The Misters: Books 1-5 Box Set

by JA Huss

  My fingers are instantly back on the rope around my ankle, but another blow to the head knocks me over, right off the bed, so most of me is on the floor, but my one ankle is still tied to the damn post.

  And then… shouting. Voices yelling. Nolan, and someone else, and Richard. Guns are going off, and a bullet hits the concrete wall just off to my left.

  I sit up as best as I can and reach for my ankle as the men yell threats and shoot at each other.

  There’s a loud thumping of feet above my head somewhere. People are here. Many, many people. A whole army of people from the sound of it.

  “Ivy!” Nolan yells. “Get down!”

  But I’m so close. I’m so close. Just one more knot and—I’m free!

  Richard is suddenly next to me, pulling me up by my hair again. I grab his balls and pull so hard, I get a sick, sick feeling in my stomach. His gun goes off and a sharp pain shoots through my body.

  I scream, but he falls, and I fall, and then I ignore the pain and scoot under the bed. I crawl for my life as a warm pool of blood puddles underneath me.

  Chapter Forty-Seven - Nolan

  The guy shoots straight. I’ll give him that. The bullets are flying. Pax has disappeared. Hit, or waiting, or hell, maybe he thinks my girlfriend isn’t worth dying for.

  I think she’s worth dying for.

  Ivy screams, and when I peek my head out from behind the corner, I see the man fall just as another shot goes off. This time Ivy’s scream is serious. It’s a scream of severe pain and I know she’s been shot. More bullets fly at me as I make a break for the bed. Ivy’s fingertips are reaching out from under the bed, and I pull her out, sliding her along the smooth concrete floor, and then jump up on the bed and I don’t even bother thinking twice.

  I shoot that motherfucker in the head.

  A second later there’s cops everywhere. Not just deputies, but men in tactical gear. Rifles longer than my arm pointing at me. Red laser dots dancing on everything in the room.

  You will always be a target, Nolan. Don’t ever let them get you.

  But I’m not their target tonight.

  So I drop my gun and slide down on the floor next to Ivy. She’s bleeding and she’s crying, but she’s still alive. And that’s the only thing that matters.

  Chapter Forty-Eight - Ivy

  Nolan’s bright green eyes are the first thing I see when I wake up. The hospital room is cold and the air smells funny. But he’s there and that’s all I care about.

  “Hey,” he says, brushing some hair away from my eyes. “How you feeling?” He looks tired. And he’s wearing dress pants and a t-shirt that says Property of Massachusetts State Police on the front.

  “What happened?” I ask, trying to sit up as Nolan urges me to lie back. “Where’s Richard?”

  “Richard? You knew him?”

  “He was my ex-boyfriend. The boring one.”

  Nolan’s smile lights up my whole life and when he laughs, I laugh with him. Just before I start to cry.

  “Hey,” he says, slipping into bed with me. His arm slides under my back, gently, so he doesn’t disturb my sling. “It’s OK. You’re OK. They removed the bullet and stitched your arm all up. You’re fine, Ivy. You’re gonna be fine.”

  “He was going to rape me, Nolan. He was—”

  “Shhh,” Nolan says. “Stop. It’s over. OK?” He looks me in the eyes and then kisses me softly on my lips. “All that stuff is over now.”

  And then he lies back with me, rests his head on my pillow and places his hand over my heart.

  “We’re gonna start fresh, Ivy Rockwell. So just relax. I’ve got this.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine - Nolan

  “So…” Match says. “Big doin’s, huh?”

  “You’re next, asshole.”

  “Nah, not me. I’m fine just the way I am. You and Perfect can keep your newly domesticated lives. I’m just fine with the way things are.”

  “Never mind that shit,” Perfect says. “We have a problem.”

  “A big problem,” Mysterious says as he cleans his gun on Perfect’s dining room table. “A very big fucking problem.”

