Pretend Married (A Billionaire Love Story)

by Nikki Wild

  The captain paused a moment, turning back to his filing cabinet and returning with a single sheet of paper. It was a shipping manifest. Manila to San Francisco.

  “Nathaniel Hale prefers to do his business in person, Sandra. That’s the manifest, and that,” he said, pointing to a dark smudge on the bottom right of the photocopied sheet, “that is Mr. Hale’s thumbprint, according to forensics.”

  My whole body felt numb. “When did this happen?” I asked, my hands shaking as I stared at the document. The captain didn’t have to answer, because my eyes swept immediately to the date at the bottom of the page.

  Yesterday… It fucking happened yesterday!

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear this piece of paper to shreds and pretend it never happened. Instead, I let my mind wander back to the last 24 hours.

  “Come back to bed…” I’d whispered, my body still shaking from the Earth-shattering orgasm he’d given me. I was positively giddy, grinning like a fool as I watched Nathan’s half-naked body move through the bedroom, his muscles bunching and coiling like a mass of serpents writhing just beneath his skin. I wanted to watch him crawl toward me on the bed, wanted to see his hard body ripple as he pinned me down again. I wanted to return to the nirvana he sent me to every time he touched me.

  “I’d love to, but I have a bit of work to do. Money doesn’t make itself, you know,” he had replied, smiling ever so smugly before walking to huge and insanely opulent bathroom and starting the shower.

  I had pouted then, and briefly even considered joining him whether he wanted me to or not. But in the end, I had settled back against the pillows and sighed, stretching my arms above my head as I basked in the afterglow of our union and drifted to sleep. When I awoke, Nathan was gone…

  I blinked away the memories, as well as a few tears threatening to overflow past my lashes. The asshole had done it right under my nose.

  I took slow, deep breaths, willing myself not to vomit all over the manifest and the Captain’s shoes. I sat back, hand over my mouth as the paper dangled limply from my fingers. I felt hollow inside and out. When I lifted my head to look at the Captain again, I barely even felt the motion.

  “Unfortunately, there’s more,” he continued. “We don’t think Mr. Hale and Mr. Wallace were business partners on this.” He paused. Maybe it was for dramatic effect, but I wanted to think better of him. I chose to believe he hesitated because it was difficult to break the news. “We have reason to believe they were competitors.”

  For a long moment, I just sat there, letting those words echo in my head. Competitors. So, Nathan wasn’t just complicit out of willful ignorance—he was actively trying to oust Wallace as the most prolific trafficker in the western hemisphere?

  Finally, feeling returned to my body, but it wasn’t a good one. Boiling heat prickled my skin from the inside out as I looked up at the captain and said:

  “What can I do?”

  I’d been betrayed. I’d been used and lied to by the one man I thought I could trust. I’d helped him secure his spot at the top of a criminal enterprise. All the little puzzle pieces had fallen into place, thanks to me.

  And the picture they formed was about as damning as it got.

  “You’re already done the dirty work. Now, you’re going to stay close to him, Detective. You’re going to do whatever it takes to hide your true intentions, and you’re going to get me access to his computer.”

  “You, as in you personally, Captain?” I asked, staring at the bear of a man. There were a lot of words and phrases that came to mind when I looked at Captain Pierce, but “technologically-savvy” wasn’t one of them.

  “We still have a rat, Sandra. Officer Kimball was compromised, and now he’s dead. We have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. The entire operation needs to stay quiet until we have the dirt we need on this asshole. Don’t let his boyish charm fool you, though. Nathaniel Hale is smart, and he may be dangerous. Letting you go back there is a risk, but if you don’t, there might be thirty-six more women at the bottom of the ocean, and that’s going to be on you.”

  None of this made sense. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have let the needs of my body get in the way of my morality? I became a cop to serve and protect, not to let myself fall for the sweet-talking billionaire with a dubious history.

  “What if he’s innocent, Captain?”

