Their Virgin Hostage, Masters of Ménage, Book 5 (11 page)

Her father, Becks, and Greg were sitting in a swanky
restaurant, looking like they were having a grand old time. There was a date
and time stamp on the photograph.

“
Kinley
, this was taken four days
ago. The night before you told me that your father had an oncology appointment
at noon the next day. You confessed how worried you were that he wouldn’t let
you go with him.”

“He said he didn’t want this to be a repeat of Mom’s
illness. He said he couldn’t stand the thought of putting me through it again.”
Had it all been a lie? “I begged him to let me go, but he convinced me to just
write the check. Greg promised to help pay for Dad’s treatments after we were
married. It’s why I agreed to bump the wedding up. Originally, I wanted to get
married in the fall.”

But that hadn’t suited Greg’s or
Becks’s
plans.
Kinley
had been stubborn about it because
she’d always dreamed of a fall wedding in New York. She had also wanted more
time to get to know Greg…and to see if she could pull them out of their
financial problems without being forced to marry.

And then her father had gotten sick. Supposedly. Now she
didn’t know what to think.

Kinley
tried to channel her anger
toward Law, Dominic, and Riley for spying on her family and trying to crush her
illusions. But she couldn’t quite get there. All the evidence pointed to her
family and fiancé betraying her. Dominic, Law, and Riley were simply revealing
it.

“Poor little rich girl,” Dominic drawled.

That voice grated on her nerves. She grasped at whatever
straws she could find. “How do I know you’re not fabricating evidence?”

“Why would we do that?” Riley asked. “Think for two seconds.
Give me one good reason we would.”

“Because you want revenge on Greg.”

“What kind of revenge would making evidence up give us,
Kinley
?” Dominic grilled her.

“You could release the pictures and cause a scandal. That
would be a big story for a long time. He wants to make contacts with society
people, businessmen who were close to my mother and grandparents. I have those
contacts. If those people think of him as a cheating, swindling scumbag, or I
publically malign Greg, they will have nothing to do with him. He won’t make
the connections he wants to.”

“This is about far more than scandal,
Kinley
.
I firmly believe he’s using your charity as a front for some illegal venture.
You should want to know if that’s true yourself.”

Her gaze strayed back to the pictures of her sister and her
fiancé.
Kinley’s
whole world was crashing around her.
Everything she’d thought she believed about her family and her future was now
being called into question. She whimpered.

Kinley
wanted to hate Dominic, but
didn’t have the energy. Every bit of her strength right now went into keeping
her chest from imploding and not crying in front of him and the other two.

“No one tells you the truth, do they?” Law said without any
trace of the lover who had held her so tenderly just hours ago and given her a
kiss she would dream of for the rest of her life.

He certainly hadn’t been honest with her. Greg hadn’t
either. That rat bastard had told her that he thought she was lovely, that he
couldn’t wait for their honeymoon. The whole time he’d been sleeping with her
sister. Even her own father had been lying to her. As much as she’d tried to
bend for the people in her life, to please them…it had been one giant waste.
Apparently they saw her as a target to con.

All of her insecurities welled, a giant wave threatening to
crash over her. Her father had always preferred Becks. Apparently, Greg did,
too. Now that she really thought about it, all of the women he’d dated before
had been slender and model-like. Had Greg been dreading the moment he had to
touch her fat body? Had he put it off all this time until it was absolutely,
positively necessary? But why marry her at all if he didn’t want her?

Ten million dollars. And Becks must have known about the
scheme. It seemed far too coincidental that she’d taken out a
three-million-dollar policy on her husband at roughly the same time. Which
meant Becks and Greg were probably in this scheme together.

Her sister wouldn’t really let someone kill her…would she?
She couldn’t possibly be that cold. The way money wasn’t mysteriously
disappearing from her charity? The way Becks hadn’t been sleeping with Greg? Oh
dear god. Was it possible Dominic, Law, and Riley were right about everything?

