by A. V. Asher
Mercedes’s eyes followed him. “You think I cheated on you? Why would you think that?”
“Because you told me so,” Alec ground out. “At least, I thought it was you.”
Mercedes was at a loss for words.
“Back at the safehouse, you said something about Alec not even sending you a text to break it off,” Declan said. “I was there, and I know Alec was quite upset when you stopped talking to him. About a week later, you sent him a text message, ending it.”
“I don’t understand . . .” Mercedes tried to wrap her mind around Declan’s words.
“It’s true.” Alec’s voice was pained. His stormy eyes were caught between anger and regret. “I never stopped calling. At least not until you were good and done with me.”
Done with him?
The realization of what this meant hit her. The oxygen seemed sucked from the room. Mercedes’s chest heaved as she tried to pull in enough air.
“We were able to hack the phone system they were using and found messages,” Declan said. “Neither of you have heard these, so . . .”
Cressida, who was sitting at the counter with a computer in front of her, pressed a key. Mercedes’s voice rang through the air, carefree and joyful. Alec’s shoulders tensed.
Hey Alec. Just got home from dinner. Charlie sends her love, Luke said to tell you that you’re an asshole. I disagree, of course. Call me when you wake up.
Why were they playing this? She told them she’d called him after she got home that night.
Another message played. At the sound of his voice, the blood left her face.
Good morning, darling. I hope you had a lovely birthday dinner. Hopefully, you’re not too hungover on that piss my cousin calls whisky. I have a meeting at two o’clock my time. Call me when you can.
Her voice played again. She remembered the messages she’d left like they were yesterday.
Hey you. Where’d you go? I secured a house on the lake. So excited. I need a break from this case, and I can’t wait to see you. Anyway, I sent the listing. Let me know what you think.
Message after message played. Mercedes’s calls tapered off, but his kept coming. By the time he threatened to change his ticket and fly to San Francisco, she was no longer even trying.
He kept trying.
Hey Sadie, It’s Alec. I got your text, and I’m . . . well, I’m confused. I thought everything was going well. So . . . um. Please, call me? I think we can work it out if you’ll just talk to me.
Alec’s last message stabbed her heart. His voice was strained but strong.
It’s Alec. I need to make this my last call. I’d hoped we could work it out. He cleared his throat as if speaking was painful. Clearly not. I just . . . I wish I could understand how everything came apart. But it’s time for me to move on. Best of luck to you . . . my darling. You’re an amazing person and deserve to be happy.
Tears flowed down her cheeks as she tried to make sense of everything. Mason brought her a box of tissues, and she took a handful. Her hands needed to stay busy.
“How did this happen?” The dagger in her throat made it come out more like a half-whisper.
It was Shake who answered. “Someone went into your accounts and manipulated the inbound calls and texts to a third-party number. Basically, whenever you called Alec, it was forwarded to the number. And the same for his calls to you. A voicemail captured the messages from both of you.”
“Who?” She was trying to keep her breathing under control. “And why?”
“Jason.” A steel edge had taken over Alec’s voice.
Mercedes gaped at him. “There’s no way he could have done that. I didn’t even know him.”
Alec strode across the room and sat on the coffee table in front of her. His warm hands wrapped around hers. “He’s a corporate spy. He’s paid to dig up information his employer deems valuable. There’s little he wouldn’t do for that information.”
“Why would a corporate spy want to manipulate our relationship?”
“To get me out of the way.”
“That’s an enormous hassle. There are hundreds of single lawyers in the Bay Area he could have used to cover his work.”
“Darling.” Alec shook his head, his blue eyes softening. “You were his work.”
The thundering in her ears made it hard to hear. “That can’t be,” she whispered.
“Think about what you were working on. Now, think about what I do for a living. I’m not a regular bloke, so to speak. I’ve spent my career being trained by MI6 as an intelligence officer, and now, I own a private security firm.” He gently cupped her cheek. “What do you think I would have done for you if I’d been there when your world fell apart?”
“You would have looked for answers.”
Alec’s eyes were filled with pain. “They had to make sure we never spoke again.”
Mercedes’s mind worked to process it all. Jason had removed Alec from the picture and then took that place for himself. Full access to everything she had.
Think about what you were working on.
It hit her like a brick to the gut. The biggest case of her career, her advancement into the junior associate position. Billions of dollars at stake. Jason was there through it all.
“Oh, my god. Seth?”
Alec didn’t have to say anything. His eyes held all the confirmation she needed.
The room narrowed and spun.
Her mind flashed to the small conference room, the detective greeting her with a grim handshake. He had news Seth’s body had been found, but instead of telling her where Seth was, he showed her. Seth’s bloated, purple corpse floating in the shallow rocks of Richmond Bay.
Jason did that.
He said he loved her, then he destroyed her life.
“I can’t breathe.” Mercedes jumped up and paced the room, the others watching her. They couldn’t help her now. She was losing her fucking mind.
Desperate to regain her breath, she hurried to the back door, wrenching it open. The clouds had opened up, and a soft rain pattered all around. Mercedes didn’t care. She gulped the cool air.
