The Fix Read online

  The Fix (The Shamed Billionaire Series, Part II)

  Contemporary Romance Fiction

  Apryl Summers

  1

  I know who killed Penny and I love you.

  The words swarmed my thoughts, over and over.

  I know who killed Penny and I love you.

  Again and again, louder and louder. The letter slipped from my hand and floated to the floor as I remained standing, shocked to my core. My head was pounding and I couldn’t get the words out of my mind. Over and over again they flashed in front of my eyes.

  Wait — was someone knocking on the door? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying with all my might to focus on the door.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  Someone was definitely at the door. I nearly tripped over as I rushed to answer it but with my hand only a few inches from the handle, I froze.

  Kelly, it is too dangerous for you to stay where you are. You need to go in hiding – tonight!

  I didn’t have my new computer hooked up yet so there was no way for me to check the security footage from outside my door. I wasn’t expecting any visitors that I could remember but I also had no idea how assassins operated.

  Could they really find you this quickly?

  They wouldn’t just knock on the door though, would they?

  Knock, knock; my name is Death and I’m here to kill you.

  I let out a hysterical giggle as the thought ran through my mind. “Okay, Kelly,” I told myself, “get yourself together!” I looked around for something I could improvise as a weapon, just as another knock landed on the door. Eyeing a pen on the counter, I snatched it up and, holding it like a knife poised to strike, I walked slowly towards the door. Stretching on my tip-toes to peek out of the little peep-hole, I was confused at first until I remembered what I had been doing when I received the letter.

  A worried-looking young man was standing outside my door with my bags at his feet.

  When my mind processed that it wasn’t a sign of danger, the words from the letter came crashing back. I opened the door and with a mumbled, “Thanks.” I grabbed my bags and then closed and locked the door in his face.

  The last thing I remember was the sensation of falling, and the carpet racing towards me.

  ***

  I awoke with a start to the smell of bacon. How did I get into bed? Why was I in a nightgown? I remember falling, but nothing more.

  Pushing the covers back, I sat up in bed, something that I instantly regretted. My head felt like it was going to split right down the middle.

  I must have bumped it pretty good when I fell, but try as I did, I couldn’t remember anything after that. What was going on?

  I could hear humming coming from the kitchen and a wafting, delicious smell that made me so hungry. I wanted desperately to walk to the kitchen, to see who was there and eat a big plate of whatever they were cooking, but the agony in my head stopped me. I lay back against the pillows and looked around the room. I wanted to be sure of some kind of escape plan in case this was all a cruel joke. What if my killer came to the apartment, found me unconscious and was so amused by it that he decided to make me a last meal as a final insult?

  The humming stopped. I listened closely to the sound of silverware on dishes and then I heard them: steps, steadily paced and heavy. It was a man and he was on his way to my bedroom.

  My heart catapulted into a rate of rapid fire as I heard the steps draw closer and closer. I watched as the doorknob jiggled and I braced myself. My heart felt as if it dropped to the lowest point in the pit of my stomach as the door flew open to reveal none other than Harvey Goldman. In one hand he held a plate that was piled high with all of my favorite breakfast foods, the other was tucked nonchalantly into his pocket.

  “Hi,” he smiled.

  “Um…hi,” I replied. This couldn’t be happening. Not only did I know that I did not have the food in my apartment to cook such a big breakfast, but Harvey was in prison. Right? There was no way this could be happening. This couldn’t be real. Yet there he was, standing in my bedroom doorway.

  A shadow fell over the apartment, as if the sky had clouded over and its shade was seeping into every crevice it could find. Harvey’s smile changed. What was happening? I curled myself into a ball as a dark expression shrouded Harvey’s face. He slowly withdrew his free hand from his pocket, revealing a pistol. As he raised the gun and pointed it at me, my body went into flight mode but not before I heard him say: “This is for Penny.”

  Screaming, I dove off the bed but became tangled in the blankets. I fell, praying for my life and confused as hell.

  ***

  “Kelly! Kelly, it’s me! Kelly, relax, it’s just me! It’s Alex!”

  I woke up screaming and swinging on the floor of my apartment, with Alex standing over me — worry etched into every line of his face.

  “Kelly you were having a nightmare. It’s over, it’s just me. You’re safe in your apartment,” Alex assured me as he helped me up off of the floor.

  “Just a nightmare?” I repeated.

  Why did my brain feel like mush?

  Achy, foggy, pain-filled mush.

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, Alex, why are you here? How’d you get in? Didn’t I lock the door?” I asked him as he helped me into a chair.

  “Yes. I’m sorry to have come over like this, I was worried. I heard a rumor that a letter may have gotten to you and I wanted to come and see if it really had, and what it was about. When I got here, the door was locked and you wouldn’t answer me when I knocked or shouted. I went down to the Property Manager and let him know who I was and he let me in with a spare key.”

  “So that’s all it takes to win over my Property Manager, huh? Tell him you’re a P.I. and he’ll let you in to any apartment,” I groaned. Alex laughed a little at that one.

  “Don’t worry, it took more persuasion than that. He was dead-set against not letting anyone into your place. I think he’s a little more dead-set on making sure that no one ends up dead in his apartment complex again.”