  I was grasping at straws and I knew it. This was the “denial” phase of grieving, it seemed. I’d seen suspects’ families do it all the time. Nobody wanted to believe that their wife, their brother, or their child could be a killer. But if there was even a chance that this might not be what it seemed, then I had to look for that angle.

  Nathaniel Hale represented everything I’d always hoped for. It wasn’t the money I was after, or the lifestyle he could afford. It was the feelings I had when I was with him. He made me feel… whole. Was that just another lie?

  “If he’s innocent, I want to know who’s pulling the strings. Wallace is in jail and O’Rourke is dead, but the wheels are still in motion. Somebody is bringing those women over, and you know damn well what will happen to them when they get here.”

  “What do I tell him?”

  “You tell him you quit.”

  I nodded. It was a sound plan. That was what I’d originally come here to do, after all. “When do we get started?” I asked, steeling myself against the tide of my emotions.

  “Pick up your badge. Take your gun. We get started right now, Detective,” Captain Pierce replied.

  12

  I stood quietly in front of the huge oaken doors at the front of Nathan’s mansion, but I knew something was wrong even before he opened them. His private security team, usually quiet and more or less invisible, was out in force. They seemed to be scouring the exterior of the building, although after a quick glance in my direction, they completely ignored my presence.

  Relax. Innocent before proven guilty. Don’t just let yourself fly off the handle, I told myself, trying to calm my nerves.

  It didn’t make sense. Wallace was in jail. O’Rourke was dead. Any Paddie left would be too busy stuffing their pockets with the leftovers to bother with retaliation. Nathan didn’t need this kind of security presence, unless there was another, more sinister reason they were here.

  One of the men walked past, sweeping a long antenna through the air, the business-end attached to a strange little electronic box. He barely even acknowledged my presence.

  When Nathan finally opened the door, he looked different. On the courthouse steps he had seemed a happy man, a braggart and a lover. Now, he carried a look that was anything but calm. I’d watched him stand up and allow himself to be shot. The last thing I’d expected to ever see on his face was fear.

  Was it possible to be sexy and scared? Nathan pulled it off. Sort of.

  “Get inside,” he whispered, pulling me through the door and shutting it behind us. I could hear a mechanical whirring and a high-pitched electronic whine, and I glanced back to see expensive looking locks sliding into place behind me. They looked better suited for a bank vault than a front door.

  “What’s going on, Nathan? You’re scaring me,” I said, my hand instinctively moving toward my purse and the piece of death-dealing metal within. Before I could go any further, Nathan had grabbed my arm and dragged me through the living room, past the kitchen, and around near a staircase. Hitting a piece of the wall paneling, I watched in silence as it slid away, revealing a heavy metal door. It swung open, and I could see the three enormous metal bolts that had retracted from the wall.

  “Get inside,” Nathan said fiercely. I complied, despite every instinct in my body telling me to get the hell out of here. A moment later, the man I had come to both love and fear in such a short amount of time was standing before me, the huge metal bolts closing off any hope of escape.

  “What are you doing, Sandra?” Nathan asked, staring down at the gun I’d pulled out into the open. “Put that thing away.”

  “You
just locked me in a dark room and you look like something has you scared to death, Nathan. You tell me what the hell is going on right now and I’ll think about putting this away,” I replied, my hand shaking ever so slightly.

  What the hell was he doing? I stepped backward as he moved toward me, one step, then another, until I was flush against the cold metal wall of our makeshift prison.

  “Stop. I’m warning you, Nathan!” I shouted, holding the gun up. He stepped closer, reaching out. Every part of me wanted to pull the trigger. Here he was, the man I thought I could trust, ready to show me how foolish I’d been… But I couldn’t do it. His hand wrapped the barrel of the gun and pushed it aside as he swept me up into his arms.

  “Oh, God. I thought I might not see you again,” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. I didn’t even have a chance to protest as he forced his lips down onto mine. What the hell was going on? He ran his hands over my body, my gun clattering to the floor. I pushed him back as hard as I could, separating us.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked, looking around the small space. Shelves lined the walls, and a phone was wired into one of them. Next to me, a small cot was pushed up against the side of the space and a laptop sat atop a little table, open to what looked like a stock market ticker.

