Peyton’s Price: A Singular Obsession Novel

by Leroux, Lucy

  “No. The papers are from Priya,” she said. The need to confess all was overwhelming, but Anisa had appeared at the end of the food court.

  The girl was walking fast, turning her head every which way as if she were both looking for Peyton and checking to see if she’d been followed.

  “Oh, crap.” She grabbed Matthias arm. “You have every right to be suspicious because I did keep a secret, but you must trust me now. I need you to leave.”

  Matthias’ lips parted in protest, but she tightened her hold. “Please. I think she’ll leave if she sees you, and she needs help.”

  Desperate, she gave him a little push. He went, but not far.

  Shooting her a supercilious glare, Matthias straightened his jacket with a snap. He walked to the left a few feet, then settled at the table next to her with a defiant air.

  Trying not to cringe, Peyton forced her features to smooth. The last thing she wanted was for Anisa to see her mid-panic.

  The girl finally spotted her. She hurried over, then sat in the chair Matthias just vacated. “Thank God you are still here,” she said, out of breath, her English more stilted than usual. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Omer’s afternoon meeting was canceled, and he wanted to, um, you know…”

  “Yeah, I know,” Peyton said, gritting her teeth.

  “I had to wait until he fell asleep.” Anisa’s face was tight, but there was a resolution there Peyton hadn’t seen the first time they met. “Was your friend able to get me a new passport?”

  Peyton nodded, hyperaware Matthias sat just behind her. Her hands shook as she took the thick envelope out of her purse.

  “Thank you for sending that picture so quickly. It was perfectly lit for the ID. There’s also a birth certificate with the same name and a social security card. The typewritten sheets include a plausible backstory you can tell people if you can’t make up one on your own. We also wrote up a list of schools with flexible admissions policies if you decide to finish high school. You’ll have to work on softening your accent, but you can always say you spent your childhood abroad.”

  Leaning over, she pressed the envelope into Anisa’s hand. “I’ve also included a cashier’s check. It will be honored at any major bank. There’s more than enough to pay your tuition for a few years plus living expenses. Are you ready?”

  Anisa’s head bobbed up and down. She gave the contents of the envelope only a cursory glance before clutching it to her chest. “Yes.”

  “Good. There’s an Uber waiting at the south entrance by the cart with the sunglasses. It will take you to the Chunnel. You’ll fly to the States out of Paris, not the UK.”

  A tear ran down Anisa’s cheek. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Peyton had all but forgotten Matthias’ presence. “You do that by getting away from that creep and having a nice life, one where you get to choose who you are with,” she said fiercely.

  The girl’s chin quivered, but she didn’t cry. Anisa launched herself out of her chair, throwing her arms around Peyton. Then she straightened abruptly, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands.

  The gesture, so distinctive of youth, brought tears to her own eyes, but Peyton fought them. They wouldn’t help Anisa. Murmuring words of encouragement, she hugged her goodbye.

  Anisa hesitated. “I think I was careful, but if Omer finds out you helped me, he will do something bad. He has a temper—a bad one.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she promised, aware Matthias had twisted in his seat. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel his eyes boring a hole in the back of her head.

  She waited until Anisa had disappeared before slowly turning to face him. Or rather face his shoes. Peyton was having trouble looking Matthias in the eye.

  When she did, she wished she hadn’t. He stood with his hands on his hips, his expression so dark it made her want to run and hide.

  “Please don’t look at me like that.”

  A muscle in his cheek twitched.

  “Matthias, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”

  “Was that one of Priya’s new-life packets?” he interrupted.

  “It was, but I made her help me.” Peyton shifted her weight from foot to foot, almost dancing in her anxiety. “Please don’t fire her.”

  Silence.

  Oh, this was bad. She’d screwed up so badly. “Matthias, please talk to me.”

  He held up a hand. The commanding gesture was so imperious and cold she quailed despite herself. It certainly drove home the fact Matthias headed a centuries-old empire.

  This must be what his Viking ancestors looked like before they sacked a city.

  When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Stop. Just stop.”

  This was excruciating. “I have to explain.”

  “Not now, Peyton,” Matthias said, averting his give and shaking his head a little. “I have to go.”

  “But—”

  He looked at her, his brown eyes glacial. “I can’t talk to you right now.”

  Stupefied, she stood there rooted to the spot as he turned on his heel and stalked away.

  Chapter 36

  Liam could hear the argument all the way down the hall. He frowned, closing the jeweler’s box he’d taken out to admire.

  He slipped it into his pocket as Matthias burst into the hotel suite. Peyton trailed behind him, almost chasing him.

  “I can’t believe you’re giving me the silent treatment,” she was saying, her voice pleading. “Just yell at me if you have to. I know you want to.”

  Matthias ignored her.

  Liam could tell by the look on his face that it was bad. He had only ever seen that expression once before—after Matthias had heard about the deaths in the ill-fated trafficker’s raid.

  Liam had already broken things off when the Belarus massacre had happened, but he’d flown out to the Ormen Lange when Priya called. They may not have been lovers then, but his friend had needed him.

