Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little Secrets #1)

by Cassie Cross

  “Hey,” I reply, making my way over to where that liquid gold is waiting for me. It’s got cream and a teaspoon of sugar in it, just the way I like it, and a strong rush of affection for this man hits me square in the chest. “Thank you for this.”

  Caleb reaches across the island, and takes hold of the mug’s handle. “If you want more, you’re gonna have to come and get it.”

  I do want more, so I go and get it. Caleb warps his arm around my waist, and pulls me close, giving me a soft kiss. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” I reply.

  Caleb hands me my coffee, and I take a long sip, letting out an appreciative noise when I swallow.

  “Your laptop was going off a few minutes ago,” he says casually.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Going off?”

  “Yeah,” he says, turning a page of the paper. “Beeping. I hope you don’t mind, but I muted it. I went to wake you up, but you looked so peaceful in bed.”

  A cold chill runs down my spine, and my grip just…gives out. The coffee cup I’m holding falls to the floor, splashing hot coffee all over my legs. I’m too stunned and panicked to even care about the pain.

  “Jesus, Mia,” Caleb says, sounding worried.

  I vaguely register him moving in my peripheral vision, and then he’s kneeling in front of me, wiping the coffee off of my legs with a hand towel.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “Mia?”

  The panic in his voice is increasing with the panic in my chest. I turn, and walk over to where my laptop is sitting on the dining room table. Sure enough, my tracking program is up, only instead of alerts for Privya’s name or whereabouts, I see my own name. Multiple times. I had set up a search for myself, just in case, and it started going off really early this morning. When I click on one of the alerts, the link takes me to the website for a gossip rag. There’s a picture posted of me and Caleb from last night.

  How did anyone at that site find out my name? Was I on a guest list somewhere? Did Caleb, or Felicity, or maybe Ben tell someone? Why did I even tell them my real name? I checked in to the hotels with aliases. Why…why did I let them in? Does any of this even matter now? My name is out there. My face is out there, and I’ve just given someone who knows where to look a map that leads straight to me.

  It also leads straight to Caleb.

  Fuck.

  “Is everything okay?” Caleb asks cautiously from the doorway. He’s looking at me like I’m a wild animal that he’s scared to spook.

  Before I answer him that no, everything might not be okay, I need to know how not okay things are. I check the alerts that I have set up on Privya, and there aren’t any. Not yet. Either he’s not on the move, or he’s been using cash, like me. Or he’s traveling in some other kind of way that I’m unable to trace. Regardless, nothing that I have access to gives me any indication that he’s left Chicago.

  So, I’ve got that going for me, I guess.

  “Everything’s okay,” I tell Caleb. My voice is shaky, though, and I know he’ll catch the lie. Sometimes the man can read me like a book.

  He walks up behind me, and I jump when he touches my shoulder. “Mia?”

  “It’s noth-”

  “Don’t tell me this is nothing,” he says. The panic in his voice earlier is being overtaken by anger. It’s burning around the edges, just waiting to catch fire. “Tell me the truth.”

  I walk over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and look out at the park. For so long, being in this apartment let me forget about the outside world. Right now, I’d love to be out in it. I’d love to be anywhere but here. This is the moment that I let myself believe would never come.

  This is the moment that proves I’m a fool.

  “God damn it, Mia,” Caleb says, walking up behind me. “Your computer’s going off like crazy, you dropped your coffee all over yourself and barely even noticed it. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Tell me what the fuck is going on. Now.”

  Caleb’s patience has run out, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to wait anymore. Honestly, I don’t want to keep this secret anymore. So, here goes.

  “It’s true what I told you, that I left Chicago because I needed a new start. But needing a new start, it wasn’t a voluntary thing,” I say, turning my head to the side. I can’t bear to look at him, settling instead for seeing him out of the corner of my eye. “I was running away from something there.”

  “Running away from what?” He walks closer, and I turn my head to look out the window again. Talking is easier this way, because I don’t have to see the anger and disappointment on his face. “What are you hiding from me?”

  I swallow, not quite sure how I’m going to phrase the next part of the story.

  “Look at me,” Caleb says roughly.

  I do as he asks, I at least owe him that. When my eyes finally meet his, there’s anger there, yes…but there’s also fear.

  “I’ve been patient, and I never want to push you, Mia. But if there was ever a time to push, it seems like it’s now. I’ve opened my home to you, and helped you when you didn’t have anyone, and you owe me the goddamn truth.”

  “I know,” I say, feeling my eyes water. “I know I do. I wanted to tell you sooner-”

  “Bullshit,” he says. “If you wanted to tell me sooner, you would’ve told me sooner.”

  “I was scared,” I admit. My voice sounds smaller than it ever has before, and something in it makes Caleb’s expression soften.

  He takes a step toward me. “You don’t have to be scared with me.”

  “I do,” I say, nodding. The tears are flowing freely now, and I’m not even going to try to stop them. “Once I tell you, you’re not going to look at me the way that you do, and I didn’t want to lose that. You make me…you make me forget all of this shit, and…”

  “I can help you,” he says. “But I can’t do that if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You can’t help me with this.”