  Ivy and Ellie are out shopping. We’re here on official Mister business, but the girls don’t know that. Ivy’s arm is healing nicely. She might need another surgery or two to remove bone shards if they become a problem, but she’s OK. She’s good. We’re both good.

  “Where the fuck is Corporate?” Match says. “He’s late. Why is he fucking late?”

  “I told you he wasn’t gonna show. He’s got some big deal going on. Said he’ll read the Cliff’s Notes when he gets back.”

  “Well, that’s fucked up,” Match says. “If you’re a target, then we’re all targets.”

  “Where the fuck is Claudette?” Mysterious asks, never taking his eyes off the gun.

  “I dunno,” I say, frustrated. “I’ve had people looking for her since she missed the funeral.”

  My father died. Just two days after all that shit went down at the Martha’s Vineyard house. We hadn’t been close for years and even though it would make a nice story to say we patched things up in the end, we didn’t. He was in a coma by the time I got to the hospital in San Diego. I’ve been to more hospitals in the last two weeks than I have in my whole life.

  But it didn’t matter that we didn’t get to talk. I know now. I know why my mother ended up divorcing him. I know why Claudette was never welcome at our house in Florida. I know why my father kept her with him.

  I don’t know why she was cut out of the will and I was put back in. That is still part of the mystery. But it makes sense that she attached herself to my hip these past six months. Why she offered up some of her own money to get that resort started. She was cut out of the will and wanted back in. She was playing the good big sister part to make that happen. But she was doing more than that. She was setting me up. How she came up with Ivy to make that happen though? That is also still a mystery. But I know—I feel it in my gut—I know she set me up with Ivy. I know it was her who forged Ivy’s résumé. Sent that invitation. How many people know about the silver envelopes we use? Not many. People connected with the old case. They know. And Claudette certainly qualifies as one of them. I fucking know it was Claudette who put all the events of the past few weeks into motion.

  But why?

  She’s a devious fucking cunt, that’s why. And I have no doubt that her mother was the same kind of woman. I know my father wasn’t perfect, but he was not a psychopath.

  Claudette is.

  I was waiting for her to show her face at the funeral, and when she didn’t come, I knew. She’s on some kind of revenge vendetta. She won’t get one penny of my father’s money. Not one penny. But hey, if she wants to fight that shit, I’m ready. I’m waiting. I’m gonna take her down from the inside out.

  She wasn’t at the MV house. In fact, there was not one shred of evidence that could link her back to Ivy’s ex-boring-boyfriend. But we all know it was her.

  There are very few people who have access to schedule the jet. Claudette is one of them. The only one connected to me.

  “I still don’t understand what Boring Richard had to do with this,” I say.

  “Did you ask Ivy?” Match says.

  “She had some kind of argument with him when she went home for dinner the Sunday before all this happened.”

  “About what?”

  “Me, I guess. He looked me up. Told Ivy I was a deviant or something. Told her to stay away from me.”

  “But why?” Match asks again.

  “How should I know, Oliver? I don’t see the connection.”

  “I do,” Perfect says. “Or at least I’m starting to. People are coming back. Allen came back into my life the same day Ellie popped into it. And somehow Allen and that Ellen Abraham woman were connected too. I don’t know how, but I know they were. Same thing with you, Romantic. You find a girl; your sister goes nuts. Now what we don’t know is what part Claudette played in those events ten years ago. Wher
e does she fit in? Because I already know where Allen fits in. Too bad Boring Richard is dead. We could’ve put some pressure on him to give up the answers we still need. I should try and find Ellen Abraham. See if she might talk.”

  “Yeah,” Mysterious says, snapping his gun back together with satisfying clicks. “And Boring Richard left me a present on the bed up in Nolan’s house. So that’s another clue that he’s connected to all this somehow.” He looks up at me and I see it. I see just how dangerous Mysterious really is. He’s out for blood over that little gift. And I don’t know how he managed it, but Mysterious picked up every piece of damning evidence left out at the MV house. The cops never saw any evidence of what Ivy and I were doing that night. He got his own reminder of the past safely tucked out of sight too.