At least this time, she recognized the panic attack for what it was. She leaned against a tree and tried to get control, focusing on the sound of the rapids crashing against the nearby rocks.
It was too much.
She’d been screwing Seth’s murderer. More than that, she had given him access to end Seth’s life.
Bile rose in her stomach.
Quiet footfalls on the grass made her look up. The darkness only revealed his tall silhouette. He wrapped a thick sweater around her shoulders. Warmth enveloped her, and she shivered against it.
“Come sit with me?” Alec took her hand and led her to a covered swing at the bank of the river. Mercedes sat and pulled her knees up. Alec sat next to her, and she put her head on his shoulder, willing herself to stop trembling.
“I don’t know what to do. I feel . . . paralyzed,” she choked out. “How could this have happened? He took everything from me. Why?”
“There are a lot of questions I don’t have answers to. But I’m going to do everything I know to get it all back for you.”
And I would have been there for you before . . . if I had known.
A sob escaped her, and she tried to hold it back, but the tears kept silently coming. Alec slipped his arm around her and pulled her tight against him.
“It’s alright, darling. Let it go. When you’re done, we’ll make plans.”
The fight went out of her. She broke against him, clinging to his warmth.
Jason had robbed her of everything she was. She could name them, the things he’d systematically ripped from her. Charlotte, friends, her career, music, self-worth.
Alec.
All ripped away with little protest from her. The raw wound that had been her life for three years was laid bare.
Eventually, the tears subsided, and fatigue set in. A heavy ache in her chest crushed her, pulling her down. Alec anchored her, b
ut nothing could keep her heart from thrashing in the currents.
The night chill was breaking through, and Alec shivered beside her. She couldn’t keep him outside all night. Whether she wanted to or not, she had to face the way things were.
Taking a long, cleansing breath of fresh air, Mercedes sat up.
“I think I’m ready.”
Chapter Forty
The slump of Mercedes’s shoulders was enough to gut Alec. She was a hell of a strong woman, but there was only so much a person could take.
Someone had to be held responsible for the shit that went down. He wanted to believe that Jason Marsh, or whoever the fuck he was, was the only one he’d have to kill, but it was looking like an entire team would need to be neutralized.
Cressida met them at the door and pulled Mercedes into a hug. “We’re going to get these fuckers.”
Mercedes gave a tearful smile. She had the look of someone walking through the fog, lost in the mist. Hanging up the jacket he’d given her, she walked to the couch and sat. Her fingers tapped on her knee.
“What’s his name?” The question broke through the silence like a cannon.
“Edward,” Cressida said. “Edward Jason Hollis.”
“Edward Jason Hollis,” Mercedes repeated slowly, her empty stare aimed at the floor. “He doesn’t look like an Edward.”
Alec’s heart wrenched to see her so defeated. The blaze he had seen in her hours ago had dimmed.
Mercedes rubbed her eyes. “Alright. You need information. Where do I begin?”
“The case you were working on. If I remember correctly, it was a lawsuit between two pharmaceutical companies, right?” Alec probed. “Why don’t you start there?”
“Our client was a small pharmaceutical company called Henley Medical. They’d created a new painkiller called Cannativa, one of the first derived from the cannabis plant. If it did everything it was expected to do, patients would have access to long-term pain relief without the addiction that comes with opioids.
“For the American Food and Drug Administration to approve a drug, it goes through four phases of human trials. Henley completed the first two, but the next two are extremely expensive. Often, small companies can’t complete them alone, so they sell their formula to larger research labs. Henley sold the Cannativa formula to Cooper Pharmaceuticals for eighty-six million dollars.”
“Holy shit!” Shake exclaimed. “Eighty-six million dollars? That’s insane. Did they not get the money then?”
“Oh, they got the eighty-six million up front.”
“Well hell, I’d have taken the money and ran for it. Why did they sue?”
“Because the contract stipulated that for each milestone the drug hits in phases three and four, Cooper would pay an additional dividend to Henley, with the largest payout to be when it received the final FDA approval. Once it was on the market, they’d receive a percentage of the sales.”
“So how much would it be when it got the approval?” Declan asked.
“In total, just over a billion dollars, not including the sales. With sales, it would be upwards of three to five billion in the next three years.”
“Fuck me. That’s the type of cases you were working on?” Shake blurted.
“You knew she was a lawyer.” Cressida rolled her eyes at her brother.
“Well sure, but I thought it was the ‘sue your crazy neighbor’ kind or something.” Shake shrugged in disbelief.
Alec cleared his throat. “So, what happened in phase three then?”
“There was no phase three. That’s why Henley hired us. For months, they waited for word the trial had started, but Cooper gave them the runaround. So, we filed a complaint for breach of contract, which forced a response. Cooper Pharma claimed Henley’s trial data in phases one and two were flawed, and they would need to restart the entire process. Years’ worth of research and study were lost. And because Cooper claimed they were unprepared for phase one, they would need at least two years to get started.”
“So, on hold indefinitely,” Alec said.