  I fell silent.

  “Oh shit, Kelly I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” he pleaded, seeing how his comment made me feel.

  “It’s okay. I just keep thinking about this letter. I really think you should see it.” I pointed to it and he quickly picked it up and scanned through it. It felt like I was waiting forever before he finally said something.

  “In my line of work, you truly see it all. What he’s doing could easily be a ploy, something to try and draw you to him — he may already have some plan in place,” he held his hand up to keep me quiet as I tried to interrupt. “However, I did go through a lot on this case and there were definitely suspicious aspects. There are people that are just so good at covering up that they get away with their terrible crimes.

  “I’ve seen people wrongfully accused on many occasions. With that being said, I’m not going to tell you what to do. What I am going to tell you is that you just need to be careful. This is no game, Kelly.”

  I nodded, not really having anything else to say. What could I do? Perform my own investigation? I didn’t know the first thing about true detective work. Hell, I had only made it to my sophomore year of college for law; I was still knocking out my prerequisites at that point.

  “Here, you’ve got a lot of thinking to do,” Alex said as he walked over to the kitchen and grabbed a plate to bring to me. “I’m going to get going now that I know you’re safe. I made you a little food while you were passed out. I figured you’d be hungry when you woke up.” He grabbed his briefcase and walked towards the door before pausing to look at me. “Kelly, please be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.” He gave me a worried smile and then left.

  I sank back into the chair and let my mind run wild for a bit a
s I munched down on some of the bacon he had fried for me.

  ***

  I hadn’t left the apartment, and hadn’t responded to the letter that was still sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter. The same thoughts had been running through my head: Is he telling the truth? Where do I start? The more that I thought about it, the more I wanted it to be true. I wanted to find out that Harvey had nothing to do with killing Penny, and I wanted to believe that he loved me. I also knew, though, that I had to take care of myself. If I was in danger, then I needed to take the necessary precautions.

  I started packing some bags, deciding that I would stay at a hotel for a while like I had done in Vegas. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the money. I would try to get a suite at The Four Seasons and lay low for a while.

  After making sure I had everything I would need for a short stay, I threw on a pair of distressed jeans, a baby blue tank with no bra, black stilettos and a black baseball cap, and then I grabbed my sunglasses before heading out.

  As I drove my red convertible towards The Four Seasons, I wondered if Larry and Robert knew about the letter. If Alex had heard a rumor about it, I was sure they would have found out as well. I wondered if I should contact them and get a little more insight on what I should be doing. If the letter was true, I felt in my heart that I needed to act fast but after everything I had been told about the case, and everything I had been told about Harvey, I just didn’t know what to believe.

  Pulling up to a red light, I adjusted my rear-view mirror to see that a black SUV with tinted windows had stopped behind me, the kind of vehicle that would escort the president wherever he needs to go. I had noticed that it had been in the other lane before, and when I thought about it, I also remembered catching sight of it in my rear-view just after I left the apartment. My heart rate picked up little by little as I thought about the possibility of someone following me. That was the last thing I needed, I just wanted to curl up in a warm bed somewhere.

  I decided to run a little test. Instead of going straight on through the intersection, I turned right and plotted out a new course that would take me to the Ritz-Carlton instead. As I turned right, the black SUV turned right as well. I kept my eyes straight and acted normal as I made my way to the hotel and calmly parked right in front of the main doors for the valet to park my car and assist me with my bags. I watched as the black SUV drove past the driveway to the hotel. I was sure it slowed down a little as it passed.

  I didn’t want to waste anymore time thinking about it so, turning on my heel, I went directly inside, walked up to the counter, and paid for 5 days and 4 nights. If I was going to pull this off, I had to make it seem believable. I left a note with the front desk making it very clear that I was not to be bothered by any visitors unless the desk called up to my room first and described who was there to see me. Luckily, the desk attendant took the note without asking any questions.

  After I had a nice warm shower, I called Larry and Robert and told them about my decision to take a mini vacation. I also told them how I was dying for some Ritz crackers, and asked if they could have Carl send some over.

  “We’ll be sure to get on that right away,” said Larry.

  As I hung up, I was confident that he would be able to tie together Ritz and Carl to get Ritz-Carlton. I sank my naked body back in the plush chair that adorned the sitting room in my suite and I waited. I didn’t realize that I had been drifting off to sleep until I was awoken to my hotel room phone ringing loudly on the table next to me. Groggily, I raised the phone to my ear.

  “Yes?” I mumbled.

  “Apologies, Miss Lee,” a young woman’s voice said. “But there are two men here to see you. One of them says that he is your Uncle Pete.”

  “Okay, please send them up.”

  I threw on some decent clothes and was getting ready to unlock the door just as they knocked.

  “Good to see you guys again. Glad you understood what I was trying to tell you,” I smiled as they entered the room.

  “It took me a second but I got it,” Robert said. “We got down here as quick as we could. There’s a rumor flying around that a certain letter is in your possession. Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m alright for now. I was going to stay at the Four Seasons but on my way there, I noticed I was being tailed by a black SUV with tinted windows.”