  Caleb runs his fingers through his hair frustratedly. “You can at least let me try!”

  “Can we sit down?”

  “I’m fine where I am. Stop trying to stall, Mia.”

  “Can we please sit down? I’d feel better if we were sitting down.”

  Caleb lets out a long, shaky breath, and makes his way over to the couch, and sits down. His legs are wide open, his elbows resting on his knees. His foot bounces up and down nervously, like he just can’t sit still. He looks as on edge as I feel.

  I take a seat on the coffee table across from him. I figure it’ll be good to keep some distance between us. I’d feel better if I was wearing something other than Caleb’s shirt to have this conversation, but there’s no turning back now.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I admit. Do I start by telling him about the money I stole? Do I start at the point when I left Chicago? How far back should I go?

  “What were you running away from?” Caleb asks.

  “It’s complicated.”

  He sighs, and shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve got all day, Mia.”

  I take a deep breath. Here goes.

  “I told you the other night about the woman—Amelia—who treated me like one of her own after my mom died.”

  Caleb nods, acknowledging that he remembers.

  “After my mom died, my dad, he was really depressed. He did the best that he could with me, but he didn’t really know how to be a single father at first. I guess most people don’t, when it comes unexpectedly like that. He was out of work for a while…well, a long while, and we didn’t really have that much money to begin with. We had been renting this house in the suburbs—white picket fence and all that—but he couldn’t bare to live there anymore with my mom gone, and we couldn’t afford the rent, anyway.

  “We moved to a…a not-so-nice area of town. My mom was always worried about my education; she wanted me to have the best. So, we lived in this shitty, hole-in-the-wall apartment, and every penny my dad had to spare went to private school tuition
. When I’d get home from school in the afternoon, Amelia would invite me over, and she’d make sure I had dinner, because my dad was always working nights. She had a son, Marcus. He and I have been best friends ever since.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with you being in some kind of trouble, Mia.”

  I sigh. “I told you it was complicated. I’m trying to make it as uncomplicated as possible.”

  “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.”

  “This building, it was in terrible shape. It was run-down, in disrepair, and it was owned by this shady businessman who was rich as hell, but owned a lot of slummy buildings that he rented to people who were down on their luck, or who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. He cut corners all the time, but sometimes things would be broken for months before he’d get around to hiring a repair man, if he ever even bothered to do that. We filed formal complaints with the city, but this guy had so many officials in his pocket that none of the complaints ever made a difference. It’s amazing what money can do to make people turn the other way when you’re not doing the right thing.”

  Caleb’s eyes widen, like I actually smacked him, then he looks down at his hands. I reach out and clasp his hand with mine.

  “Hey,” I tell him. “I don’t mean-”

  “I know,” he replies, and he gives me a halfhearted smile. “It’s true, what you said.”

  “I went off to college in Massachusetts, on a full scholarship. I didn’t get home often—we didn’t have spare money for the airfare—but when I graduated last year, I moved back to Chicago to be closer to him. The building had really gone to hell. I tried to convince him to let me move us out to a nicer place, but he wouldn’t have it. I mean, I couldn’t have afforded much better at the time…I was just picking up clients, but I could’ve afforded better than that.”

  Caleb is gradually moving closer, leaning into me. I’m guessing he’s starting to think that maybe this story isn’t as bad as he anticipated, but I’m just now getting there. He’s cradling my hand in his now, rubbing his thumbs in a soothing circuit across my wrist.

  “I saw news of the explosion on the television,” I begin with a sniffle. “I was meeting with a potential client in a cafe. I looked up, and I just…I was in shock. It seems as if my dad died right away. I hope he did, at least. Amelia, she was on her way home from the grocery store, so she didn’t take the brunt of the impact, but she had burns all over her body. They ruled it a faulty gas line, but…we complained about so much shit in that building over the years. It was due to neglect, I know it was, but the owner—Jack Kemp—he was pretty much untouchable.”

  “Your friend Marcus, was he-”

  “No,” I reply, shaking my head. “No, he wasn’t there. Anyway, Kemp gave our families a small stipend. It was enough for me to pay for my dad’s funeral, but not much else, considering we had lost everything. There were a few survivors of the blast, but they died within a few days after the explosion. Amelia, she’s the only one who survived.

  “Unfortunately for her, she didn’t have any insurance, and what little help Marcus and I were able to find for her wasn’t enough to cover her through the end of her treatment, if there ever is an end of her treatment. It had only been four months when I…did what I did, and her bills were already more than she could ever pay. Her apartment blew up; everything she had was gone, and she’d never be able to get out of that debt. How can a person lose everything twice?

  “A few ambulance chasers came to Marcus, wanting him to sue, but the terms were more beneficial to them than they would’ve been to Amelia and Marcus, and Kemp has enough money to tie a case up in court for years, and it might not have even gone their way when it was all said and done. She needed to be moved to a specialized care facility, and she and Marcus needed the money now, not five years from now, or whenever a settlement would be reached.”

  A look of understanding flits across Caleb’s face, melting away whatever anger was left.

