Satisfaction

by Lexi Blake

  If only there hadn’t turned out to be a fourth . . .

  “I explained all of this to you. I told you I wasn’t sharing the information with anyone.” He glanced at the clock. Only another half hour to wait. He’d set the meeting for after work in order to keep things quiet. Perhaps he should have set the meeting at his house, but he didn’t want any gossip in case he got turned down. He also never knew when his brothers or sister and their spouses would show up. All of his siblings were getting ready to celebrate Riley and Ellie’s marriage with a blowout reception he was hosting. It was still a few weeks away, but apparently receptions took as long to plan as a damn wedding. Nevertheless, he didn’t want to tip off his siblings, until his plan was firmly in place.

  He could hear Hatch moving, knew exactly where he would go. There was the sound of a cork popping open. Naturally Hatch went for the expensive Scotch. But then the man was a pro. “You’re wrong about this.”

  “So you’ve said.” About a million times since that terrible night when they’d discovered who the real villain was.

  “Fine.” Hatch’s tone was short. “Explain this to me.”

  How did he get Hatch to understand? He turned and looked to the man who had been his mentor his entire adult life. “Mia’s pregnant.”

  That should suffice. It made sense to Drew. Mia was pregnant and that meant he kept his mouth shut.

  Hatch frowned. “What does that have to do with anything? That was inevitable the way she goes at it with that cowboy of hers. A pregnancy makes things worse. Now she’s even more vulnerable.”

  Hatch wasn’t a sunny-side-of-life person, but then neither was Drew.

  “Yes, she is, but I suspect she’ll be safe enough. She’s going to try her hand at fiction instead of wandering the globe looking for trouble.” His sister was a reporter and a ball of chaos. Rather like the woman he was about to meet. “Case and the rest of the Taggarts will look out for her.”

  “And the Taggarts would be invaluable in finding our target,” Hatch insisted.

  McKay-Taggart was the premiere security and investigative company in the country. Drew knew he wouldn’t have taken down Steven Castalano and Patricia Cain without them. But he couldn’t hire them for this job and Mia was the reason why. He couldn’t ask family to put up walls, to risk relationships for his revenge.

  “Do you know what Mia said to me when she told me she was having a baby?”

  “Hopefully she said do everything in your power to ensure no one kills me or my baby because there’s a psychotic bitch running around out there who wants to do just that,” Hatch insisted. “If she didn’t say that, then she missed the point.”

  “She told me she wished our mother was here. She told me she wished she could hold our mom’s hand and ask for her advice. She cried because her mother is dead.” It had ripped his heart out, watching his sister cry like that. He couldn’t explain to her that the mother she longed for was alive and well and had killed at least five people.

  The mother she missed had tried to kill them all.

  Hatch took a place beside him, holding out one of two crystal tumblers with two fingers of the Scotch he’d paid dearly for. “You don’t want Mia to know that Iris is alive and posing as Francine Wells. I get that. It’s no reason to cut out Taggart.”

  “Ian Taggart would feel the need to tell his brother.” It was why he hadn’t already brought the man in. “He would tell Case and inevitably Case would tell his wife and Mia would find out. Once Mia knows, she’ll start to research Iris herself.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to call that woman mother. Not ever again.

  “So tell her not to.”

  “Have you met my sister?”

  Hatch knocked back his Scotch in one long swallow before turning dark eyes on Drew. “You can’t allow Iris to walk around like nothing happened.”

  “I have no intention of doing that, but she was quite clear when it came to her instructions to Carly. She told us to back off or she would finish what she started all those years ago.” When she’d murdered their father and his apparent mistress, then locked all the doors and set the house on fire with her four children inside.

  Was it any wonder he didn’t want to tell Mia the truth? She needed to think about her child. Riley and Bran needed to concentrate on the future and their partners. His family needed to move on.

  It was his job and his alone to deal with their mother.

  He’d promised them they would be free after they’d taken down Stratton, Castalano, and Cain. He meant to honor that promise. He would handle Iris Lawless on his own.

  “Do you honestly believe she’ll leave them alone?”

  He had to. “She has for years. Twenty, to be precise. She could have murdered us at any time. We were in foster care. No one would have stepped up to protect us. If she didn’t take us out when we were vulnerable, I don’t see why she would bother now that we aren’t. I believe she’ll leave Mia alone for the simple fact that she married into a vengeful barbarian hoard.”

  That actually got a chuckle out of Hatch. “All right, I can buy that. I’m going to assume she’s done her homework. If there was one thing Iris always was it was smart as hell.”

  Too bad she was also a sociopath. “She won’t want to start a war with the Taggarts. She can’t win that one.”

  “But you think she can beat you?”

