Secret: A Stone Billionaire Series Novel (The Stone Billionaire Series Book 5)

by Kaya Woodward

  Stress is now all that I am feeling.

  “Well, what the fuck! Why didn’t you say anything, then, you jerk?” I rage at Evan.

  “I asked him not to,” Merc’s deep voice is in my ear.

  That voice!

  I thought I’d never hear Merc say anything again.

  That day at the funeral, as his mother sobbed for her only son?

  Merc broke my fucking heart, and now it’s breaking all over again!

  “You fucking piece of shit!” I turn on him.

  “Leigha,” Merc says.

  He grabs my arms, and I struggle against him, but he holds tight.

  “Get away from me!” is all I can say.

  He wraps his arms around my waist, drawing me closer.

  He stares in my eyes, and I feel my knees going weak.

  “Get away!” I repeat.

  “Leigha,” Merc repeats my name.

  “Stop it,” I say, sobbing.

  The tears are close.

  So close…

  My resolve to hate him weakens further as he holds me tight against him, and I’m forced to realize that the man I thought I knew, I now know nothing about.

  “Why?” I ask.

  Merc looks in my eyes, and wipes away a tear with his thumb.

  “It was necessary, Leigha. I know that probably isn’t what you want to hear, but it was just something I had to do,” Merc says.

  “I’m sorry,” he tells me.

  “Sorry for what?” I spit back, angry again.

  I am furious at him!

  He looks sad.

  “Sorry for breaking my heart? For killing your mother’s soul? For faking your own Goddamn death?” I add.

  There are so many things I want to ask.

  There are so many things I need to know!

  “Isn’t there a part of you that’s at least slightly happy to see me?” Merc asks.

  My rage stops dead as soon as he says that because I am.

  Merc alive makes me feel like I’m glued back together again after I fell apart five years ago.

  “Why?” I say, because I don’t want to admit to anything.

  “He works for MI6,” Evan says, darkly, and I am reminded that he’s here with us.

  For the first time, I feel like Evan is invading a private moment between Merc and me.

  Merc only nods.

  He tips my head back, holding my face gently under my chin with a finger.

  “Come here,” he says gruffly.

  Then, Merc pulls me roughly into his arms.

  It’s all I can manage; to hug him back; cling to him.

  I pray to God that I am not dreaming.

  How many times did I wish Merc wasn’t dead?

  And now, my wish is come true!

  I don’t know how long he holds onto me for, but it doesn’t feel nearly as long as it could be when Merc lets me go.

  “How have you been?” Merc asks.

  “I don’t know how to answer that,” I say honestly.

  My hand traces the new scar on his forehead.

  “Listen, I’m sorry to break up the reunion here,” Evan starts.

  He doesn’t sound sorry in the slightest.

  “What the fuck are you doing here Merc?” Evan asks.

  “I could ask you the same question,” Merc fires back.

  “You first,” Evan insists.

  “No, you, go ahead,” Merc replies.

  “I insist,” Evan says through gritted teeth.

  My head moves back and forth like a ping-pong ball as Merc and Evan argue.

  “Stop it!” I yell finally.

  “We’re looking for Isaac Miller,” I shout over their petty argument.

  It’s not that I don’t understand Evan’s anger.

  I do.

  But, I don’t know why he’s all fired up and ready to go.

  “Same here,” Merc says.

  Should I bother asking him why?

  Will he even tell me anything?

  “Why did you drag Leigha into this? What business of yours was that?” Merc spits at Evan.

  “You son-of-a-” Evan rages at him.

  I know what’s coming, even before Evan crosses the room and sends his left hook flying directly at Merc’s face, and I barely manage to take a step back before Merc returns the favor.

  Jesus Christ.

  All I do is shake my head as Merc and Evan struggle against each other before they hit the polished hardwood floor and Evan lands another punch.

  “Guys!” I scream.

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” Evan shouts, ignoring me.

  “What is your fucking problem?” Merc screams back at him.

  “Guys!” I yell over both of them.

  My shouts do nothing as Merc and Evan wrestle each other.

  Merc lands a solid punch against Evan’s face, and I see blood.

  That doesn’t stop Evan, however, and he hooks his leg around Merc before pushing him over and against the floor.

  Then, he begins to pound his fists on Merc, who narrowly misses a few punches.

  “Evan!” I scream his name as loud as I possibly can.

  Evan looks up at me, and Merc lands one last punch that sends Evan right into a side table, knocking everything off it, as one of the legs breaks from underneath it.

  “Are you finished?” Merc yells at Evan.

  “Jesus Christ! Your both fucking children!” I shout.

  I just shake my head as I move into the state-of-the-art kitchen and grab a tray of ice.

  I’m not going to help Evan.

  Fuck that lying asshole!

  I hand him the tray, and he pops out a couple cubes, holding them to his face.

  He passes the ice to Merc.

  Merc presses a couple of ice cubes to his face, glaring at Evan, and then me as well.

  “You shouldn’t be fighting, you jerks! I assume we’re all on the same team,” I point out to both of them.