“Essentially, yeah. We were looking at years of litigation with little proof they were lying. But our team caught a breakthrough.”
Mercedes’s team had discovered a conflict of interest. Marcus Cooper, the CEO and president of Cooper Pharma had created another drug, Sutanyl.
“It’s a derivative of Fentanyl, one of the most dangerous opioids on the market. The drugmaker claimed they somehow removed the habit-forming side effects. It’s incredibly popular as pain management, even today.”
“They offered it to you in the hospital, and you refused it,” Mason said. “I couldn’t understand why you would want to go without.”
“That’s right. You should never take that shit.”
“Why would Cooper’s stake in this other drug matter? Wouldn’t he make more money from the new drug?” Shake asked.
“No, it was a catch-and-kill scheme,” Mercedes explained. “Cannativa would have been a direct competitor of Sutanyl. Even though he’s not directly named on the company, Marcus Cooper receives sizable dividends from Sutanyl sales. And it’s a lot of money.”
“Why wasn’t this conflict discovered prior to the sale?” Cressida asked.
“Cooper didn’t make it easy to find the link. There were name changes and hidden corporations changing hands several times. We were running out of avenues when a whistle-blower stepped forward.”
Mercedes stopped, her voice tightening with emotion. “Seth Collins was a chemist who worked directly under Marcus Cooper. His sister overdosed on opioids when she was nineteen. He was committed to ending the opioid crisis.”
“When Marcus Cooper directed him to kill the trials and falsify his data, he came to us. We built a solid case against Cooper and were days away from presenting everything to the feds. The case would’ve exploded, with worldwide consequences.”
Her voice broke. “And then . . . I made a mistake.” Tears came to her eyes, but she cleared her throat and pushed on. “I attended a retirement party for one of my colleagues at this high-end restaurant. I drank too much, and the next morning my laptop was missing. Sometime that night, my account was used to locate all the files. The most damning documents Seth provided were gone. Deleted and unrecoverable. The same night, our office was broken into, and they took the hard copies. By that afternoon, the police informed us Seth was missing. Without his evidence, we had to drop the suit.”
“How much did you drink?” Declan said.
“Honestly, I don’t know. They had bottles of wine on the tables. Jason kept topping my glass off. Next thing I knew, I was waking up at home to twenty missed calls and hell breaking loose.”
Those absolute fuckers.
Mercedes looked between Alec and Declan. “I was drugged, wasn’t I?”
Alec met her eyes. “It looks that way.”
Silence filled the room as everyone took in the information.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Cressida said. “If Jas—Edward, whatever the hell his name is, was just a plant to get information, then why did he put Mercedes in the hospital?”
“It’s two separate things,” Alec said. “The mission was to keep her isolated and reliant on him, so he’d have access to what they needed. The physical abuse was all him. He’s like any other dirtbag who beats women. Control issues, raging narcissism, an insane amount of jealousy.”
Shake piped up. “But they got what they wanted from her—whistle-blower’s dead. The case was dropped. Should’ve been a done deal in San Francisco, right?”
“Should have been,” Alec agreed. Shake was putting to words what he’d already been thinking.
“So why drag her all the way here? Why didn’t he piss off back to wherever?”
“Crazy obsession?” Mason offered.
Shake shook his head. “Nah, mate. Sadie had twenty-four-hour surveillance the entire time she was in hospital, and none of it was by him.”
Cressida finished her brother’s thou
ght. “So, what did they have to gain from it?”
Mercedes got up from her chair and walked contemplatively to the kitchen, arms tightly crossed. Alec could read her face. Fear etched with understanding.
“They still want something from her.”
She closed her eyes.
Christ, she knows why.
When her gaze landed on Alec’s, he knew she’d had enough. “I think Sadie needs a break and a little time to process. Let’s regroup tomorrow.”
Mercedes shot him a wary smile.
One of the worst parts of all this was watching the light go out in her eyes.
The team packed their equipment and headed to their cars. They would stay the night at the inn. Alec followed them out to the driveway.
Shake and Mason took one car back, but Cressida and Declan stayed behind.
“She knows what they want, doesn’t she?” Declan asked.
“Aye, I think so.”
Declan sighed. “We’re going to need that information if we have even a chance of helping her out of this.”
“I know. What about what she gave us tonight? Will we be able to use it?”
“It’s doubtful,” Cressida said. “We can prove someone interfered with your relationship three years ago, and that’s it.”
“What about working on the Cooper Pharma part of it? He has to have a role in this. Otherwise, who’s paying them for their work?”
“We’ll dig and see what we find. But without the whistle-blower, we’d be in the same spot her firm was.”
Cressida gave him a pat on the shoulder and got into her car, but Declan stayed where he was.
“About the past,” Declan said. “I don’t know what you’re planning for the rest of the evening, but if it doesn’t include sweeping that woman off her fucking feet, you’re a god damn moron.”
Alec scoffed at his cousin’s bluntness. “Thanks for the tip.”
“I’m serious, Alec,” Declan said. “Three years ago, she messed you up pretty bad. Now you have the truth of it. If you won’t fight for her now, you don’t deserve her.”