“You need to start using your head,
Kinley
.
Read over the accounting reports. Something is wrong at Hope House. Greg,
Becks, and your dad have kept you too busy with the wedding for you to notice.
Well, guess what, honey? We’ve made sure you have all the time in the world to
figure it out now. So look at the fucking reports and tell me your fiancé is
clean. Because either he’s dirty or you are. One way or another, whoever’s
guilty is going to jail.” Dominic stormed out of the room.

The bulldog stayed, his eyes on Gigi.

Riley set the accounting paperwork in front of her. “Don’t
bother trying to escape the kitchen. I’ll be right outside the door. The other
entrance is locked. The windows don’t open in this room, and if I hear you
trying to break one again, I’ll put you over my knee. No one will stop me from
smacking your ass red.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the funny one,” she
muttered under her breath.

Riley’s eyes strayed back to Law. “Is that what he said?
Well, there’s nothing funny about this situation.”

He sent his brother a long look and left.

She didn’t understand what he meant at all. “Could you
please leave, too? I’d like to be alone. I promise I’ll look at this stuff.”

“I’m staying in case you have some trick up your sleeve.”

She was beyond tired. “What would I try, Law? Everything I
try fails. I try to be a good sister, and Becks sleeps with my fiancé. I try to
be a good bride, and my fiancé plans on killing me once I’m his wife. I try to
do good in the world, and apparently everyone just uses me, including my
father. In fact, everyone I’ve loved and trusted just might be plotting to kill
me. Hell, I even tried to make a friend, but it turned out that even you lied
to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you about anything except my name.”

“You told me you cared.” Why was she harping on this? She
hurt so badly, and somehow the thought that Law had fabricated a bunch of crap
to placate her only made her feel twenty times worse. Why?

His face softened for a moment. “
Kinley
,
I…” His jaw firmed. Then he closed his eyes and pulled back, and she knew she’d
lost him. “I did what I had to do.”

“Then leave, and I’ll get through this stuff faster. Like I
said, I won’t try anything. I would just fail.”

He stopped, and for the briefest of moments she thought he
would insist on staying with her. “Fine, but know that if you try, I will let
Riley spank you. When he’s done, I’ll have you over my knee, too. And I won’t
let you up until we’re on the same page.”

“Brutalizing women. Very nice.”

He stopped in front of her, his stare holding and drilling
into hers. “I didn’t say you wouldn’t like it, baby. I just said we would be on
the same page.” He frowned. “How do you do this to me? How do you make me
forget everything I planned? Come on, Butch. She doesn’t want you anymore than
her owner wants me. Let’s go.”

Butch slowly padded toward the door, his doggy eyes
lingering on Gigi.

Law left with the big animal, the door swinging behind them.

Kinley
stared down at the photos
and reports, the brutal proof that her whole life was a lie. Her tears began to
flow in earnest.

* * * *

Law walked out of the kitchen feeling like the lowest
fucking piece of shit on the planet. He crossed the hall and stalked into the
office he, Dominic, and Riley were using as their base of operations. “I really
hope you two are happy.”

Had ruining
Kinley’s
life been
worth it? Maybe if he had tried again, he could have figured out a way to put
Greg behind bars without wrecking all her illusions.

I would just fail.
Her big brown eyes had been filled with tears. Pain had been etched onto her
sweet face.

He’d caused that. Maybe he hadn’t been the fucker cheating
on her or planning to kill her, but he’d helped to expose it all. And he’d done
it coldly because he knew his feelings for her were hopeless. Dominic was
right. Hell, even Riley was probably right. Even if he hadn’t abducted
Kinley
, how would a woman with her class and sweetness ever
survive a relationship with him, a brooding Dominic, and a smartass Riley? It
sounded impossible, and he was such a stupid ass for fighting that realization.

“No,” Dominic said. “I’m not happy. And we have a problem.
Annabelle is on the line. Riley, can
Kinley
hear us?”

Riley crossed the room and shut the door. “No, the doors are
thick, and we’re far enough away. I can see her through the panes if she tries
to come out of the kitchen. I secured the other doors, and the windows won’t
break. We’re good.”