  Got to hand it to him. When Mysterious takes a job, he’s not fucking around.

  “Well,” Match says, “we’re just gonna have to take care of business. That’s what my old man always told me. He always said, ‘Oliver, my boy, when the shit hits the fan, you just turn that fucker around.’”

  “Your father’s a regular poet,” Mysterious says.

  “Maybe nothing’s happening?” I say. “Not the way we think it is. I mean, we don’t have anything to go on. We just have your old vendetta with Allen, Perfect. And my sister is a crazy cunt. Maybe that’s all there is to it?”

  “It’s not,” Mysterious says, stashing his gun in his pants. “You can’t overlook the fact that Mac had some weird woman fucking with Ellie at work at the same time Allen was fucking with him. And now we have two examples. Because Boring Richard was fucking with you at the same time as Claudette. Why was he looking you up?”

  “He told Ivy her roommate told him to. But she asked her roommate after, and she said that never happened.”

  “Yup,” Mysterious says as he looks inside a duffle bag. “What we have here is a classic tag-team operation happening, my friends. One operative distracts while the other takes care of business. And if anything else happens, I’m gonna do exactly what Old Man Match said. Turn that shit back on them. And they do not want to be my target. Whoever the fuck they are.”

  “Someone needs to get a hold of Corporate and make sure everything’s cool with him,” I say.

  “I’ll handle him,” Match says. “We have a business deal going, so he’s gonna show up for that in a few days for sure.”

  “All right,” Perfect says, peeking through the curtains of his front room. “The girls are back, so just…” He stops and looks at Mysterious. “Dude, get rid of the guns.” Mysterious has another one out, all ready to start cleaning it when Perfect says this.

  Mysterious grunts, but he stashes it back into the pack he brought with him, hikes it over his shoulder, and walks out the front door.

  “Jesus Christ,” Perfect says. “He’s gonna kill someone.”

  And then Match and Perfect both look at me. Because even though Mysterious has killer written all over him, I’m the one who pulled the trigger this time.

  “Maybe someone has it coming,” Match says, shrugging his shoulders and sliding his shades down his face. He turns and leaves it at that. Following Mysterious out the door.

  Perfect and I watch Ivy and Ellie talk to them for a few seconds before they both get into Match’s Hummer and drive off.

  Maybe someone does, I think as I watch them go.

  Maybe all that shit we’ve put up with for the past ten years is about to come back around. Only maybe this time, it’s not the Misters who have to stand in front of the fan while people throw shit.

  Maybe it’s someone else’s turn.

  Epilogue - Nolan

  “Just be nice,” Ivy says as she straightens my tie outside her parents’ house.

  “Hey,” I say, “they don’t call me Mr. Nice for nothing.”

  “They don’t call you Mr. Nice at all, Nolan. Now stop.” She shoots me a sideways grin as the word comes out. We haven’t had another rape fantasy. And I’m not saying we’ll never do it again, but I’m over it. It was fun, but it was a stressful fucking night. And every time I think about yellow rope, I see Ivy’s foot, tied to that bedpost as the guns went off and that sick fuck, Boring Richard, shot her.

  I don’t need to prove I’m innocent to Ivy. She knows.

  I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, I decide. Fuck them all.

  The front door opens and the Reverend William Rockwell stands there looking very much like a pastor’s daughter’s father.

  Well, except him, I guess.

  “Come in!” Sophia, Ivy’s mother, calls. Ivy slips past her father and leaves us there together. On the front stoop. He doesn’t invite me in, so I shift my feet a little, wondering why I’m letting this conservative dinosaur make me nervous.

  “You’re not good enough for her,” my father-in-law says.

  I nod, pressing my lips together. “Yes, sir,” I say. “I know that.”

