Devious Lies: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Cruel Crown Book 1)

by Parker S. Huntington

  Delilah watched me shove half a million dollars into the safe, my ritual for every penthouse in all my hotels. A fail-safe in case I ever got caught and needed cash quickly and a go-bag to run. “Ugh. Fika. You trust him to take care of it?”

  “Took care of it,” I corrected, cramming a small go-bag into the remaining space. “As in, it’s already done. Stop worrying about it. I think I see two new wrinkles on your forehead. You look forty.”

  “I’m thirty-one, and I look twenty-six,” she corrected, fingers dabbing her forehead for the aforementioned wrinkles. “It’s Fika. Trusting Fika is like giving Rosco a full bag of treats and trusting him not to finish it.”

  No love lost between them. Odd, considering they both shared similar views on the law. Fika pretended it didn’t exist. Delilah dedicated her life to defending people who bent it. Either way, they both treated it like a nuisance.

  I didn’t acknowledge this. Keeping them at odds with one another compartmentalized the less-than-legal portion of my life.

  “Don’t underestimate Fika.”

  I closed the lock and set an anagram for Emery Winthrop as the password. When I realized what I’d done, I swore and jabbed at the keypad, trying to undo it, but I didn’t know how to change the password. Perfect.

  Pivoting to face Delilah, I leaned against the wall and added, “Beneath the Jonas Brothers wig, the distressed jeans, and the litany of addictions, Fika is an ex-cop whose calling in life is to break the rules without getting caught.”

  She scowled when I adjusted her fingers to where two non-existent wrinkles sat, just to fuck with her. “He literally got caught. It’s why the people of Eastridge fired him as the sheriff.”

  “Semantics.”

  “No.” Both hands met the air as she tossed them up. “That is not what semantics means. Look, I need to know what you did. How do you expect me to do my job with my hands tied behind my back?”

  Readjusting my tie, I pulled off the tag and made a point of feeding it to Rosco in case D got any crazy ideas of asking me to pet sit again. “If you need hand-holding, you’re in the wrong building. I’m sure some midlevel firm will be happy to have you.”

  Delilah snatched the tag away from Rosco’s thin lips. “Fuck you, Nash.”

  “I’d rather eat a bag of dicks, thank you.”

  She glanced down at her phone when it vibrated. “He’s on his way up. Let me do the talking.”

  “Fine.”

  “Say as little as possible.”

  “No shit.”

  “I mean it. I will do all the talking,” she repeated slowly, like I’d given her a reason not to trust me in the past.

  She’d stopped trusting me the week we’d met when I fired a supplier without pay and suggested he take his shriveled-up dick and shove it into a pussy that didn’t belong to the now-ex-wife of one of my board members.

  The lawsuit hadn’t been pretty, but that’s why I paid Delilah double what she would earn anywhere else. She won cases no one else could. Better—she rarely had to step foot in court because she performed miracles before the cases ever reached the steps of Lady Justice.

  I mocked a zipper across my lips and pretended to feed the key to her rat. “Maybe you can get your rat to bite him and give him rabies.”

  “He’s not a rat.” She picked Rosco up, held him close to her chest, and followed me into the living room, where Cayden from the design department had set up a mini-office for me two days ago. A mahogany desk and a high-back leather chair. “Rosco is a hairless Chinese Crested Dog. A four-thousand-dollar dog, for the record.”

  “I could blow four grand on a flea-infested crack den in North Korea, and it’d be a better investment.”

  She pressed a kiss to her pet rat’s temple and whispered, “Don’t listen to the bad man, Rosco.”

  My knuckles flexed along the handles of my chair. She set Rosco down and swung the front door open.

  Delilah didn’t understand the accuracy of her words.

  I was a bad man.

  Sisyphus.

  With blood on my hands.

  Penance in my future.

  Tick.

  Tock.

  After acquiring my wealth, I realized half the power of money came from possessing it. I could spend it, sure, but I didn’t need to. It was a nuclear weapon. A threat looming over enemy heads.

