Womanizer (A Standalone Novel) (A Steamy Alpha Billionaire Romance)

by Tyler, Nella

  I decided it was the best time to try and find the information we needed on the company. I quickly flipped through the boxes to find the payroll box and tried to find the most recent one. It looked like the most recent was about a year old, but I grabbed it. There was no place to make a copy of it so I just folded it up and put it into my pocket.

  I spent another ten minutes flipping through the boxes to see if I could find anything else that looked like I needed it. Unfortunately, nothing else caught my eye so I continued on to the next office. There was a desk in the office that looked like it was occupied during the day, probably by one of the men who had left earlier. Nothing seemed too unusual except that the desk and the file cabinet behind it were all locked.

  There was a noise downstairs.

  I froze and then looked out over the ledge to see what was going on. The security officer appeared to be making his rounds. I went and hid under the desk and hoped he wouldn’t find me. My heart pounded so loud I was sure he could hear me. My breath was rapid and I tried everything to get it under control.

  I wasn’t cut out for the Mission Impossible stuff. I was a stock broker; I needed to get out of there and get back to what I knew. My heart continued to pound out of control as I waited for it to be totally clear.

  I probably waited a lot longer than I needed to under the desk, but I had to be sure the guard was gone. After five minutes of not hearing anything, I crawled out from the desk and made my way down the stairs. I wanted to just leave, but something called me toward the downstairs offices and I decided I should at least take a look before I left.

  When I walked into the first office my mouth dropped open. There was a stack of money on a table and a dollar counting machine next to it. I wanted to touch it. My instant urge was to grab it all up and carry it out of the building with me. But I didn’t want to leave any clues that someone had been in the building.

  There were two large duffle bags under the table that I needed to see inside. I wrapped my fingers inside of my shirt and unzipped one of the bags. Sure enough, it was filled with cash as well. I didn’t know how much was there, but it was all in twenty dollar bills so I assumed there was a lot of money between the two bags and the money on the table.

  Slowly, I left that room and moved onto the next one. It had a desk similar to the one upstairs but no file cabinet. In the third room there was a huge safe that I didn’t try to open.

  I had seen enough and was afraid the security guard was going to come through again soon, so I made my way back to the side door. I crawled through the fence and hurried through the woods to my car. I didn’t stop to take a break and I didn’t look back at all. My adrenaline rushed through my veins as I sped down the dirt road and made my way back toward the city.

  I didn’t know what all I had seen yet. I did know that there was not a fully stocked warehouse in New York. I wanted to called Alicia and ask her about what I had found. I was angry. Mostly because I felt lied to about the type of person she was, but also because I still deep down wanted to believe that she didn’t know about that warehouse and what was going on.

  My logical side knew that Alicia had to of known what was going on. She couldn’t be the CEO of the company with all these people reporting back to her and she wasn’t aware that there was a fake warehouse.

  My mind raced all the way back into the city. I zoned out as I drove and really needed to talk to someone about everything that I had found. My first instinct was to call Rebecca, but since I now had a bandage on my hand where she had bitten me I decided I needed to enlist Mike to help me instead.

  It was too late to get him to help that night though, so I returned my car and headed home. As I walked past Edwards a small urge pulled me to go inside, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to deal with anymore women. I just wanted to sleep.

  Chapter 31

  For the first night in many, I finally got a good night sleep. I was exhausted by the last few days and the sleep was so appreciated. The adrenaline rush from the warehouse had worn off and my body was finally able to slip off into dream land without the need to worry all night long. My anxiety over all the events that were going on was finally beat by exhaustion.

  Typically the only time I went days without sleep was when I lost money on stocks. I had never been so consumed by researching a company, or by its CEO, as I was with ALL Warren. If the CEO had not been Alicia, I likely wouldn’t have invested in the company at all and instead would have just ignored the IPO all together.

  I wasn’t the kind of guy that would waste my time on a company that didn’t look good. I certainly wasn’t use to putting the kind of effort into something like I had been doing with Alicia. This was all out of my comfort zone.

  Alicia was the only reason I had gotten involved so far into the company. Now that I was in so deep, I needed to see if Alicia was part of it or not. I still held out hope that she had nothing to do with any of the illegal stuff that was obviously going on. Although, that hope was getting dimmer and dimmer the more information I found.

  I decided to call Mike before I got to work and had him meet me over at the gym. I needed a workout and so did he. Mike never worked out unless I specifically called him or his wife forced him to go on a bike ride.

  I liked having someone to work out with, well someone like Mike to workout with. He was quiet and we could just workout without the constant need to talk during the workout. I wasn’t the type of person who enjoyed idle chit chat. My life was just too busy for it and I didn’t see the need to waste my energy on talking if there was no purpose of it.

  As Mike and I ran on the treadmills, I explain to him everything that I had seen at the warehouse. He wasn’t shocked at all. He was quiet and let me finish telling the story before he started to judge me.

  “I knew something was up with that company, Evan. You’re just too close, you couldn’t see it.”