  “And you eloped, so you’re never going to be good enough for her.”

  I nod again. “I know. I don’t deserve her. Not one bit. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life thanking God for letting such a smart and beautiful woman be my wife.” I have apologized profusely on the phone and email for weeks about the elopement. “We’re already planning a real wedding, Mr. Rockwell. So we can make it official in your eyes.”

  He’s never going to forgive me. Especially after I tell him she’s pregnant.

  “Hmmph,” Rockwell says, stepping aside. “If you keep kissing ass like this, Delaney, then we might even like each other in about twenty years. Come in.”

  I step into his house and immediately feel at home. Ivy is everything my life was missing these past ten years.

  And together we are building the best motherfucking resort the Southern California desert has ever seen. Ivy’s marketing plan was a whole lot more than free rooms to pique interest in the San Diego corporate community. It was cooking class weekends with our professional chef. It was golf lesson weekends with our new resident pro. It was dark-sky stargazing with guest astronomers. It’s a place for parties, and weddings, and anniversaries and corporate events.

  In fact, my new career looks almost nothing like my old one. I might not have ever gotten that art degree, but I got something much better instead.

  And it was just what I needed.

  A beautiful new life with my beautiful new wife, Mrs. Romantic.

  Mr. Corporate

  By J. A. Huss

  Edited by RJ Locksley

  Copyright © 2016 by J. A. Huss

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-978-1-944475-08-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  DESCRIPTION

  Weston Conrad is the best headhunter in the business. That handsome smile goes a long way towards convincing most people to trust him with their future.

  I’m not most people. I’m his direct competition. And it doesn’t hurt to be just the kind of woman he’s been looking for.

  I’m gonna flash you these legs, Weston Conrad.

  I’m gonna wear low-cut shirts and micro-mini skirts.

  I’m gonna dazzle you with wit and conversation and kiss those lips like they’re exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

  So don’t hate me when you figure out my secret.

  You understand, right? You’re Mr. Corporate and this is just business.

  Prologue - Weston

  “Say it.” Victoria Arias looms over me, her feet planted on either side of my hips, seething. “I want to hear you say it.”

  She looks like the storm that just passed. That poor lavender shirt is rippling in the remnants of the wind. It’s ruined. And out of nowhere, like God was playing a trick on us earlier, it starts to rain. Hard, pouring-down rain.

  “What’s your fucki
ng problem?” I ask. “Just what the fuck, Tori?”

  She drops, her ass sitting on my dick, but nothing about this moment says seductive. She slaps me six times in the face. Both hands, one after the other. Six times. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

  “Say it!” She yells it this time.

  I taste blood in my mouth and reach up to wipe it away as I look her in the eyes.

  Those beautiful violet eyes. That wild dark hair is sticking to her face as she rages. And her breasts are practically bursting out of her shirt—those last two buttons have no hope of containing them.

  Another slap, and this time it stings.

  “Stop it,” I say, grabbing both her wrists and pulling her down onto my chest. “Just fucking stop it.”

  “I hate you more, Weston Conrad.” Her voice is low. Even. Controlled. “I hate you more than you will ever know and I want to hear you say it.”

  “Why should I give in to you? Why the fuck should I? Do you really think this badass attitude you have is cute, Miss Arias? Well, it isn’t. It’s fucking old, OK? I’m sick of it. I’m sick of you. And I’m not giving you what you want. Ever.”

  I push her off me and get up. I’m wet, I’m covered in sand, I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, and my dick has been hard for three days.

  “You’re a coward,” Victoria says, her South American accent appearing. “You’re a coward and a cheat.”

  “That makes no sense. And I’m not a cheat. You’re the fucking cheat. How the hell did you get here, huh, Victoria? You cheated!”

  She’s on her knees now, that goddamned lavender shirt blowing open. “Well, just give me what I want, Weston Conrad. And then we can part ways and never see each other again.”