  It said, “I have the power to destroy you. Don’t make me use it.”

  Flexing that power became an art I valued.

  A way of life.

  As natural as breathing.

  By the time Delilah took her stance a step from my shoulder, the elevator dinged in the hallway.

  The window behind me spanned the length of the room with panoramic oceanfront views, and Delilah and I had positioned ourselves in front, so Brandon had no choice but to look at what my money could buy.

  Delilah wore enough jewelry to sink the Titanic, while I leaned back against my seat, shoulders relaxed and my new phone pulled out like I hadn’t a care in the world. I downloaded the Eastridge United app, opened it, and logged in.

  Brandon Vu entered. I didn’t bother to glance at him as I read Durga’s messages, noting she’d been up as late as I was last night.

  Durga: You know what would be an awful way to die? In a room full of people you don’t know.

  Durga: Or worse—a room full of people you hate.

  “Delilah Lowell.” Beside me, Delilah reached a hand out to Brandon as I shot a reply to Durga.

  I ignored the death portion of her messages. It wasn’t like I avoided death, but I preferred not to think about it. After Dad had died, Ma invoked an unspoken do-not-go-there rule, and I had no arguments.

  If I ever went there, I’d drown in the woulda, coulda, shoulda of my life. Death was a mistress approaching her expiration date. To be held at arms’ length, until one day, you forgot about her.

  Problem solved.

  Not the healthiest solution, but I’d never been the type to eat my vegetables, and even Michelle Obama ate at Shake Shack every now and then.

  Benkinersophobia: You’ve never struck me as the type of person who hates people.

  Brandon stepped closer, but I still didn’t glance up. “Brandon Vu, S.E.C.”

  Durga: What type of person hates people?

  I considered it for a moment, but the answer was obvious.

  Benkinersophobia: Me.

  Delilah’s elbow dug into my shoulder, and I waited fifteen seconds to piss her off before I slid my phone into the inner pocket of my suit and gifted the S.E.C.’s errand boy my attention. “Why are you here, Brandon?”

  The cocky tilt of his lips had me questioning whether I’d left a trail of evidence. I hadn’t. Fika pissed me off, but I hadn’t lied to Delilah when I’d said years of being a corrupt cop had given him experience in hiding crimes.

  Brandon eyed the oceanfront view, his attention lingering on Delilah before he turned to me. “I’d like to ask you a few questions if that’s okay.”

  “Rhetorical questions are a waste of my time.” I leaned against my seat and pressed my fingertips together like a church steeple. Probably the closest I’d get to a church, because I was sure I’d burn alive if I ever stepped foot inside one. “Get to the point.”

  Delilah made a show of checking her hundred-thousand-dollar watch with the hand not buried in my flesh. “We only have a few minutes to spare, Mr. Vu.”

  Brandon focused on me, his smile something more fitting for a wax museum. “Do you have your lawyer at every meeting?”

  Delilah’s elbow dug deeper into my shoulder as I spoke, “I’m sure this is a foreign concept for you, but I’m not in the habit of paying people salaries out of charity.”

  “Charity. You do a lot of this.” Brandon lifted a finger with each charity he listed. “The Eastridge Fund. The Eastridge United app. Healthcare for All. Soup kitchens across the South. I could go on.”

  Not exactly classified information.

  Internet trolls accused me of d
oing charity work for good P.R. all the time. They were wrong. I couldn’t give two shits about P.R., but I did have an ulterior motive and talking about it always put me in a mood.

  “I’m impressed. It’s almost as if you know how to use the internet.” I cocked a brow, daring Brandon to accuse me of something. “Is there a point to this or do you enjoy wasting my time?”

  He’d come here expecting to rattle me. Maybe get me to make a mistake. I could see it in his face, the downturned lips and the pinched eyes. He could continue to be sorely disappointed for all I cared.

  D’s stiletto heel found my shin, and she kicked. Hard. I didn’t wince, but she’d drawn blood. I felt it trickling down my shin and staining my suit.

