by Casey Hagen
Text copyright ©2018 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Romig Works, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original The Fidelity World remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Romig Works, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.
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Table of Contents
Marked
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Marked
A Dangerous Intentions Novella
Casey Hagen
Hagen Novels, LLC
KENNEBUNK, MAINE
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Beatrice Addington, dutiful daughter to prestigious corporate lawyer, Wallace Addington, craves lustful adventure. Desperate to flee her gilded cage, her brazen desires tempt her to stray from her sterile environment in search of intrigue. She finds a hotbed of forbidden sin at The Sliver, a mysterious nightclub in New York City. Finally free, but afraid to voice her truest desires, she scrawls them on a napkin, desperate to give them wings.
It’s New Year’s Eve and she is not starting 2018 as the same old Beatrice…
Micah Alessi seethes with a burning need for revenge against the man who stole a rare, lucrative chance at investing in Infidelity. A young, single millionaire, new to the scene, Micah finds more closed doors than open, and out of reach opportunities reserved for investors with old money and socialites on their arms. The time has come for him to enter into an Infidelity contract of his own for companionship that will open doors getting him closer to the vengeance he yearns for.
But first, he must see about this regal stranger with the haunted eyes languishing at the bar…
Chapter 1
White-hot rage permeated every last cell of Micah Alessi’s body. His fingers curled into his palm, his fists clenching until his neatly manicured nails left crescent digs in his olive skin. In a rare show of temper, he slammed his fist down on his two-hundred-thousand-dollar Parnian desk.
“I want to know where Wallace Addington goes, what he does, every minute. I want a detailed report on each member of his immediate family and all members of his personal staff. If he owes people money, I want to know who and how much. If he has addictions, vices, fetishes, I want all the dirty details. If he has seven bathrooms, I want to know which one he shits in and when. Understood?” Micah asked.
His full-time private investigator, Sebastian, stood unwavering, a rare combination of a brilliant mind topping off a solid wall of muscle. He kept his hands folded before him; the only indication that Micah’s demand surprised him was the slight twinge in the corners of his black eyes as they widened a fraction of an inch.
“Yes, sir.”
Micah pushed away from his desk and rolled his high-back, leather chair into place with measured movements. He forced himself to use care when he slid the jacket to his Kiton K-50 suit off the hook in the corner and pulled it on. “I’m going to The Sliver tonight. I expect no interruptions unless you have information on Addington, got it?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Sebastian answered with a nod.
Micah patted him on the back as they walked out of his office. “Now, go, take a few hours with that family. Give Leah and Ellie a kiss from me,” Micah said, reaching for Sebastian’s hand when they stopped before the elevator.
Sebastian gripped his hand and gave two quick shakes. “Thank you. Happy New Year, Mr. Alessi.”
“Micah.”
“While I’m on the clock, you’re Mr. Alessi,” Sebastian said as he walked away.
Micah shook his head at Sebastian’s departing back as the elevator door slid shut.
His thoughts returned to that son of a bitch, Addington, sitting on his mountain of old money, costing Micah an exceptional opportunity to invest in Infidelity. Although Micah didn’t know how or when, Addington was going to pay, and pay dearly.
His Lincoln Town Car waited for him in front of his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, making it easy to avoid the chaos of New Year’s Eve in Times Square.
The majority of bodies in the city tonight would be crammed together in the cold, shivering masses of tourists, five hours past needing a bathroom, drunk, with their multicolored beads and hats, dancing in the crowd of thousands.
Micah had every intention of enjoying the slide into the new year with an Old Fashioned in his hand and a beautiful woman on his arm.
With a low tolerance for bullshit, The Sliver, with its exorbitant prices and elite clientele, ensured that he’d have privacy…until he chose otherwise. Sliding into the backseat, his mind rushed back to what was stolen from him.
Micah was new money. He knew going in how that looked to men like Addington, who had been born into generations of wealth and privilege. What men with silver spoons in their mouths never considered was the thing about new money…it had to be earned. If you don’t hustle, you don’t eat.
Old money didn’t understand scrapping in back alleys, making deals out of desperation that involved gambling with one’s very life. Addington didn’t know what it was like to lay his last breath on the line. The adrenaline rush of it. The knowledge that all it would take was one of the many hundreds of variables to go wrong, and that last breath would be ripped from your lungs without even a blink. Micah had laid his very soul on the line, each time more precarious than the time before. Because the more money you had while living in the void between food stamps and private jets, the higher the stakes got in order to reach the next level.
Men like Addington were born into posh bubbles that coddled them. With private schools, designer clothes, brand-new luxury cars for sixteenth birthdays, they never knew hunger, what it felt like to be cold at night, or to wear the same outfit, over and over. They never had to feign indifference because the kids around them in the lunch room had a tray of food and they didn’t.