  “It’s a safe room, Sandra. Three-foot-thick walls, enough food, water, and air for a month. I had it built a few months after I moved into this place, as a precaution…”

  “Why the hell am I in here?” I asked indignantly, staring into his crystalline eyes. Despite its name, this room made me feel anything but safe. I felt claustrophobic, like the walls and Nathan were all closing in around me. I felt like a cornered animal, like a victim waiting to happen.

  I had never felt this way with him before. I didn’t like it.

  “Because I needed a safe place to talk about this,” Nathan said, tossing a small recording device onto the table. I recognized it immediately. It was a standard issue t22 short range video and audio transmitter. We used them to listen in on people during investigations. “There’s dozens of them all over the house,” he added.

  “Of course there are. You were potentially connected to one of the biggest human smuggling rings we’ve ever taken down. Do you really think the police wouldn’t have ears on you?” I shouldn’t have been so open, but I also didn’t like lying to the man who had stolen my heart. I needed to look into his eyes and know one way or another if he was guilty.

  “I’m pulling these things out of here. All of them. I’ll live in this goddamned safe room if I have to. The police offered me protection for my testimony, they gave me immunity,” Nathan replied.

  I almost smirked. Immunity protected you from past crimes, not the present. The captain had to be hell-bent on taking Nathan down if he was investing this much of the budget into tracking and listening in on him. Any little misstep and the asshole billionaire would be behind bars. Just thinking about the women on that container ship made my blood boil. I wanted to be the one to slap the handcuffs on this asshole…

  This asshole who made me love him.

  “And there’s this,” he continued, tossing a small box next to the transmitter. This box was far more chilling. Photographs spilled out onto the table, dozens of shots from every single angle. My apartment, my car, the inside of my bedroom…

  And one of me from just last night, asleep in my bed.

  I stared at it for a moment, fear washing over me.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked, trembling in place. I had to maintain my composure. Nathan was trying to put me off balance. He was trying to make me need him. I could see right through this game—he’d put someone in my bedroom and had them take pictures of me. He had to…

  “Did someone hurt you?” he asked, his eyes suddenly alight with an angry, terrified fire. “So help me God, if someone hurt you…”

  “I’m okay. Nobody hurt me. I didn’t even know they were there,” I whispered, sitting down on the cot next to him. He seemed sincere, and that set warning bells off in my mind. Was he playing me for a fool? Was this whole thing an act? Did Nathaniel Hale have me photographed in my own bed? And if he didn’t, who the hell did?

  I couldn’t put it past him. Knowing what I knew, what the Captain had shown me, Nathan was capable of damn near anything. If he was half as cunning as Captain Pierce had made him out to be, there was no telling what plan he might concoct to keep me from seeing the truth.

  Maybe he intended to keep me out of harm’s way. Or maybe he wanted me in here where I couldn’t interfere with his plans, where I couldn’t snoop around and ruin his schemes. Even if I’d quit the force, he might have suspected that I’d still be able to put my detective training to good use. Maybe this was intended to be my prison.

  “We can stop this,” I said, trying to manufacture a reason to get us out of this room. “The police, the FBI…”

  “No, Sandra. Don’t you see? Someone with a badge has been watching me this whole time. Things haven’t sat right with me since the courthouse transfer.”

  The transfer… My mind flashed back to the men I’d shot. It played over the chase, and the way Officer Kimball had sped off ahead.

  “There were two in uniform when they came to pick me up. Everything seemed normal. The lanky guy, the one with the scar, he gets me in the car and shoots his buddy in the head, point blank. A couple of the undercover cops tried to stop him, but it was too late.”

  Kimball… It had never sat right with me. I trusted Officer Kimball, and he’d gotten in the car with scar-face like nothing was wrong. If he was in on it, why did he end up taking a bullet?

  My mind went back to the day I shot O’Rourke. I could see Kimball and the way he greeted the man with the scar. It was as if they knew each other… Or… Maybe he was expecting someone.