  “Forgive me. I’ll get to the point.” He eyed the rat before stepping closer. “Mr. Prescott, do you know what insider trading is?”

  Rosco approached Brandon and sniffed his leg. I imagined him taking a piss on the fucker’s shoes. For a second, I thought he’d finally make his four-thousand-dollar price tag worth it. But the traitor curled up against it and laid down.

  The motherfucking rat.

  “Toddlers from Old Greenwich know what insider trading is.” I powered on my laptop and began sifting through the emails my Singaporean contacts had sent me. “Spare me the dramatics, and actually get to the point when you say you’ll get to the point.”

  When I glanced up, Brandon’s face remained frozen for a half-second longer than necessary, his cool slipping like melted FroYo before he collected himself. “Fine. Let me lay it out for you.”

  He placed two palms on my desk as if the movement would intimidate me. Leaning across the table, he lessened the gap between us until his chest brushed against the back of my laptop.

  I responded to an email as he continued, “You came from a poverty-stricken family, yet you’ve amassed a substantial fortune in the past four years, particularly right after the fall of Winthrop Textiles. Two parties gained a large sum from the collapse of the company. You’re one of them.”

  He gestured around the penthouse suite, which despite being sparsely furnished until the designers had the opportunity to do their jobs in here, boasted an ocean view I’d paid tens of millions of dollars for.

  “Before I accuse you of anything and before you deny anything,” he bit out, “I saw Emery Winthrop here last night, a name tag pinned to her dress, working for you. Too many threads connect you to Winthrop Textiles for it to be coincidental. I am good at my job, and if there’s anything for me to find, I’ll find it. You may as well save both of us time and talk to me now. We can work out a deal.”

  I pressed send on the email and glanced up at him in time to see his self-satisfied grin. Ripping out of his Saks Off 5th outlet suit and eyebrows so neat they had to be waxed, he looked more like a Tod with one D than a Brandon.

  He knew too much for me to dismiss him, but I stood knee-deep in this shit I’d helped create for me to shift the blame onto someone else. If anything, this very moment had been in the making for seven years.

  It seemed as inevitable as taxes.

  I tilted my head to the side, taking the time to look down my nose at him despite the fact that he stood while I sat. “Does that ever work?”

  “More often than you’d think.”

  Delilah stepped forward, the picture of calmness. She reminded me of the principal parents and students secretly feared. Eyes that had seen everything in the book and remained unimpressed. “Agent Vu, I think it’s best you leave now. We have a strict schedule to adhere to, and if you’d like to talk any further, you may contact me and only me.”

  Brandon’s eyes flickered between me and Delilah before he straightened and nodded. “Think about my offer, Mr. Prescott.” He tossed a business card onto the desk. “A deal doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

  After Delilah shut the door behind Brandon, she turned back to me, a vein bulging on her temple. I’d once named it Delilah Jr. “What part of ‘do not talk’ do you not understand?”

  “The words ‘do’, ‘not’, and ‘talk’.”

  “Nash, this is serious.”

  Wasn’t that the truth?

  In my opinion, insider trading fell on the lowest rung on my list of crimes. I always knew I couldn’t hide the money I’d made from trading in Winthrop Textiles stock, but insider trading was difficult to prove, and I’d done a good job of cleaning my tracks.

  What I hadn’t known was someone else had profited from the fall of Winthrop Textiles.

  I slid out my drawer and brushed my knuckles over the charred leather I traveled with. “Get me a P.I.”

  Delilah’s nose curled up at the sight of the burnt leather, but she said nothing. Her naked, furless rat pawed at her legs to be held. “What about Fika?”

  “Fika is gone.” At the horror in her eyes, I rolled mine. “Relax. Gone as in fired. Fucker’s still alive and kicking.”

  “Jesus, Nash.”

  “Let’s not involve him. He’s never been my biggest fan.”

  She ignored me. “You don’t tell someone a man with cancer is ‘gone.’ You also don’t pay me to be your assistant. Find your own P.I.”