  “Like that SUV?” asked Robert who had been scanning the road outside as I was talking. I quickly walked over to where he was standing and cast a glance outside. In a fenced-in parking lot across the street, parked next to a streetlight, was the black SUV.

  He saw the worry on my face and said, “We need to get you out of this hotel.”

  “They’re probably waiting for you to come out,” Larry chimed in. “Your car is still there so they’ll assume that you’re still inside the building. They don’t know us so that’s good. Robert and I can go out the front and calmly get back into our car. We’ll fiddle with a map or something; it’ll make us look like tourists. We’ll arrange to have you escorted to an employee exit since they’re probably not watching them as closely, and then we’ll pick you up and take you somewhere safer.”

  “Sounds good to me. I’ll start getting ready and wait for you to send someone up,” I replied as I started gathering my things.

  When the door closed behind Larry and Robert, I let out a long breath. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about this. It felt like I was a damsel in distress in some cheap action movie. As scary as it was to think that I was being watched by people who probably wanted to kill me, I couldn’t help but notice how much my heart rate quickened when I thought about the excitement of it all.

  How could I be horny at a time like this?

  In the light of danger, I suddenly just wanted to have it given to me. Hard.

  2

  I could only imagine what was running through his mind right now. The vision that I presented him was like something out of his wildest fantasies. I was strung up almost exactly as Janine had been when I spent the evening having adventurous sex with her and her boyfriend.

  The perfectly tanned, muscular, dirty-blonde haired man in front of me stood near the foot of the bed, letting his eyes drink in the sight of my waiting body. My legs were strapped up over my head while my arms were pinned to my sides. I watched him as he settled his expression into a cocky, seductive smile and started to slowly walk around the edge of the bed, dragging his finger lazily along the back of my legs as he did so. I felt a moan rise from deep in my throat as his touch lit a fire over every nerve in my body.

  “You have a nice ass,” he said as he ran his hand over my backside, one cheek to the other, letting his fingers tickle over my pussy. I closed my eyes and sank into the abyss as he started rubbing my clit, but it wasn’t long before I was brought back with a sharp smack on my bottom. He gave me a little smile and slid his left hand under my head to get a firm grasp on my hair while pulling the gag out of my mouth with his other hand.

  “Come on, Harvey baby,” I moaned, plastering the sexiest look on my face that I could muster. I wanted him so bad. I could feel the sheets beneath me starting to soak. He had me so wet. I just wanted to feel him slide his big cock deep inside me. “Fuck me, baby. Please fuck me.”

  A dark fire flared in his eyes at my words and the next thing I knew he had me locked in a passionate kiss and I could feel his hand inching lower and lower until he was sliding his fingers in and out, slow at first but then faster and faster. I felt like I was about to blow and could feel every muscle in my body aching for that release. Just when I felt like I couldn’t last any longer, he pulled his fingers out and shoved the gag back in my mouth, giving my hair a good yank.

  “We’ll fuck when I say we’ll fuck,” he growled in a low, sexy tone. My heart started racing as he started to walk around to the foot of the bed, preparing to climb up. That’s when I heard it, the buzzing. It was just every now and then. I gave Harvey a confused look but it was like he didn’t even notice. There it
was again, that buzzing.

  My phone was buzzing on the table next to me, I could see it now with its screen all lit up. I tried to get my hand free but couldn’t manage it. I stared at Harvey, trying to plead with my eyes for him to untie me so I could get to my phone. Why wasn’t he paying attention? He was just standing there with a cocky smile on his face.

  ***

  I shot up in bed. The late morning sunlight was streaming into the hotel room and my phone’s alarm was going off on the nightstand next to the bed.

  It was just a dream.

  The sheets were a little wet beneath me and I looked at them with a mixture of confusion and shame. I had no idea why my dreams were so vivid of late, it had been a long time since I’d had a wet dream, and a long time since I’d seen Harvey.

  I picked up his letter and read it through a few times as I paced around the small living room in my Four Seasons’ suite. The hotel switch went off without a hitch. Shortly after Larry and Robert left, there had been a knock on the door and a nervous looking bellhop gave me a shy smile.

  “Excuse me ma’am but two gentleman have made it clear that you are to be taken out of our hotel through a private, back entrance. Are you prepared to leave?” the boy asked me.

  He was adorable. I could tell that he was nervous to be helping me leave but I could also feel the curious tension building as, I’m sure, he tried to figure out why my exit was to be in this manner. As I bent down to pick up my purse, I caught him casting a peek my way. I wasn’t surprised seeing as how I wasn’t wearing a bra. I saw his eyes snap away when he realized that he’d been caught. Fixing a flirty smile to my face, I thanked him for helping me with my bags and led the way to the elevator, making sure to sway my hips a little as I walked.

  Like clockwork, Larry and Robert were waiting to pick me up. We made it to The Four Seasons in good time, and, after being sure that we weren’t followed, I checked in to my suite and headed straight up. I just wanted to sleep. It was a much longer day than I had wanted to deal with. I made sure to hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and lock both available locks before stripping off my clothes and crawling under the big, comfortable covers.