When those spoiled spawns got older, maybe dabbled in drugs and alcohol, and with their tendencies for overindulgence, letting it take over their lives, their families were right there to buy their way out of trouble and give them a soft place to land.
Pampering made them weak.
Vulnerable.
Because, if their very foundations were stripped from them, they didn’t have those back-alley lessons to sustain them through the battle. They have no survival mode.
They fell when going head to head with men like Micah.
And it was in those moments, with determination born of shit beginnings, that men like Micah dug their claws into the soft, fleshy backs of those helpless pups and clawed their way to the top.
Micah may have lost the battle, but Addington had started a war that Micah would win. He’d pull every tool from his arsenal and forge new ones if need be…whatever it took to ensure Addington, and men like him, knew that, new money or not, Micah was a force to be reckoned with.
His driver glided to a smooth stop in front of a sleek, black awning hanging over a glass door darkened with privacy glass. ‘The Sliver’ was scrawled in white script across the front of the awning, the words small enough that you needed to be within twenty feet to make it out. The austere sign ensured that
no one just walking along ducked in.
He opened the door and stopped at the hostess station, where a svelte, raven-haired hostess waited to greet him. He remembered her well. Simone. There was an edge to her that he recognized. She had scrapped, too. And now she decided who stayed and who went at the most elite bar in Manhattan, and she did so with Dolce & Gabbana gracing her lithe body and diamonds dripping from her ears.
“Good evening, Mr. Alessi. Would you like your usual table tonight?”
“I would, Simone. Yes.” He slid a crisp hundred-dollar bill from his breast pocket and lay it before her. “Consider it a down payment on the matching necklace to go with those earrings.”
Her blood-red lips tipped up in a sly smile. He knew that look. Simone lingered in the lower end of that void between poverty and prestige. The site of a crisp hundred still made her blood race, and elicited a yearning for more.
As long as she kept his usual table free, he’d be happy to rain them on her.
She tilted and bowed her head. “Thank you, Mr. Alessi. Right this way.”
She led him down a dimly-lit hall illuminated by wall sconces, and stopped before a black steel door with a keypad. She punched in a series of numbers with her slim fingers, accessing the centrally illuminated bar surrounded by small, round tables with cushioned leather seats, and booths with high backs. The corner tables offered more space, keeping high-paying customers secluded. She led him to his table, where he welcomed being obscured by shadows so he could gaze at the other patrons to his heart’s content.
With quick curl of Simone’s finger in the air, a waitress appeared table-side. “Welcome, Mr. Alessi. Can I get you your usual?”
“Yes, please. And a bottle of Kona Nigari. Thank you.” He gave her an easy smile and gentle nod.
Her eyes widened and she smiled, the warmth reaching her gaze before hurrying off to the bar, where the bartender deftly worked the tools of the trade and made his Old Fashioned.
Micah knew what surprised her. He had seen it before. It was his use of ‘please and thank you’. You didn’t hear it as much out of old money, because everything was handed to them and they just expected it, manners be damned. Please and thank you didn’t extend to the help. But Micah had been raised by his old Italian grandmother, and if you didn’t use your manners you got the shoe. She wielded a clog with more skill than a nun with a ruler.
He took a certain pleasure in being polite. He’d overheard the whispers, seen the stares. People tended to fear him when they looked at him. With his height, dark looks, and stern, unwavering gaze, he intimidated. Deep down, while he was fueled by a drive to succeed and willingness to cut the throat of whoever he needed to in order to get ahead, he also genuinely enjoyed people. Most people. In rich circles, it seemed as if real friends were as rare as the Hope Diamond.
When he found people he respected and trusted, he kept them. Like Sebastian.
His chipper little server returned with his drinks. “Can I get you anything else? Dinner, perhaps?”
“This is excellent for now…” He knew he had seen her in here once, albeit briefly, so he read her name tag. “Heidi. What is a bubbly young thing like you doing stuck here on New Year’s Eve?”
Her cheeks pinked up, erasing a good five years from her already child-like face. “Earning money for college. My friends are out. Their parents are paying their way. Mine are helping, but they can only do so much, so here I am.”
He drummed his fingertips on the table. “You don’t sound bitter.”
“Why would I be? My mom is a school teacher. My dad is retired military. It’s rather amazing they can even help me at all with NYU. I earned a scholarship, they help, and I do what I have to do to earn the rest. I’m lucky. I have other friends going to state schools. I get to be here, in the middle of it all. This is a small price to pay for that.”
She was a hard worker, but in a different way than he and Simone. She would do what she needed to pay for what she wanted, but her hunger could be abated.
His could not.