  “You’re right. I am close and that’s why I need to figure out how much Alicia knows about this all. I care about her. I don’t want her to be in trouble when this all comes out.”

  “Evan, she knows about it. There is no way she is the CEO of the company and she doesn’t know about all this that is going on. Get your head out of your ass.”

  “Mike, I don’t know if she knows about it or not. This Bill guy could really be pulling the wool over her eyes.”

  “Oh, God! Evan this is exactly why you shouldn’t be involved with the CEO of a company. You’re blinded by her tits and ass.”

  “Fuck you, Mike,” I said lovingly.

  We were friends; I knew he could take it.

  One time we were working out and Mike had told me to fuck off at least a dozen times. We were in a heated debate about women and anal sex and my opinion was that he should get his wife to do it more often. We were just joking with either other but a waitress had told the restaurant manager who came over and asked Mike if I was bothering him. He replied, “Yes,” and the manager asked me to leave the restaurant. It was hilarious.

  “I’m just being honest with you. If it looks like a criminal, it’s usually a criminal. There is just too many facts that point to her knowing what’s going on.”

  I wasn’t so sure there were all the same facts that Mike thought there were. In my head, things were still very much unknown and I had to have some sort of finality in order to cut off my relationship with Alicia. I needed her to admit something was going on or I needed to find evidence that she didn’t know what was going on. But I couldn’t sit in limbo land any longer.

  “I know you’re just trying to look out for me.”

  “Let’s call Rebecca and see what she thinks,” Mike said as we finished our workout.

  Panic set in instantly and I didn’t want Rebecca anywhere near me, or my hands. She was getting a little too much to handle in the bedroom and I needed to cool things down as soon as possible.

  “Um, I think we got things figured out. The two of us can go through this human resources file I have.”

  “I�
��d feel better if Rebecca sat in with us, I’ll text her and have her meet in your office.”

  Before I could stop him, Mike had already sent something to Rebecca.

  My stomach churned as I thought about how Rebecca had chomped down on my hand. Something about her had started to scare me that was for sure. At least Mike would be with me, so I should be safe for our conversation.

  We made our way to my office and cleared the conference table off. When Rebecca arrived we all pulled out the research we had and put it onto the table so we could go over everything and get our facts straight.

  The files I had ordered were all there, plus Rebecca’s files, and I added the human resource file I took from the warehouse. We should have had enough information to figure out what was going on, but when you are stabbing in the dark there is a lot of room to make mistakes.

  We didn’t really know what we were looking for and there were so many different people who could be hurting Alicia’s company. Even if we narrowed in on Bill Yobi, we couldn’t find everything we needed to find on him to prove he was involved in something sinister.

  I was overwhelmed before we even got started. I wanted to just leave the room and let Mike and Rebecca figure out what was going on. My mind just couldn’t get wrapped around all the nooks and crannies of information. If it had been stock information, I would have had no problem, but the financial information of a company that I didn’t know very well, that was overwhelming to me.

  I was lucky to have both Mike and Rebecca willing to give up their day and help me get to the bottom of my research. They were both much more detail oriented than I was and could see things from a different angle than I saw things. My focus was always on the hard numbers and Mike did great at the big picture.

  We all started going to through files and taking notes. Rebecca was vigorously writing and pillaging through page after page of material. I half wanted to just sit back and let her finish going through everything. She without doubt was an efficient researcher.

  “Bill Yobi isn’t on any of these payroll sheets. I mean they are from a year ago and not the most current ones; but still he should be on them,” Rebecca said to break the silence.

  “Well didn’t we already decide that there were probably hundreds of people not on the payroll sheets? Maybe there are other sheets?” I suggested.

  “No, there can’t be other sheets. That’s illegal. They need to all be together.”

  I sat still and pondered what exactly she said. If they didn’t have everyone on these payroll sheets they could make it look like there were making a lot more money than they actually were. But the thing that confused me was that they actually did have tons of money. I had seen it in the warehouse.

  “I still don’t get what’s going on,” Mike said as he looked at both of us.

  “It’s money laundering, Mike. That’s what’s going on here,” Rebecca said.

  I didn’t know the specifics yet, but I definitely could tell they were hiding their money from people. Their books were not how they were supposed to be. Their payroll wasn’t either. Nothing about ALL Warren Clothing seemed legitimate at all. I needed to talk to Alicia. But I had no idea what I was going to say to her.

  She could either be in on everything, or she could know nothing. I didn’t know which was true, but I was getting closer.

  “So, guys, I need to try and get some information out of Alicia. How can I do that?” I asked them.

  “You need to see how she reacts when you bring some of this up. Her reaction will be key to knowing how much she knows about it all.”

  “You’re right, Rebecca. If she gets defensive then she probably knows everything. If she gets pissed off she might not know anything at all,” Mike added.

  “The problem is, I don’t see how I can bring it up without totally letting the cat out of the bag. If she knows I have been investigating her and her company she’s going to be so pissed.”

