door, but the more I looked at the information she’d gotten, God only knew how, about what the people framing my Dad planned to do to me, the more I could see why she’d thought it was absolutely necessary to take care of things as quickly as possible.

  “Okay,” I said, locking down the computer and ejecting the USB drive. “Here’s what we need to do. We need to go to the DA, first of all.”

  “Do you know him? Because I do, but I don’t think that’s going to help us here,” Cynthia pointed out.

  “From what you have here, it doesn’t look like he’s involved in framing anybody,” I countered. “So if we can tell him that there’s something hinky going on, he might be able to stall.” I smiled a bit. “Especially if I mention that I’d be happy to transfer some money into his reelection campaign for next year.”

  “You’re seriously talking about bribing a public official when there are people trying to frame you for fraud and embezzlement right now?”

  “Fight scandal with scandal,” I said with a shrug. “Besides, it isn’t a bribe; it would be a perfectly legitimate donation. Fully legal.” Cynthia stared at me.

  “You aren’t actually talking about a legitimate donation and you know it,” she said flatly.

  “It will be on the books as a legitimate donation. It will help his campaign. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time I paid someone extra to get something I wanted, would it?” I raised an eyebrow. Cynthia scowled at me, and it brought back all the times in high school when we’d been dating, when she knew I was right about something but didn’t want to admit it.

  “Fine,” she said after a moment. “We’ll try that. But we need to get a move on. Let me just text someone.”

  “Who?” I wasn’t sure why I suddenly felt so interested, but I definitely wanted to know who Cyn would text at a time like that.

  “Jack, my bodyguard” she replied.

  “You got an actual bodyguard? This quickly?” I vaguely remembered her mentioning something about getting someone the night or so before when we’d both gotten the threatening messages. But I hadn’t thought she had someone on tap.

  “Yeah, he’s worked for me before,” Cynthia said matter-of-factly. “He’s hanging out probably about a block away. I’ll let him know we’re on the move, so he can follow.”

  “We can take my car,” I suggested. “Let him know what we’re riding in.”

  “Or we c
an take my car,” Cynthia countered.

  “Leave your car here,” I suggested. “They might think that you’re still here, if they’re sending someone to watch.” I wasn’t exactly naive about the kind of people who were after my Dad and me, but I didn’t think they realized that Cynthia had caught wise to what they were doing just yet. So hopefully they wouldn’t already be watching. It was a risk we’d have to take.

  We argued back and forth for a minute or so, but I pointed out that it would be easiest by far for us to use my car, on multiple levels. Not to mention that my car was faster than hers. “We don’t have time to argue anymore, so if you’re just going to be stubborn about it, I might as well just agree with you,” Cynthia said, and I couldn’t help but grin.

  We left my house and headed towards my car that was parked on the street. I’d been feeling jumpy ever since I’d gotten the message on my phone. That was probably the only reason why things played out the way they did in the next ten minutes. I saw something in the corner of my eye, as I was turning my head to ask Cynthia for the address we’d be going to. I don’t even remember why I looked except that finding out I might be getting framed had only made me more jumpy.

  I turned my head and saw someone coming from a corner of the property line my town house sat on, as if he’d jumped the garden wall. “Who the hell are--” I didn’t even have time to finish my sentence. Another guy appeared, from another direction. All in all, I found out there were six guys. But in the moment, all I knew was that there was something really screwed up happening.

  “Shit,” Cynthia said, and I knew she’d realized the same thing as the guys closed in on us. “Jack’s too far away.”

  “Get in the car,” I told her.

  “No time,” Cynthia said, and then everything became kind of a blur.