Craving HIM (Serving HIM Vol. 7) (23 page)

Ten hours later, she was still asleep.

The stress, I had to figure. The past few weeks had been hell, plus she had just gotten over that ear infection. It was understandable that she wasn’t feeling all that great. Understandable that she was worn out. As a matter of fact, I’d been working her damn hard from the very beginning. She probably needed a bit of a break and some rest and had for a while, but she’d just kept on pushing herself until her body took over.

Once she had a chance to rest and decompress over this bullshit with Pence and Penelope, then she’d feel better. I’d been telling myself that ever since I’d found her asleep, still dressed, last night because I couldn't bear the thought that it could be something else. That maybe she was really sick. Like deep inside sick, the kind that meant hospitals and x-rays and CAT scans and talking about “what-if” plans.

I knew I was over-reacting, but I couldn't seem to stop the crazy thoughts circling in my head, telling me all the ways I could lose her. I needed to just ask her if she was okay.

I was already halfway through my fourth cup of coffee when she finally shuffled into the kitchen. She was wearing a pair of yoga pants and a too-big tank top that kept falling off one of her shoulders. Her nipples were soft under the thin material and her hair was rumpled. She looked sleepy and beautiful.

And she was mine.

Her eyes slid my way and she smiled tiredly before looking around. “You already had breakfast?”

“Yes. What would you like to have? I’ll let Mary know. She's just in the pantry, checking to see what needs restocked.”

Aleena grimaced. “Toast. That’s all I want.”

“You’re still sick.” Rising from my chair, I opened my arms and she immediately leaned into me.

“I’m not sick. I’m tired. Stressed.” The words were slightly muffled as she put her head against my chest.

The words she said should have soothed some of my nerves, but she felt oddly frail and she gripped my waist tightly, as though she thought I was slipping away. The anxiety in my stomach doubled.

“Aleena.” Burying my face in her hair, I took a moment to breathe in her scent before I said, “I want to take you to the doctor.”

“No.” She eased back, giving me an easy smile. “I’m tired, Dominic. I just want to rest. Rest. Not think about Penelope or Mitchell or the cops or the videos.”

I wasn’t going to be able to keep convincing myself it was stress, no matter what she said. Shadows lay like bruises under her eyes and I fought the urge to argue. Only the knowledge that it wouldn’t make her feel any better kept me from pressing the matter.

Stroking a finger across her cheek, I nodded in an agreement I didn't feel. “A few days of rest, then. If you’re not feeling better when we get back to New York, you’ll let me take you into the doctor.”

She pressed a quick kiss to my chin, but didn't meet my eyes. “If I don’t know what’s going on by then, yes.”

I could tell that was the best I was going to get. I reluctantly released her and followed her to the kitchen. I poured her a glass of orange juice as she toasted two slices of bread. Neither of us spoke, and I could sense that she was just as lost in her own thoughts as I was. Except my thoughts were about her and I doubted she was thinking about me.

While we were on our way into the morning room, my phone rang. The sight of Kowalski’s name on the screen didn’t make me happy though. The man did good work and he was on top of things, plus a professional through and through. But I really didn't want to deal with anything right now. I knew, however, he wouldn’t be calling me this weekend unless it was important.

I answered and the tension in his voice had my pulse picking up. “What’s going on?”

I flicked Aleena a look as I waited for him to answer. No more bad news. That was all I wanted. No more bad news right now, not when I was worried about her.

He hesitated, as if he was trying to find the right words. “I’ve got...well, let’s just say some very sensitive information that you need to be aware of. I can’t talk about it on the phone. I’m heading up your way. Can we meet? I’m an hour outside of the Hamptons.”

I headed for the stairs, wanting to put some distance between me and Aleena in case I had to say something about what I'd hired Kowalski to do.

“Which...assignment is it about?” I wasn't sure which one would be worse. If it was bad enough for him to come up here, it had to be bad, and I didn't know if I wanted it to be bad about Pence and Penelope or about...

“It's the new job you gave me. I have some pretty damning stuff. Can we meet?”

I stopped breathing.

It wasn’t until my chest started to ache that I realized the problem and let air out in a rush. “How sensitive?”

“Very. Trust me, Mr. Snow, while you likely don’t want to hear what I have, you need to know it.”

That didn't sound good at all.

“I'll be there.”

Aleena was lounging in a chair on the wide deck when I came back downstairs. She had a book in her hand, but she wasn’t reading. Her eyes were on the water and she was gazing out over the ocean as if mesmerized. She had a little more color to her cheeks, which was a good thing.

“I have to see Kowalski,” I said, kneeling in front of her. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? I can always have him come here.”

“I’m fine.” She pushed a hand through my hair and a zing of electricity went through me. “I’m feeling better already. Just need to drag my lazy tail out of this chair, go shower and dress. I’ll feel better once I do. I’m just lacking motivation.”

“Your tail is perfect.” I kissed her palm and then stood. “If you need to take a day to rest, then do it. Take a few days, a week, a month. Just take care of yourself.”

She looked up at me with a fond smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. “Dominic, if I took a month off, you’d fall apart. You can’t keep track of what you’re doing in a single day, much less a month.”

She had no idea just how right she was. I'd be lost without her, but if she needed some time off, I'd make it happen. “I’ll manage. If you need some time, take it.”

“If I need it. Right now, this bit of rest is helping.” She nodded and I turned to go before I talked myself out of it.

I had a feeling it wouldn’t take much to talk myself out of this, either. I'd much rather have stayed and taken care of Aleena than go hear what my PI had to say.

***

Kowalski had been right.

I didn’t want to know.