  All I could think about was that I actually cared about Alicia. Of course, I didn’t want to lose thousands of dollars if her company went bust. But more than that, I had something special with her that I hadn’t had with another woman in a very long time. I didn’t want to fuck that up.

  Honestly, I didn’t want to fuck it up until I had fucked her at least. After weeks of dates, flirting and kissing I really needed to be with her. I had to see if our connection was just some weird flirting thing or if we actually had a real connections.

  “Darla text me and invited me to a dinner party, maybe I should take Alicia. Try and throw out there some stuff I heard about Bill Yobi and see what she has to say?” I wasn’t confident at all that it was a good plan.

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t go too far into things though. Maybe start with some facts you heard about the previous company they worked together at. Talk about some of the news stories you saw. See how she is reacting. It’s the past and public she shouldn’t get all that upset about it. Especially if she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Mike was always great at thinking things through, it was one of the reasons we got along so well. He had an innate ability to bring me into focus and I loved that. We always joked that someday we would start our own investment firm, but that he would have to get 60% and me 40% because he worked more efficiently than I did.

  “Sounds good, Mike, thanks,” I said as we wrapped up our review session.

  I started to put the files away and noticed that Mike was getting up to leave but Rebecca was still sitting. There was no way I wanted to be left alone with her again.

  “Thanks for coming to help, Rebecca, I really appreciate it,” I said in hopes of getting her going.

  She just sat there.

  I looked at Mike briefly as he left the room and hoped he would offer some sort of help to me, but he didn’t. He just smiled at me and then kept walking. Mike obviously didn’t understand how badly I didn’t want to be left alone with Rebecca.

  Although she had behaved perfectly fine when in the room with Mike and I, I feared she wasn’t going to be so sweet if it was just the two of us. I looked to the door and then back at Rebecca. There was no way I was staying alone with her in that room. I had to figure out a way to get out of there. A way to leave without her following me and without her knowing I was purposely trying to avoid her.

  “I’ll help you clean up,” Rebecca said as she moved toward me.

  “Aww, that’s alright; I’ve got it. Thank you, though. I need to run and ask Mike one last thing. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I ran off after Mike like a teenager avoiding a girl who liked him. It got even more obvious when I hid in Mike’s office and watched for Rebecca to leave down the hallway. I looked out his cracked door and then would close it again. I closed the blinds to the tiny window by the door and stood there and breathed heavily while I waited for Rebecca to leave my office and go back to her own desk.

  “What are you doing?” Mike asked.

  “I can’t be alone with her; she’s dangerous,” I said as I peered out the door.

  “Oh, yeah. The sweetest woman in the office is dangerous?”

  I just held up my hand and showed it to him. He hadn’t asked me what had happened to it yet; probably just assumed it was some stupid accident or something. I had been injured by women before. Sometimes while we were trying to do some fun sex move, but not typically by them purposely hurting me.

  “She bit me.”

  “What? Did you say she bit you?” Mike laughed.

  “Yes, and it hurt.”

  “So was she mad when she bit you? What exactly was going on when this biting happened? Were you two fucking?”

  I turned around and looked down at the ground like a child about to be scolded by his father. Mike knew from the look on my face that the answer was yes. I had indeed been fucking Rebecca.

  “Yes.”

  “Way to go Evan. Now you have flipped the nicest girl in the office into some sort of fatal attraction.”

  “I don’t think it’s l
ike that. Well, I don’t know. She said it was an accident. She bit me when my hand was over her mouth when she orgasmed.”

  Mike just laughed and went back to his work. I could tell he didn’t want to hear any more of my stories. Mike had been privy to pretty much every sex story I had ever had. Not because I wanted to share them with him, but typically he asked me about things.

  He had heard about the woman who tied me up and then passed out, so I was left tied up until the next morning. Mike had laughed hysterically at the woman who had convinced me to have sex in a movie theater and then we got kicked out and banned from there forever. Still to this day I am allowed back into the theater on Thirtieth Street. Mike had heard it all before and he just shook his head.

  “Well now the office is going to be super uncomfortable, Evan. What happened to not sleeping with the women in the office?”

  “I know, I slipped.”

  He just laughed and shooed me out of his office. Nothing really surprised Mike anymore and me fucking a woman from our office certainly wasn’t going to be the thing that shocked him. He had work to do and was done being distracted by me and my troubles.

  Chapter 32

  I was excited to meet Darla’s wife at the dinner party and I couldn’t stop talking about it with Alicia on our drive over.

  “I just can’t wait to meet her. I’ve never met an honest and true lesbian couple that was hot before. This is exciting,” I said as we pulled up to their building.

  My plan for the night was to have fun and enjoy ourselves. I hoped after a couple drinks I could slip in some conversation about Bill Yobi and see how Alicia would react. Hopefully, with some alcohol in her she would be more relaxed and willing to let go of some of her secrets.

  “You do look really excited for this,” Alicia said.

  She seemed in a good mood and it was nice to see her after the lunch we had the other day.