  “Christ, Mia. You stole the money?”

  I lower my head, and nod. I can’t look him in the eye, I’m too ashamed.

  “And Marcus let you?”

  The shame I was feeling dissolves quickly, and I look up, glaring at Caleb. “Nobody lets me do anything.”

  “He just stood back while you…what, ran for your life? Is Kemp the one who’s after you?”

  “He didn’t stand back, he…Look, I made a mistake, and I left an electronic trail when I stole that money. One of Kemp’s IT people traced it back to me. What’s the point in implicating Marcus when my fingerprints were all over the crime scene? Besides, it was my idea.”

  “And Kemp isn’t smart enough to put two and two together and figure out why you stole from him?”

  I shrug. “He doesn’t seem to have put it together so far. I’ve been in touch with Marcus. I talked to him just yesterday, and he’s okay.”

  “Does he know where you are?”

  “No,” I reply. “I’m not that stupid.”

  “If Kemp isn’t after you, then who is?”

  “A man named Andre Privya. Kemp hired him.”

  Caleb shakes his head a little, like he’s trying to make sense of everything I just told him. “How do you know that?”

  “I was tracking his communications.”

  Caleb lets out this unbelieving huff of air. “He just hired someone to kill you? Over the phone?”

  “No, he never said kill. He said ‘find,’ although the killing might have been implied. I was surprised he was so brazen about it, but I guess when you get away with so much for so long, you feel comfortable pushing the limits.”

  “How much did you take?”

  I swallow. I’ve come this far, no sense in trying to lie about it now. “Two million dollars.”

  Sliding his hands through his hair, Caleb bows his head, taking a deep breath.

  “I didn’t do it all at once, and I didn’t take it all from the same account, but like I said, I made a mistake covering my tracks, and here I am.”

  “And your computer beeping means…what, exactly? That he found you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I had been really careful about not using my real name. I checked into the hotels under aliases, I used cash for everything. I used a burner phone to call Marcus. I didn’t want to give him any way to track me, but I put an alert on my own name anyway. It pinged last night because there were pictures taken of us at the benefit, and someone gave the press my name.”

  Caleb starts bouncing his leg again, and then he stands, and he gives all of his pent-up rage an outlet by sliding his hand across the coffee table, and knocking everything on top of it onto the floor. “God damn it!”

  I cringe at the sound of breaking glass, and look over at him.

  “I’m the one who gave them your name. They asked, and I…”

  “You didn’t know,” I say soothingly. I don’t want him to have even an ounce of guilt about that. “You didn’t know, Caleb.”

  He turns, and oh, that anger is back.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped you before now. Now we’re on defense, and it’s better to work on offense.”

  I don’t miss the ‘we’ in that sentence, but I can’t let him be a part of this. I won’t.

  “I don’t know what being on offense feels like anymore. And I didn’t tell you, because how would that look? What would you think of me, if I had just met you and told you I had stolen money from a crooked millionaire who basically killed my father, and was responsible for ruining the life of my surrogate mother?”

  Either he doesn’t have an answer for me, or the only answer he can come up with isn’t a good one. Not that I’d blame him one bit for running away after an admission like that. I wouldn’t blame him for running away now, but it doesn’t seem like he’s going to do that.

  “Did you think you could just stay here forever? Start a new life?”

  I shrug. “I came here to get away from the situation, to give myself some time where
I didn’t have to look over my shoulder, and could take a breather to figure out how to make things better.”

  “There is no making things better when someone’s sent a hitman after you, Mia. And you were just pretending it didn’t happen?”

  “No,” I reply, my voice shaky. “There’s no forgetting something like that, but I came here, and I met you…and you made me want something different. You…you made me hope I could have it. I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me now.”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like you don’t even know me,” I say, not blaming him one bit for that. “Like you’re disgusted with me.”

  “Not for the reason that you think.”

  “Not because I’m a liar? Because I’m a thief?”

  He glares at me. “You’re neither of those things, and no, that’s not it.”

  Caleb rubs his hand across the back of his neck, then turns and looks out the window. He’s quiet for a few minutes, probably trying to figure out how he’s going to end this. I decide to make it easy on him; it seems like the very least I can do.

  “I’m going to go get dressed,” I say, tugging on the hem of the shirt that I’m wearing. “I’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  Caleb laughs bitterly, then turns and faces me, arms folded across his chest. “Where would you even go?”

  “Back to Chicago,” I tell him. “To get this over with.”

  “No you’re not,” he replies, walking toward the hallway. “You’re staying right here.”

  “And what…you’re leaving?”

  “I’m going to get dressed, and then I’m going to go work out what’s going on in my head. I want you here when I come back.” His eyes soften then, and he looks at me tenderly. “Don’t go getting any crazy ideas about turning yourself in, or leaving town. We’re going to talk about this some more, I just need some time to think.”

  Caleb disappears down the hallway. He’s gone for two minutes at the most, and walks back into the living room fully dressed. It seems like he’s cooled down a little, and when he stops in front of me, he cradles my cheek with his hand. It’s the most comfort I’ve felt all morning.