  Matthias had been pretty broken up at first, but he seemed to recover quickly. And then he’d asked me to leave. Back then, Liam had taken it as a confirmation their relationship had run its course.

  He didn’t think that now.

  Liam was about to say something to alert the pair to his presence when Peyton forcibly stopped Matthias, grabbing his arm. “I had to help her.”

  Matthias closed his eyes before gently pushing her away. “I said not now.”

  Tears began to stream down Peyton’s cheeks. “Liam would never walk away from a fight.”

  “I am not Liam,” Matthias yelled.

  “No, I am,” he said, breaking his stunned silence. “What the hell is happening?”

  Matthias and Peyton turned to him. The tears streaming down her cheeks gutted him—they always had. He walked over, attempting to put his arm around her, but she shied away.

  “I don’t deserve to be comforted. He should be mad. I lied to him. By omission, but I still lied.”

  The whole story came spilling out in fits and starts, but Liam soon understood exactly what had happened. To his relief, Matthias stayed for the entire explanation as well, but his determined silence was not a good sign.

  Suppressing a groan, Liam sat on the couch, rubbing his temples in an attempt to ward off the headache starting to build in the front of his skull.

  Peyton perched at the edge of the armchair. She stared at her hands, completely downcast. Matthias held up the wall opposite her. Liam sat in between, instinct telling him to appear as neutral as possible even though he wanted to crush them both in his arms until they started looking at each other—and him.

  “I understand that Peyton was wrong not to tell you, but I also understand her trepidation in delaying the truth given your history with this sort of thing.”

  “Are you seriously trying the role of peacemaker?” Matthias asked with a sniff.

  “It feels weird for me, too,” Liam grudgingly admitted.

  Liam was usually the one who needed a mediator. Maggie or his brother usually took turns cle
aning up after him. When he fought, it tended to get messy. There had even been one time when a competitor lunged at him across a conference room table after he’d destroyed him in a negotiation.

  Something told him this was going to be so much worse than that. Where the hell did he start?

  “Matthias, I know you’re upset, but I also know Peyton. There’s no way in the world she would have turned her back on someone who asked for help.”

  Peyton cleared her throat, her hands twisting her skirt into knots. “Technically, I offered and she accepted.”

  Liam’s smile grew tight. He surreptitiously made a slashing movement across his neck, one that Matthias caught.

  The other man rolled his eyes. “I understand that. What I don’t understand is why she didn’t tell us.”

  Peyton was going to tear a hole in her skirt. “I was worried you would stop me,” she said. “Time was of the essence.”

  Matthias threw up his hands. “You still should have said something. You heard the girl—her boyfriend is dangerous. He could have had her followed, then your part in this mess would have been exposed. You might have been seriously harmed.”

  “It was not a mess,” she argued. “My plan worked. Anisa got away! And that man was her molester, not her boyfriend. She was a child—I don’t care if she was almost eighteen. She is not even legal, and her mother sold her to that pervert. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”

  “Of course I would have—but I wouldn’t have done the drop and evacuation in person,” Matthias snapped back. “I would have sent trained personnel to do it. The pervert would have never even known I was involved. And if you’d only told me what you had planned, he wouldn’t know you were!”

  Liam passed a hand over his face. “To be fair, we have no idea if this Omer knows anything. And now that Peyton has come clean, we can take steps to protect her.”

  “I was going to tell you. Despite my precautions, I knew there was still a risk. I don’t know much about Omer or his resources—I didn’t find much, but Priya is still looking.”

  “Priya knows?” Liam asked.

  “Yes, and please don’t fire her,” she said, peeking at Matthias from under her lashes.

  “Priya did not compromise her security. Her job is not in jeopardy.”

  Despite Matthias’ clipped tone, Peyton visibly relaxed. “Thank you. I know you wouldn’t have wanted me to do this—”

  “I never said that,” Matthias interrupted. “But you should have read me in from the start. That way, we could have planned and made it safe for you.”

  She frowned. “You mean cut me out of it entirely.”

  Matthias was close to sneering. “Isn’t this the part where you tell me Liam would have never turned his back on a woman in distress?”

  “I would never say that,” she shouted. “After all you’ve done to help people, how can you even think that?”

  This was getting out of hand. “And we have to turn our back on people in trouble all the time,” he said with a sigh.

  Peyton flinched, a question in her eyes as she studied him. Even Matthias looked confused.

  Liam let himself fall back against the cushions. “Stuff happens behind closed doors. And when you’re in the hotel business, that’s hundreds of doors.”

  “Liam, you help women every day. The gold star rooms—” she began, referring to the program they had set up to help women on the run from abusive partners.

  “Those do help,” he acknowledged. “But those are clear-cut cases. You, of all people, understand we run into a lot of situations that aren’t clear. People are good at hiding things they don’t want others to see.”

  He addressed Matthias next, who was still leaning against the wall. “You don’t know how frustrating it is, knowing in your gut that someone is in trouble, but you can’t do anything about it because there is nothing—no sign or evidence that anything is wrong.”