  “Well, I don’t know who’s team he’s on,” Evan spits at Merc, gesturing with his thumb.

  “Goddamnit Evan, you never see things the way they are. You never did!” Merc shouts.

  His sentence is laced with a familiar annoyance.

  “Merc, stop it!” I urge him.

  “No, he needs to know! He’s fucking blind to everything around him; only sees what he wants to see,” Merc continues.

  “Merc!” I scream at him.

  Then, I childishly stomp my foot.

  Merc’s gaze meets mine, and the urgency in his familiar brown eyes doesn’t fade.

  God, how I miss that look.

  I feel myself getting wet.

  Merc’s always been passionate, and he’s a man in every sense of the word.

  As he rises from the floor to hand me the ice cube tray I can’t get over how different he looks.

  With a haircut and a proper dress shirt that highlights his rippling muscles, that familiar attraction is still there.

  We never dared to cross that line, however.

  Not then, and not now.

  I force myself to focus on the business at hand.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” he instructs.

  “Your mother deserves to know,” I reply.

  “No one,” Merc insists.

  “So, what? This is all I get? I see you once, and then you disappear as some black-ops spook, never to be seen again?” I question.

  “Yes,” comes Merc’s reply.

  His voice is deep, his tone grave.

  “You don’t want that,” I tell him.

  “He wants whatever he wants,” Evan spits from the floor.

  “Oh, shut up you big baby,” Merc retorts.

  “Fucking spoiled,” he adds.

  “You grew up same as me! How am I the fucking spoiled one? I didn’t fucking run off-” Evan starts.

  When we both give him a pointed look at the same time, Evan shuts up.

  “All you’ve ever done is run! From Leigha, from your problems, from everythi
ng!” Merc roars.

  Evan’s suddenly in his face again, and I can’t decipher anything between their screaming over each other.

  I step in between them because it’s the only way I know how to break this up.

  “Let’s focus,” I tell them both.

  “Why are you here?” Evan sighs.

  “Elizabeth Darlington and Isaac Miller have a connection, which I was investigating before you bloody interrupted me,” Merc shouts angrily.

  “Is anything here going to lead us to the twins?” Evan asks bluntly.

  Merc presses his lips together, looks down at the floor, then at me, like he’s looking for an answer.

  I already know what he’s going to say.

  “This was a waste of time wasn’t it?” I ask Merc.

  “Yeah,” he confirms.

  “How do I know we can trust you?” Evan asks.

  The way he stresses the word ‘we’ annoys me.

  “I’m going to have a look around then while you two continue your pointless argument,” I sigh at the both of them.

  It’s hard to believe they were best friends, once upon a time.

  “Then, let’s get started,” Evan says.

  He grabs a drawer out of the desk and dumps everything on the ground.

  Merc’s right.

  Evan can be such a fucking child sometimes.

  7

  Evan

  February 31, 2018

  The first thing I don’t understand is why Merc and Leigha drive me up the wall.

  They chit chat aimlessly about nothing as I ransack the apartment.

  But, it’s definitely my jealousy, and I know it.

  Plain and simple, Leigha and Merc make me jealous because I’m the one who picked her up off the floor after Merc died, and she just forgave him without any hesitation at all.

  He wasn’t the one who had to deal with her collapse.

  I did.

  Now I’ve got to tell my father that we’re coming home with nothing.

  Isaac’s apartment revealed absolutely nothing.

  We’re back to square one.

  I knock on his office door and twist the handle open to find my father hunched over his desk, head bent down, with a whiskey.

  The great Noah Stone looks like he’s been defeated.

  I just want to tell him I’ll take care of it.

  It’s my turn to fix things.

  “There was nothing,” I tell him.

  My father’s head pops up, and he takes a sip of the whiskey.

  “At all?” he asks.

  “A dead end?” he adds.

  “Dead. Lucius’ contact from MI6 was there. That was a fucking surprise if I’ve ever had one before,” I tell him.

  “Who is his man anyway?”

  My father asks the one question I’m not ready to answer.

  I steel myself.

  Fuck Merc.

  “Do you remember Merc?” I ask.

  “He died, right?” my father replies.

  “Well, he’s not dead anymore,” I snort.

  My father raises an eyebrow at this, but somehow his reaction is far less than I expected it to be.

  Then, he says something that I don’t expect to come out of his mouth.

  “Well, then we know we have someone on our side, who knows what Elizabeth would do to keep the twins away from us,” he says with conviction.

  I have no response to this.

  “He’s right,” Leigha says from the doorway.

  “Merc wouldn’t betray us,” she adds.

  “Again. You mean he wouldn’t betray us again,” I correct her.

  Leigha looks at me, staring quietly.

  “He did say he would put us in contact with someone who could help. In the meantime, maybe if we retrace Elizabeth’s actions so far, we can find something we missed?” she asks.

  “I’ve retraced her steps hundreds of times, but go for it,” Noah replies.

  Then, setting down his glass, he leaves the office without another word.

  “I think he’s sick and tired of Elizabeth’s games,” Leigha says.

  “We all are,” I tell her.