  I would have taken her more seriously had she not picked up Rosco and pet the five strands of hair on his body. “This shit again?”

  “I deserve a raise.”

  “Done.”

  “But I don’t need one.”

  Truth.

  Her husband came from old money. The next ten generations of her family could stop working and still fund ten Star Wars franchises.

  “What do you need, D?” I quirked a brow, giving her my full attention.

  “Why do you assume I need something?”

  “No one does anything out of the goodness of their heart.”

  “You do.” So she thought. “You’re a cranky asshole, but you spend your nights feeding people at soup kitchens regardless of the town we’re in, you take care of your family, you donate a shit ton of your income, and you have never passed someone in need without expensing help.”

  She made me sound like the saint Eastridge had made me out to be. The reality couldn’t be further than that. The word penance tattooed where my forearm and elbow met reminded me of this each time I stripped myself bare and forced myself to look in the mirror.

  I ignored her Nash-Prescott-is-a-saint canonization speech and got to the point. “I need someone not connected to the company. Not the investigator with your legal department. An independent private investigator who isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.”

  Someone like Fika, I didn’t say.

  Burning bridges seemed to be a habit of mine. I’d go as far as considering it a hobby if I didn’t need those bridges to walk across.

  “What’s being investigated?” Emerald eyes studied me, waiting for me to give something away.

  “Vu mentioned a second party profiting off the Winthrop Textiles scandal. I want to know who.”

  “Are we going to talk about how you’re one of those two parties?”

  “No.”

  She paused a beat, and finally, something other than indifference flickered into her eyes. Guilt, maybe. “About Emery Winthrop…”

  I held up a palm to stop her. “I know. Spare me the lecture. She had a catering gig last night. We won’t hire them again.”

  “What?” Her head shook until Rosco nipped at her neck to stop her. “No, that’s not it. Why would you think that?”

  I pushed aside my laptop, ignoring the last question. “Spill.”

  She cocked a hip against the wall and rubbed at Rosco’s belly, a nervous habit of hers. “Reed called me.”

  Already, I knew I’d hate the punchline to this story.

  Not because I hated Reed. I didn’t. The opposite. He was the one who hated me, and I didn’t blame him. I deserved the hate, definitely more than I deserved Eastridge’s naive adoration.

  Didn’t mean I accepted it.

  “Spit it out, Lowell.”

  “I owed him a f
avor. He cashed it in. He wanted me to get Emery Winthrop a job for the company under Emery Rhodes. That was before I knew about the S.E.C. investigation. If I’d known it would cause problems, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  This was the thing I admired about Delilah. She possessed the rare ability to admit when she was wrong. Her confidence was unmistakable. The humility required to pinpoint and admit her mistakes didn’t lessen it.

  “Where is she working?” I asked, wondering if I could fire an entire department without a settlement.

  “The design department as an intern.”

  Fitting.

  She’d always had her head buried in a sketchbook.

  I pulled out my phone and shot a message to Durga.

  Benkinersophobia: How would you treat someone who fucked your family over? Who hurt your family so badly, it’ll never recover?

  Durga: Assuming I like my family?

  Benkinersophobia: Clearly.

  Durga: Like dirt.

  Durga: Like less than dirt.

  Great minds think alike, Durga.

  Delilah continued, “It’s for the duration of the Haling Cove project, and the upper half of the floors are mostly designed based off old schematics. The budget is tight because we had to grease too many fingers to get the zoning and plans approved so fast. We took the money from the design budget.” When I didn’t speak, Delilah asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”

  I hate Emery Winthrop.

  She epitomized everything I stood against. Also, she’d known about her dad’s embezzlement and had done nothing about it. To think I ruined my relationship with my brother over her.

  I didn’t say any of that.

  Instead, I pressed the shin Delilah’s heel had pierced against the desk’s leg until the pressure drew more blood. “I got stuck in the elevator last night.”

  “Stop changing the subject.”