Chapter 1
Piers
Like always, it felt all sorts of fucked up to be sitting in the small waiting area of Bachelor International. Six months ago, I had been the matchmaking company’s head legal counsel as well as best friends with its owner, Tenor Butler. In those days, I’d breeze through the front door and make my way to any area I wanted in the office. I’m not even sure I’d ever looked at the waiting room any of the times I came by to meet or chat with Tenor.
Now, however, he wouldn’t speak to me unless it was necessary.
While I’d admit to strong-arming his then employee, Mia, into quitting all those months ago, I had done so based on what I thought was ironclad proof she was using him. I had been trying to protect my best friend and the business he’d built from the ground up. Instead, I’d fucked up a bunch of shit.
For the past four months, I’d been working to make amends, for the most part, by tracking down the asshole who’d given me the worthless information in the first place, Benjamin Douglas. To be honest, I was shocked I hadn’t found him yet. Known by most as a respected attorney in the Boston area where I lived, I hadn’t always been the upstanding gentleman most people viewed me as. Among other things, I had what might view as questionable contacts. A good number of those contacts were known for their ability to find people who preferred to remain hidden.
Needless to say, the fact that Benjamin Douglas seemed to have disappeared and had remained hidden from all of us dumbfounded me. Earlier in the week, I’d narrowed down the ways he could have accomplished such a task and found two that seemed to be the most likely.
One, he was dead.
Two, he was part of an unsavory group who had their own questionable contacts and means of doing things.
While I preferred reason one, I had a gut feeling reason two was more likely. Based on that gut feeling, I’d revised my search tactics, and the result was why I found myself sitting in the previously unnoticed waiting area.
“Mr. Worthington?” the admin working the front desk asked. “Ms. Matthews said to send you on back.”
“Thank you,” I told her, walking past her desk, noting that she watched until I disappeared around the corner. Mia and/or Tenor had hired her since my fall from grace, though I’m sure someone, if not multiple someones, had filled her in on my history.
Mia had her office door open. But I didn’t want to barge in, so I knocked on the frame to get her attention.
She looked up and smiled. “Hey, Piers. How’s it going? Come on in and sit down.”
I walked into her office and took a seat in a chair across from her desk. While Tenor only spoke to me when necessary, the same could not be said of Mia. She’d forgiven me for my actions that led to her untimely departure from Bachelor International. The way I saw it, my forcing Mia out had been a positive thing in the end. Ultimately, it’d resulted in her becoming part owner. That didn’t even take into consideration the fact she and Tenor now lived together.
But that was a conversation for another day. Since I was the one who’d asked for the meeting, I started. I began by telling her my thoughts on the two most likely reasons locating Benjamin Douglas bordered on impossible. She agreed it was unlikely the man had somehow died with no record of it happening.
“That’s not the only reason you asked to meet, is it?” she asked. “You’re here because the new search you started on has turned something up, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. Based upon what she and Tenor had told me before, in addition to what I’d learned from my own research, Mia and Benjamin had met in college. They dated for a brief time but decided they were more suited together as friends. While this seemed to have been the case while they were in college, after graduation, they hadn’t seen the other person until that fateful meeting when they were in Atlanta at the same time and hotel months ago.
Though I doubted Mia still considered Benjamin a friend since, according to both her and Tenor, her old schoolmate had attempted to assault her during that Atlanta meeting, I hesitated voicing what I’d found. A fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Mia.
“You asked for this meeting,” she reminded me. “Tell me what you found.”
I took a deep breath. “I have reason to suspect a wanted crime lord paid Benjamin for his actions in Atlanta.”
“What?” Mia asked, her confused expression reminding me so very much of how I suspected my own shocked face looked when I discovered the evidence.
“Don’t ask me how I came into possession of this information, but according to bank records, his account recently received a large deposit from an overseas bank. I’ve been able to track it that far, but I can’t get any further.”
“Okay,” Mia said. “I’ll agree getting a hefty sum of money deposited by an international bank into your personal account is a little fishy, but does that mean it’s always fishy? Is there not an instance you can think of in which the transfer would result from a legitimate reason?”
She was playing devil’s advocate. I had to admit I appreciated her questioning me and not taking everything I said as gospel.
“Of course,” I replied. “There are several reasons the money could have been deposited legitimately. But I don’t believe any of those to be the case with Benjamin.”
She gave a quick nod. “It’s America. Innocent until proven guilty.”
“It’s my research,” I came back with. “Assumed guilty until proven otherwise.”
“You think Benjamin is in cahoots with the mob?”
Cahoots. I loved the English language. So many fun words. “Yes,” I said. “I think they have him deep inside their pockets.”
She leaned back in her seat, and I had a fairly good idea of what she was thinking. A suspicion that proved correct when she replied, “If that’s the case, this could have a much broader scope than we originally thought.”
Yes, and that was another problem.
“Is it possible it wasn’t a coincidence I ran into Benjamin in Atlanta after all these years?” she asked.
“As crazy and as improbable as it sounds, it means we have to look into that possibility.” I still thought that arranging an accidental meeting was something of a long shot. Based on what I remembered, Tenor and Mia had booked their flight and hotel only a few days before they left. One would think it impossible to move that fast.
“Why would anyone considered a crime lord be interested in me?” Mia asked, but she didn’t wait a second before answering her own question. “Unless they were using me as a way to get to either Tenor or the business.”
“That would be my guess,” I said. “Although I’m not sure why anyone would target them either.”
Mia chewed on her bottom lip. “I should get Tenor and bring him in. He needs to know about what we’re potentially dealing with here.”
As much as I knew Tenor didn’t want to see me, she was right. He needed to be present. I’d been the one who discovered the information, and therefore I should be the one who explained it to him. I gave Mia a nod.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said and stepped out of her office—on her way to get Tenor, I presumed.