“I like you, Heidi. Dedicated and sweet. Do me a favor tonight…keep these coming, and I assure you there will be a generous tip in it for you. Generous enough that you’ll never have a single regret about missing the ball drop.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Alessi. Thank you,” she said just before she scooted away, on to the next customer.
He unbuttoned his jacket, leaned back, crossed his ankle over his knee, and stretched his arm across the chair next to him. He narrowed his eyes and scanned the crowd.
Almost everyone wore black or gray. He glanced down at his own black suit and felt his lip twitch. It was the power color. But the women…for the love of God, give him a pop of color. Something that indicated some sort of personality. Gorgeous was good, but holding an intelligent conversation, that was dynamite. The majority of women at the bar tonight blended with the staff. Oh, a few of them wore cleavage-enhancing fabrics that draped over their curves just right, to tease and tantalize with glimpses of the curve of their breasts, but the stark colors, probably all in an effort to look even thinner, did nothing for him as a man.
Maybe he wouldn’t find that woman for his arm after all. Unfortunate.
He could save himself some time and enter into a year-long contract with a beauty through Infidelity and be done with the hunt, but after the investment opportunity had been stolen he couldn’t bring himself to go there. Soon. Just not yet. He’d have to do something next week. He had a high-profile event to attend, and he would not do it solo. Call him superstitious, but the new year was all about reset for him. He’d begin with attending events coupled as a kind of social experiment to see how it benefited his business endeavors and opened doors.
Every year had brought him a new level of success, and this year would be no different. He took a long sip of his drink and rolled his upper lip inward to get every last bit of drink. He set the glass down and glanced up at the bar to the cluster of females on the hunt. Fruity drinks dangled from their gem-embellished hands, their velvety skin on full display. Light jazz hummed in the background.
He appreciated the view as the rich liquor warmed his belly, but it was the glimpses of gold that winked through the mass of women that made him sit straight in his chair and take notice.
Next came a flash of shapely legs.
And bare arms, the left wrist adorned with a tennis bracelet.
And when the view cleared…
A goddess.
She looked like the finest champagne. Golden. Sparkling. Her shimmer in constant motion.
His eyes traced over the blonde waves clipped low over her left shoulder with a jewel- encrusted clip. Her slim neck, a neck that begged to be caressed, called to his lips.
The dress was magnificent. It cut straight from shoulder to shoulder across the back, regal and demure, but the short garment revealed long, creamy thighs.
His palms itched to touch her. He flexed his fingers and curled them around his cold glass.
She fidgeted on the leather stool at the bar, her delicate hand reaching for the hem of her dress, trying in vain to conceal some of the skin on display.
His goddess was playing vixen, and wasn’t entirely comfortable in the role.
What brought her here? What idiot would leave a prize like her alone on New Year’s Eve?
Micah didn’t know, but he intended to find out.
She scanned the area, threw back the last of her wine, then pulled a pen from her purse and scrawled something on her napkin. The minute she lifted the pen from the napkin she read the words, closed her eyes, and crumpled the napkin in her tight fist.
Oh, yeah, he was going to find out plenty.
Chapter 2
Who did Beatrice think she was kidding? She didn’t have a wild streak. She didn’t have any streak. On a bad day, even at that time of the month, or after a break up, she couldn’t force herself to eat cookie dough straight from the wrapper.
Maybe whatever emotional component normal pe
ople had managed to skip her.
All of her friends were having a perfectly lovely time in Rye at Evangeline Thomaston’s waterfront home. She could be wearing a comfortable pantsuit, drinking champagne, indulging in roasted duck, and laying out her projects for the following year. Faye had just started a fund- raising campaign for the Special Olympics. Cassidy Williams was eyeball-deep in the expansion of a series of women’s shelters in the city and could use help.
Enough projects floated around for Beatrice to stay busy seven days a week if she wished. Besides the projects, half of her time could easily evaporate attending the many parties and business dinners her parents held.
She closed her eyes, and gripped the napkin in her hands like a lifeline to a different reality. One she never knew she wanted.
Sometimes she thought if she attended one more dinner as the prized daughter of Edith and Wallace Addington, she might just pitch herself off a tall building.
Her thigh came in contact with the leather again and she tugged at the bottom of her dress. She’d lost her head at Saks when she had overheard the elicit adventures of a random shopper in the dressing room next to hers. A five-thousand-dollar cocktail dress later, and here she was at a club with the fast and rich, yanking on an indecent hemline.
She looked like a Fourth of July firework in the middle of a high-powered cocktail party. Just further evidence that this fast world was not the world for her.
Her skin flushed and she took a sip of the fresh glass of Chardonnay that appeared before her. “Excuse me.” She raised her hand in the air to get the bartender’s attention.
He smiled and glided over to her, propping both hands on the counter. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, I just wanted to let you know this is my last one. I’m ready for my check. Please.”
“Of course, I’ll be right back,” he said.