  I sit down on the couch in front of the mass of papers covered in my father’s familiar scrawl.

  He’s mapped out every single instance of my mother’s betrayal, and I can only imagine how hard this is on him.

  Rain taps against the window as Leigha takes a seat beside me and begins to sift through the papers.

  She’s smart enough that she might pick something up no one else has.

  “Don’t you think it’s strange, that Isaac still had his wedding ring?” Leigha asks me.

  “Where did you see that?” I ask.

  “It was on his nightstand,” she replies casually.

  “Why would he still have that, if it was just a ruse to murder Vic’s father?” I ask.

  “My point exactly,” Leigha replies.

  “Would you keep your wedding ring if you married someone out of obligation like that?” Leigha asks me.

  “I wouldn’t marry someone out of obligation,” I reply.

  Leigha sighs.

  “That’s not the point, Ev,” she tells me.

  The way she says Ev just blows me back to the last time Vic said my name like that.

  I sit back against the couch and wait for that familiar wave of emotion to hit me, but it doesn’t come.

  Leigha leans against the back of the couch and folds her legs underneath her.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, reading my mind.

  “No,” I refuse.

  “Well, I’m here now, so either you talk about it or tell me what that was back there with Merc, your choice,” she replies flatly.

  “I don’t want to talk about that either,” I admit.

  “Too bad. I get that you’re angry with him, I’m angry too but chances like this? To see someone you thought you lost? They don’t come along for most people,” Leigha points out.

  “Leigha,” I breathe her name.

  “It’s not that simple,” I confess.

  My explanation is weak, and I know it.

  “What’s ever been simple with you Evan? Your life has always been complicated, but I think that’s because you like to make things complicated. I mean, I get that you’re fucked up from your mother’s consistent bullshit attempts to ruin everyone’s life, but that doesn’t mean you have to play into her games. Your nephews are missing, your girlfriend is dead, your father is a bigger wreck than I’ve ever seen him and your sister is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This is your chance to be the strong one,” she says.

  Her conviction is hypnotizing.

  Leigha doesn’t normally talk to me like that.

  At first, I’m horrified that she’s mentioned Vic, but that fades as Leigha pushes her hair away from her face to pull it into a bun.

  “You really think I can do that?” I ask.

  Our eyes meet.

  “I’ve always had faith in you, even when you didn’t have faith in you, Evan,” she replies.

  That’s true; if there’s one thing, I’m sure of it’s that Leigha has always had faith in me even when I’ve fucked up royally.

  She’s talked me off the edge plenty of times.

  What would I do without her?

  Even when she was with her ex-boyfriend, she’d answer the phone at three in the morning whenever I had a problem.

  What am I going to do when she does find someone, and I’m no longer as important as I am now?

  She came running over the Atlantic the second I called.

  All because she knew I needed her.

  I watch her press her lips together, and it’s like I’m seeing her for what she is to me for the first time.

  Without thinking about it, I press my thumb against her lower lip, and it’s smooth as silk.

  “Evan,” Leigha says my name.

  I know what I want to do, but Leigha turns to the papers instead.

  It’s
like I’m stuck in the same moment, and I want to turn her around and make her face me.

  Aware that my feelings are probably misplaced, and I just miss Vic that much, I try to put them aside.

  However, I only hear Leigha’s voice, and it makes me feel at ease.

  I don’t hear a word she’s saying.

  “Evan, are you listening to me?” Leigha pokes into my thoughts.

  I shake my head.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t,” I admit.

  She doesn’t seem too surprised, though.

  “What about Fiji?” she asks.

  “Fiji? The island?”

  I’m confused.

  “Well, if it was that important there’s more to this, right? I propose there’s something on that island that your father doesn’t know about,” she explains.

  “What?” I ask stupidly.

  “They ran an entire operation through that island, we know that much, and when it transferred to your father, what happened?” Leigha guides me.

  “He built the house,” I reply.

  “So, there was nothing there,” she points out.

  “No,” I answer.

  “As far as my father knows anyway. I visited with him when they were building. No structures, nothing; just untouched island,” I recall.

  “Think,” she tells me.

  I try to remember the time, and realize that was when I’d come home from my tour, and I was itching to go back.

  But, my father wanted me, so I put what I wanted aside.

  I was also high on whatever I could get my hands on, or drunk, for the better part of that time frame.

  Then, I remember Ava.

  “My mother already pulled that stunt once. She’s not going to do the same thing twice. She’s smarter than that. Remember, she kidnapped my sister?” I point out.

  “Right,” Leigha says.

  She nods.

  Leigha runs her tongue along her teeth and flips through more of my father’s notes, her tongue sticking out of her mouth slightly.

  She always does that, she sticks her tongue out absentmindedly when she’s thinking really hard.

  I have to actively remind myself that she’s got a huge stake in this too.

  Leigha wants my mother dead as much as I do because Elizabeth destroyed her life as well.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, for doing this,” I tell her.

  Leigha stares at me for a moment.

  “What exactly are you thanking me for? You know my reasons are entirely selfish,” Leigha says, and proves my point.