Law was happy about that because the last thing
Kinley
needed was to know that her best friend had been in
on this plot from the beginning. One more betrayal, and
Kinley
might not survive, even if Annabelle had participated with good intentions.

Dominic pushed a button on the phone. “Annabelle, tell us
what’s going on.”

“Greg is freaking out.” Annabelle’s voice was hushed. “He
suspects you. I overheard him talking about it with that goon of his,
Dargo
. At first he thought that
Kinley
got cold feet. He was really upset about the luggage.”

“Why would he want her luggage?” Law asked.

“It’s designer,” Riley explained. “You’ll have to excuse my
brother. He’s not into designer anything. We’re lucky he doesn’t still wear his
BDUs
.”

They wouldn’t let him or he would. He’d spent so much time
in uniform it felt weird to be in civvies, even years later. The Army had been
simple. No need to pick out his clothes. No wondering if he looked like a
douchebag.
Kinley
probably liked a man who knew how
to dress.

Annabelle sounded thoughtful over the line. “I know a full
set of Louis Vuitton is expensive, but her engagement ring cost far more, and
he didn’t give a damn about it. I overheard him talking to Becks, and he was
pissed. He told her that she needed to find
Kinley
and get that luggage back or she would be the one in trouble.”

They’d been through her luggage. Law hadn’t found anything
but her clothes, makeup, and an
iPad
. He’d put the
tablet in airplane mode, and she didn’t know the password for the Internet, so
Riley had declared it harmless, but maybe he should look at it again. All he’d
seen was a bunch of games, pictures, and her e-reader app, which was completely
full of romance novels. Unless Greg liked cross-dressing in private or needed
to catch up on his reading, Law wasn’t sure why he would want anything she’d
packed for her honeymoon.

“We’ll go through it all again. Something’s not right
there,” Dominic said. “We’re working on
Kinley
, but I
can’t tell if she simply doesn’t know anything or she doesn’t want to tell us.”

Law was pretty fucking sure she didn’t know. “Come on. You saw
her face. They’ve kept her out of the loop, and we just crushed her with all
that information. She’s looking over everything we left her now. Maybe once
she’s convinced, she’ll start thinking about what she knows. One thing about
Kinley
I’m sure of, it’s that she has a good heart. She
wants to do what’s right.”

Dominic sent him a sigh that was somewhere between
thoughtful and contrite.

“Spare me.” Riley rolled his eyes.

He got in his brother’s face. “You spare me. Why don’t you
stop assuming she’s just like Simone and fucking get to know her before you
jump to all kinds of assumptions?”

Dominic cleared his throat. “Has anyone been able to find
the accountant she uses?”

“Yes,” Riley muttered. “Tate found Steve a few hours ago. I
hadn’t had a chance to tell you. He claims Greg fired him eight weeks ago.
Since he worked from home, he rarely saw
Kinley
.
Imagine Steve’s surprise when he found out that he was supposedly still
employed. Tate showed him the reports someone had filed on his behalf since he
was fired. He claims none of the work is his. So we have to assume that Greg
has been quietly putting his own people into position.”

And isolating
Kinley
from anyone
who could help her. “The bastard.”

“There’s no question about that,” Annabelle replied, then
her voice became even more grave. “We have another problem. When he couldn’t
find
Kinley
, he called the police. They found a
surveillance tape.”

“Seen it.” Riley sounded long-suffering. “It’s all over the
news. Not our shining moment.”

Law groaned. He was never going to live that shit down. “I’m
sorry.”

Annabelle ignored him. “The police identified Law as the man
on the tape.”

Law’s chest tightened. Just as he feared, he would likely be
going to prison. And that brought up more than one problem. “If I turn myself
over, do you think they’ll let Riley and Dominic off? I can say they had
nothing to do with it, that I had a different crew.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” A male voice came over the line.
He wasn’t trying to be quiet at all. “This is
Kellan
,
and I need to hear you verbally authorize Annabelle to pay me.”