Her Mistletoe Protector

ONE

“Ms. Simon, wait! I have a letter for you.”

Rachel Simon, CEO of Simon Inc., froze, despite the fact that she was running late for her nine-o’clock meeting. The sick feeling in her stomach swelled with dread as she forced herself to turn and face the receptionist.

“Here you go,” Carrie Freeman said with a wide smile.

Rachel stared at the thin envelope with her name typed neatly on the front, the dread congealing into a mass of fear. The letter looked exactly like the one she’d received in her mailbox at home last night, and she instinctively knew there was another threat inside. She swallowed hard and took the envelope from the receptionist, being careful to hold it along the edges. Then she cleared her throat. “Who dropped this off for me, Carrie?”

“I don’t know... It was sitting on my desk chair when I came back from the restroom. There was a sticky note, telling me to deliver it to you first thing.”

Rachel tried hard to keep her fear from showing as she cast a worried gaze around the lobby. Was the person who had left the note watching her right now? “Do you still have the sticky note?” she asked.

Carrie’s expression turned perplexed. “I tossed it in the trash bin.” Rachel glanced over the receptionist’s shoulder at the large stainless-steel trash container standing near the lobby door. “Do you want me to go through the garbage to find it?” Carrie’s tone indicated she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of pawing in the trash although Rachel knew she would if asked.

As much as she wanted to see the note, she shook her head. Asking Carrie to search through the bin would only bring unwanted attention to herself. She wasn’t ready to go public with the weird phone calls and the threatening letter she’d received. The last thing she needed was some sort of leak to the media, as if her company hadn’t been through the wringer already.

“No thanks, just curious to see if I recognized the handwriting, that’s all. Thanks again, Carrie.”

Rachel turned back toward the elevators, her mind focused on the contents of the letter rather than on her upcoming meeting with the two top research scientists in her pharmaceutical company.

The ride to the tenth floor, where her office suite was located, seemed to take forever. She smiled and chatted with various employees as if the envelope in her hand didn’t matter.

“Good morning, Rachel,” her senior administrative assistant, Edith Goodman, said as she entered through the glass doors. “Dr. Gardener and Dr. Errol are waiting for you in the conference room.”

“I’m sorry, but please tell Josie and Karl that I’ll need to reschedule our meeting.”

Surprise flashed in Edith’s eyes, but she quickly nodded and crossed over to the conference room next to Rachel’s office. As her assistant delivered the news to the two researchers, Rachel ducked inside her office and closed the door, dropping the envelope on her desk as if it might burn her fingers.

She didn’t have any gloves, so she put another piece of paper over the envelope and used her letter opener to slice beneath the flap. Inside was a single piece of paper with a computer-printed message, exactly like the one she’d received at home. Her stomach knotted with anxiety as she carefully opened the paper and read the short message.

“You will scream in agony, suffering for your past mistakes.”

She shivered, the words searing into her mind. She opened her purse and drew out the letter she’d received last night, when she and her son, Joey, had come home from basketball practice. The wording was similar, yet different.

“You will repay your debt of betrayal.”

The two letters, spread out side by side on her desk, seemed to mock her. She couldn’t ignore the threat any longer, not when she knew, with grim certainty, the source of the veiled threat.

The only person she’d ever betrayed was her ex-husband, former State Senator Anthony Caruso. A few months after they were married, the joy of discovering she was pregnant was marred by learning Anthony had ties to organized crime. At first she couldn’t believe he was involved in anything illegal. She was embarrassed that the man she’d fallen in love with was nothing more than an illusion. His fake charm covered a black soul.

All too soon, Anthony was openly talking about his Mafia association as if nothing she did could touch him.

But he’d been wrong. She’d lived in fear for months, but one night, he’d lost control and hit her hard enough to give her a black eye and a minor concussion. The evidence of physical abuse, along with her father’s money—and the fact that her father’s best friend was a judge—helped her buy her freedom.