  Liam broke off to get up and pour himself a drink. He tossed half back before resuming. “I get the impulse to leap into the fray. It’s an admirable trait—one you share. It’s one of the reasons I love the two of you. This won’t be the last time something like this comes up. But in the future, we can do it together. We just have to agree on how to go about it from now on.”

  “That’s what I want,” Peyton whispered, her heart in her eyes as she silently pleaded with Matthias.

  “Agreed,” he said, still terse, but Liam could tell he had softened.

  Thank God. “Good. Do you think we can get past this now?”

  “No.”

  Liam shifted to Peyton, his breath catching as he recognized the signs of another bomb about to drop.

  “No, we can’t,” she continued, her face creased. “Because there’s more.”

  This time, Liam did groan.

  “What is it?” Matthias’ voice was flat, devoid of any trace of emotion.

  She flattened her hands, straightening her skirt out. “I have the Interpol file on the Belarus disaster.”

  “Since when?” Matthias was aghast.

  “How did you get it?” Liam demanded, even though he was fairly sure he knew.

  Peyton took a fortifying breath. “I asked Ethan Thomas to put me in touch with his friend Mason. Mason has been at Interpol for a while, but he didn’t know the details of what happened. Needless to say, he was upset when he investigated it and decided to look into it further. He—he also sent some confidential internal communiques.”

  “Why?” he and Matthias said at the same time.

  “I think he wanted a second opinion from a hacker.”

  “You’re not a hacker,” Liam objected.

  “Not in the traditional sense, but I’ve spent enough time in backchannels of the dark web to recognize what he wanted me to find.”

  “I can’t believe this.” Matthias scrubbed his face hard with both hands.

  She stood. “I know you blame yourself for what happened in Belarus. But it wasn’t you or your staff.”

  “Peyton—”

  Shaking her head, she put up her hands. “Matthias, I have read the case file and Priya’s records over and over again. You shut it all down because, deep down, you believed someone on your staff leaked the information and sold the operation out to those traffickers, but you were wrong.”

  That was something Liam had suspected, but given Matthias’ refusal to discuss the subject, Liam had never articulated it.

  Peyton moved to stand in front of Matthias. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  The cords in Matthias’ neck were far too prominent. “That is very easy to say, but—”

  “No, I mean it. Neither you nor your staff was responsible for those deaths. But there was a leak. Matthias, you need to hear this—those girls were already dead when the agents got there.”

  Matthias shuffled back a step, blinking. Liam could feel his shock. He fucking shared it.

  “How do you know that?” he asked when Matthias seemed at a loss for words.

  “Because the girls you were trying to save died before you received the message giving you the auction’s location. So your message to Interpol disclosing that couldn’t have been intercepted by a mole in your staff. The liver temperatures established a more precise timeline, but they were doctored after the fact. Someone had tipped them off hours before you or anyone who works for you knew where they were.”

  “How do you know that?” Matthias asked.

  “Mason. He found the circumstances suspicious. To him, the layout of the bodies had a staged quality. And after talking to him, I understood why.” She broke off, rubbing her arm as if she was cold. “They were exceedingly difficult to look at, but once I forced myself to, I could see it. The bodies did appear posed. But the time of death was determined by those temperature readings. Mason discovered they had been changed by comparing the ones in the file and the handwritten notes by the forensic personnel who took them. The communiques he had me look at prove someone warned the slavers about
the raid. Someone in his office.”

  “The mole is in Interpol?” Matthias staggered to the couch, collapsing next to Liam. “All this time, I thought I missed something—that is was one of my people who leaked the information.”

  Liam finally caught on, feeling like an idiot. He rubbed Matthias’ back. “And to be safe, you shut down your whole operation.”

  “For a brief time, Priya shared your opinion,” Peyton continued. “But her personal investigation didn’t turn anything up. And she questioned everything your group did a thousand times. Probably more.”

  Matthias stared at his hands. “I realized she was double and triple checking everything, but, for some reason, I couldn’t absolve myself of the responsibility.”

  “At least you had a therapist come in for the staff,” Liam pointed out. “You did support them.”

  “Only to deal with the trauma right after the fact, but just because I wanted to bury everything doesn’t mean Priya or the others did.” He inhaled audibly. “I didn’t do right by them.”

  Liam put his arm around him. “That’s debatable. I think you did the best you could under crap circumstances.”

  Matthias was quiet for a long time. Peyton knelt in front him, taking his hands. “I don’t want you involved in the Interpol mole hunt,” he told her. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Liam leaned forward until he could touch her, too. “I agree. Whoever was responsible had no problem with the deaths of almost a dozen young girls and two bodyguards. They’re a monster.”

  “My involvement is over,” she promised. “I told Mason I would write up a report on my findings, but while they prove the existence of a mole, there’s no way to identify him or her, not with the data he gave me. I would need more. Even then, there’s no guarantee I could track the mole down.”

  “Don’t let this Mason guy push you into that,” Matthias said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Peyton let her head bang on his knee with a despondent thump. “I won’t. I’ve done enough to damage this relationship.”

  “You haven’t done that.” Liam nudged Matthias in the ribs. “She didn’t, did she?”

  Liam held his breath as the other man maintained a stoic silence.