  “I don’t intend to announce the fact that we’re involved in a skirmish at all,” he replied. “I’ve ensured that there are no records of that sketch in the police file. I’ve also investigated the police computer systems. There were no attempts to hack in before I scrubbed the file.”

  “But after?”

  “I almost missed it,” he admitted. “It was subtle, but someone downloaded the report made the night of Patricia Cain’s overdose.”

  “She was murdered.” Hatch could definitely state the obvious at times.

  “I know that. You know that. The police in LA are calling it an accidental overdose.”

  Hatch shook his head. “Why won’t they investigate?”

  “Because I don’t want them to. Because I wrote a large check to ensure that they don’t.” Oh, it wasn’t anything so gauche as a bribe. It had been the offer of a man grateful to the police for keeping his brother out of the limelight surrounding America’s most famous style maker’s rather scandalous death. It wasn’t something the Los Angeles PD didn’t see often. Famous people overdosed. It happened. They’d been happy to ensure Bran’s name had been kept out of the press and to quickly close the investigation. The tabloids had gone insane for a few days and then the reporters had moved on to different scandals.

  All except one. And he intended to take care of her tonight.

  Hatch swore under his breath. “I wondered about that. So if you’re not going to allow her to get away with it and you’re not going to use the police or your McKay-Taggart resources, I assume you’re going to do this all by yourself.”

  “Not at all. I’m hiring an investigator, but one whom I can control.” One whom he also wanted to get into bed with, but then that was all a part of his control plan.

  “Another agency?”

  “No, an individual.” There was a reason he hadn’t gone over this with Hatch, but if all went well in a few hours he would know anyway. There was zero chance of Hatch buying the story he was going to sell to his siblings. Riley and Bran and Mia looked at the world through the eyes of idiots in love. Drew was okay with that. He wanted them to stay that way. It was good for them, but it made them tend to see everything with rose-colored glasses.

  The glass through which Hatch saw the world had turned pitch black a long time ago.

  “So you hired a private investigator? I hope he’s also a bodyguard.”

  “I intend to ensure that she’s discreet.”

  Hatch went still beside him. “She? Yo
u hired a female PI?”

  “She’s actually a reporter, but she’s a brilliant investigator.” After all, Shelby had realized something was seriously wrong with his parents’ case long before Drew had. She’d requested medical records, started digging in a way that led him to believe she knew something she wasn’t telling her best friend, Carly. He’d stopped her at every turn, but only because he meant to control this investigation.

  Shelby Gates would be allowed the keys to the kingdom, provided she was willing to sign the agreement he’d had drawn up.

  Then he would have her and he would enjoy himself for as long as it lasted. Until the moment that she realized he was a manipulative asshole and walked away from him.

  It was what women did.

  “Tell me it isn’t that redhead from LA. The one you got a hard-on around every time she walked in the damn room.” Hatch didn’t wait to sigh impatiently or for confirmation. “Damn it, Andrew, I thought I taught you not to think with your dick.”

  Hatch had taught him many things. And then there had been the lessons Drew hadn’t needed. Like how to ruthlessly proceed forward, only protecting the things and people he held closest to his heart, the ones he’d been tasked to protect on that terrible night twenty years before. From the moment he’d felt the heat of the fire against his skin, seen his father’s body and not been able to get to him, he’d known that he was responsible for his siblings. He’d done a piss-poor job at times, but this move was all about protecting them.

  “Shelby can get into places I can’t. She’s also innocuous. Most people don’t see past her chest and hips and all that hair to the ambitious woman inside.” He intended to use that ambition against her. He would manipulate her with it. And reward her. She wouldn’t get the prize she sought, but he intended to give her something conciliatory. He would give her what she wanted, not merely what he’d promised. “Once I teach her how to be perfectly discreet, she’ll attract no attention to our family.”

  “So you’re sending her out there like a sacrificial lamb,” Hatch mused as though the idea didn’t actually bother him. “She’ll send you information, but if Iris comes after someone, it won’t be our family.”

  He didn’t correct Hatch about it being their family. Hatch was very much a member of the Lawless clan. The boozy, obnoxious, brilliant uncle who fucked up but was always loyal. Hatch had been loyal to Benedict and that fealty had switched to Drew when he’d come of age. Once Drew had sobered Hatch up, he’d proven to still have the business acumen he’d shown when he’d run his father’s company. Hatch had applied it to 4L and they’d gone the distance. A few billion dollars later and they were still on top of the world.

  And still had unfinished business.

  “I don’t intend to get the girl killed.”

  “But you’re willing to put her in danger. You saw what happened to the last few people who even hinted at getting in Iris’s way.”