  Still, that didn’t explain why Kimball had sped off ahead. If he was killed during the pickup, that meant he thought everything was normal right up until the last minute… He never would have broken from protocol… Unless…

  Captain’s orders… Kimball would have trusted the Captain. If he was ordered to hurry to the pickup, he would have done it. If the Captain had assigned someone to ride along with him, he wouldn’t have questioned it.

  Captain Pierce had called Kimball “compromised.” He’d branded him a traitor.

  “They’ve pulled my passport, Sandra. They say it’s temporary, in case I’m needed for any further questioning. Why? The case is over. Peter Wallace is in jail. They’re railroading me,” Nathan whispered.

  Now it was the captain’s voice ringing in my head as the detective inside me went to work, putting all the pieces together.

  “We still have a rat, Sandra. Officer Kimball was compromised, and now he’s dead.”

  That son of a bitch, I thought to myself. It all made sense. Nathan wasn’t the one who had been playing me all this time. It was Captain Pierce.

  And now he was trying to turn me on Nathan. If I gave him access to one of Nathan’s computers, there was no telling what he might do.

  But why? What the hell was his angle? Money? Power? Promotion? Was he working some kind of vigilante angle? If Captain Pierce had any part in this, then the blood of thirty-six women, and maybe even more, was on his hands.

  There was still one small problem, though. A container was on an inbound ship, and it had Nathan’s fingerprints all over it.

  “Are you okay? Talk to me,” Nathan said.

  “Nathan, I’m going to need you to be honest with me,” I whispered, staring at him. My gun was sitting on the floor well out of reach, but I was already making plans to lunge for it, if necessary. There were so many possibilities surrounding this whole sordid affair that I still couldn’t rule anything out, and that included Nathan’s possible involvement.

  My heart told me a different story. It begged me to rush into Nathan’s arms, to bury my face in his chest and promise to protect him, no matter what. Listening to it would have been dangerous, but at that moment, i
t was all that I wanted to do.

  I forced myself to listen to my brain instead. That way, I was far less likely to get myself shot.

  “I’ll tell you anything, Sandra,” he replied, his eyes sparkling in the way I’d come to enjoy. Could he really be the evil man the Captain had made him out to be? I’d been a detective long enough to know when someone wasn’t being sincere, and either Nathan was the best liar I’d ever met, or he was genuinely concerned about me.

  “You signed for another container. Didn’t you?”

  His eyes cast to the floor quickly, not wanting to meet my own. He might as well have come right out and said it: yes, that was his doing. My body was tense, muscles ready to throw myself to the floor, toward the gun that might be my only salvation.

  “I had to, Sandra. Let me explain.”

  “You want to explain? The last container ended up at the bottom of the ocean. You just condemned another group of women—children—to death or sex slavery, and you want to explain?!”

  My mother would have been proud. Her angry woman voice was channeling through me from beyond the grave. Maybe Nathan was right; maybe the Captain was trying to hand his ass over to the Irish, but none of that mattered if this asshole was still bringing women over. This time, he had no excuse. He knew what was in that container, but he’d signed for it anyway. This wasn’t a case of willful ignorance. He was a monster, and he needed to be stopped.

  “Sandra, stop. Mr. Wallace used my company to keep his business at arm’s length. The Chinese didn’t know who they were working with. They didn’t know Mr. Wallace’s operation had ceased to be, and they had already been paid for the next shipment up front. The container showed up at my Chinese dock with three heavily armed guards to ensure it arrived safely. If I hadn’t signed for the delivery, there would be another pile of bodies.”

  “You could have told the police,” I countered. “We could have…”

  “You could have what, Sandra? Sent police to the far side of the planet to stop those assholes from killing dozens of women? The only chance those women have is on that ship! If there’s even a hint of police involvement, that crate will end up right where the last one did. The Chinese expect prompt receipt and delivery. If that ship deviates from the schedule, you know exactly what will happen. You’ve seen it.”