The information turned out to be far beyond my worst imaginings and I couldn’t think of much else that would have made this any better for me. Grimly, I read through the report a second time and then crumpled it in my fist, resisting the urge to throw it against the wall. It wouldn’t do any good. It was a piece of paper, not enough to do the kind of damage I was craving. Plus, it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted lying around.

Kowalski didn’t blink an eye. Instead, he slid a journal toward me, but kept a hand on top of it. “This is the only copy. No crumpling it.”

“Got it.” Sucking in a breath, I opened it. The journal had belonged to Georgia Hayes, a woman who, according to Kowalski, had worked as the personal assistant slash secretary for JC Woodrow for years. She'd also been his mistress.

“Why is she sharing this now?” We were sitting outside a coffee shop I’d suggested, tucked in the far back. At Kowalski’s insistence, I’d put on a pair of gloves before touching the journal. It made sense. We didn’t want any extra fingerprints on it. He’d done the same. Flipping the book open, I skimmed the first page before I looked back up at him. “Doesn’t she realize she’s implicated as well?”

Kowalski stroked a finger down a neatly trimmed sideburn. “Ms. Hayes has cancer. Pancreatic. It’s invasive and not responding to treatment. They don’t think she’ll live to see Christmas. I’m not sure if she’s trying to unburden her soul before she dies, or if she’s just still pissed off at Woodrow for replacing her with a younger model when they first diagnosed her.”

“He dumped her when she told him she had cancer?” Okay, that was damn low. Even as gun shy as I was about relationships—or as gun shy as I had been before Aleena—I never would've done anything like that.

“I asked the same thing. In a manner of speaking.” He sipped his coffee and looked around, his gaze casual but I had a feeling he was watching everything and everybody around us. “She told me that his response to her was quite civilized and logical, and that he did compensate her financially—she’ll die a rich woman. However, they had an arrangement and as she was going to be rather ill and struggling to cope, she wouldn’t be able to hold up her end of the deal. It was best to just end things while she still had the energy to find a place to live.”

Hissing out a breath between my teeth, I lowered my gaze back to the journal. “Shit.”

“Very much so.”

When I caught him doing another one of those casual surveys, I narrowed my eyes on his face. “Are you expecting company?”

He gave a slight start and then laughed. “You’re very observant, Mr. Snow. If you ever decide you want a change of pace, I imagine I could make you into quite the detective.” He took another sip of his coffee and then shook his head. “No. I’m not expecting company, but I like to be prepared. Woodrow keeps Ms. Hayes under watch. It’s not constant, but I don’t think he trusts her. I was very careful when I approached her and I’m certain I wasn’t noticed, but I don't want to risk it.”

Slowly nodding, I processed that information. “If he’s watching her, then maybe he’s already prepared for something like this.”

“I think he’s watching her to make sure he doesn’t need to prepare. I don’t think Woodrow thinks much of women in general. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch. He’s just covering his ass. As he should with this woman. Probably more than he thinks. She’s very sharp.”

Rubbing a hand down my face, I pondered my next concern. “If you’re wondering if she’s doing this out of revenge, the cops are going to wonder the same thing.”

“I already pointed that out to her.” The smile on his face was cagey and he looked to his side, reaching into a box I’d just now noticed. “Which is why she passed me this information as well.”

I blinked and then rubbed my face before I looked back down. In front of me were pictures, a neat stack of discs, and a box of old VCR tapes. He gave a meaningful glance down and I craned my neck to see. He actually had a box of evidence.

“Have you looked...?” I glanced down at the top photo and the rest of the sentence died. Squeezing my eyes tightly closed, I told myself I was seeing things. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

But when I looked again, the man in the image hadn’t changed.

It was him.

My fucking father.

With my other fucking father.

Solomon Snow sharing drinks with JC Woodrow. “What is this?” I demanded, hardly able to believe what I was looking at.

“They knew each other,” Kowalski said quietly. There was something in his eyes. I thought it might have been sympathy.

Curling a hand into a fist, I snarled, “So what? Solomon Snow had money and moves in the right circles. Woodrow is a politician—”

“They’ve been friends since grade school.” Kowalski's voice was quiet. “They shared a house all throughout college. Woodrow introduced your father to your mother.”

“No.” I shook my head.

That wasn't possible. I wanted to get up, take off. Drive back to the house and grab Aleena, hold her. Lose myself in her. I definitely didn't want to have to think about the implications of what this meant.

“No,” I said again. The man was a cold bastard, but that cold?

“They knew each other,” Kowalski said again, as though he had to make me understand. “And your father...your adoptive father...”

He stopped and then sighed, reached into his ugly box for one last piece of evidence.

A folder.

I didn't want to open it, but I knew I had to. When I did, I immediately wished I'd followed my gut instinct to run. Inside the folder were copies of deposit slips, from Solomon to others. Kowalski also had information on those names and my gut crawled as I realized what I was looking at.

“This is why there was never much follow-up,” I said thickly. “Why so many of the abducted children didn’t get much attention from the cops. He was bribing them.”

“I’m sorry.”

I stared at the information spread out in front of me, still unable to believe what I was seeing. It didn't seem possible, but I knew Kowalski had done his homework. He never would've brought me any of this if he hadn't known it was accurate. There was no way around it.

A few more moments passed before I could even speak. “What do I do with this? What do we do?” I was utterly lost.

“Report it,” Kowalski said. “We can pass it on to the FBI or to your friend Sinclair.”

I nodded. “Do it. Anonymously. I don’t want to know any more about this. Give it to Sinclair. I trust him to do what's right.”

Chapter 21

Dominic

The last thing I wanted to do was tell her.

Standing in the door leading out to the patio, I had to fight the urge to turn and run. Not from her, but from reality.

How could I tell her that my birth father was such a monster?