  Yes, he’d heard what the woman had told Carly. As Bran had lain there bleeding, Carly had listened to a recitation of Francine Wells’s crimes. Of course Carly hadn’t realized she’d actually been talking to Iris Lawless, but she knew the woman who’d stood before her had poisoned Phillip Stratton before he could potentially tell all, killed Steven Castalano in his hospital bed the day before he was scheduled to talk to police, and sent someone in to murder Patricia Cain.

  He was well aware of the risks his black widow mother posed. “Better her than my siblings, and she’ll agree. She’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “Because I’ve done a study on her. Because I’ve researched her.” He knew all her data by heart, but he was intrigued at getting to know the real Shelby Gates. He wanted to see the woman inside the warrior goddess. She was so fierce and single-minded.

  Did she fuck like she lived? Would she be a wildcat in bed, or sweet and soft after a man had given her everything he had? Would she curl up next to her lover and let him take care of her, let him adore her? Could he soften her with sex, with affection? Could he soften her so much that at the end she would consider forgiving him?

  “So you think this woman is going to do your bidding because you offer her cash?”

  “Cash is the last thing I would offer her.”

  “All right. What are you offering her?”

  “I’m offering her the story of a lifetime.”

  Hatch frowned his way. “I’m confused, Drew. First you say you’re going to hide everything so Mia and the others never have to know what Iris has done. Now you’re turning it into a best seller.”

  “I’ll give her the story. I’ll even let her write it.”

  “But you won’t let her publish it. You manipulative bastard. You’re going to let her put her neck on the line and then take it all away from her. Damn, Drew. That’s cold. And it could work. You have her quietly find what you need. No one ever has to know you’re involved at all.”

  “I thought about playing it that way, but I can’t. I need to be able to keep an eye on her until I’m sure I have all the research. I can’t risk letting her tell this story. I’ll stick close to her and when the time is right, I’ll take her notes, her research, and everything else.” He didn’t like how tight his tie suddenly felt. “And I’ll offer her something else. I’ll get her any job in the world she could possibly want. She wants to work for the New York Times, I’ll make it happen. She needs cash to set herself up as a freelance reporter, consider me her personal bankroll.”

  “And if all she wants is what you offered her in the first place?”

  He shook his head. “She’ll be reasonable in the end. She’ll see that I can’t allow my family secrets out in the open. It would hurt my siblings.”

  “So you’re going to leave things the way they are? You’re going to let everyone believe Benedict killed your mother and himself?”

  “I don’t know, damn it.” He forced himself to calm down. He was never out of control. Cool. Calm. That was the only way he managed to get anything done. “Like I said, the situation is rather fluid at the moment. What I need to do is figure out exactly where Iris is and what she’s been doing for twenty years. My brothers and sister know our father was a victim. That might have to be enough.”

  “And if she’s living it up somewhere? What are you going to do? Are you going to ruin her life? You think that will solve your problem?”

  “No. I will admit that I intended to make Castalano and Cain hurt. I have only one thing I want to do to Iris.” He felt himself go infinitely cold. This was the real reason why he couldn’t bring his siblings in. He knew how this ended. “I’m going to make sure she can never hurt us again. One way or another.”

  This was his burden. His responsibility. He had owed his father one last duty and then he would be done.

  “All right. If you need anything, I’ll stand by you,” Hatch said, crossing the room and getting himself another drink. “How do you intend to keep an eye on her? Tell me you’re not going to stalk her, because that can get nasty. Also, you would have to explain to your siblings why you’ve suddenly become fascinated with a woman who annoyed the hell out of you last month.”

  “I’m going to be her boyfriend.”

  Hatch sputtered. It was good to know his mentor could still be shocked. “What?”

  “Part of the contract is that her cover for this assignment is as my girlfriend. It won’t surprise anyone. Bran and Riley saw right through my reasonable annoyance to the illogical biological reaction I have around that woman. And Mia and Carly tried to set me up with her. I’ll simply explain that the last time I was in Los Angeles, I asked her out to dinner and we began seeing each other. I’ll be able to keep a close eye on her.”

  “I knew you were thinking with your dick.”

  Luckily his dick was a strategic thinker. He sat down and sipped the Scotch. It was oaky, with a hint of caramel a
nd smoke. Would Shelby like Scotch? Or would he have to stock his suite with frilly white wines and fruity drinks? His housekeeper was going to have fun with this assignment.

  He sat back as Hatch went over all the ways Drew’s penis would bring them down. Twenty more minutes and the game would begin.

  One thing it definitely wouldn’t be was boring.

  Lexi Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of Ruthless, the debut novel in the Lawless series, as well as the Masters and Mercenaries series, including Master No, You Only Love Twice, and A View to a Thrill. She is also coauthor with Shayla Black of the Perfect Gentlemen series, including Big Easy Temptation and Seduction in Session, and the Masters of Ménage series, including Their Virgin Mistress and Their Virgin Secretary.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  * * *

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.