Villain (Hero 1.50)

Uneasiness crawled through me. If this was true… Even I, a newbie to Boston, knew who Carraway was. He’d strode into Boston high society despite his lack of blue blood because he was immensely wealthy, intelligent, and ruthless. This story… this story if true would be the biggest scandal to hit the city in a long time.

I didn’t judge people. I couldn’t care less if it were true and I wasn’t in the business of destroying a person’s reputation. I knew how that felt firsthand. “That sounds like nonsense and without proof, you’re asking for trouble. Carraway is a powerful man, Dick.”

“Exactly why we need evidence.” He reached behind him and plucked a card off his desk. Handing it to me, he said, “My one-night-stand’s card. She won’t return my calls but she might talk to you. Try to get in touch with her. While you’re at it, get digging. There’s something here. Carraway is practically untouchable. Bringing him down would take this station to another stratosphere.”

I stared at my boss in horror. He was truly a disgusting human being.

Reading my expression, Dick sobered. “I’m doing this for us both, Nadia. With sex appeal and charisma like yours, you deserve to be a star.”

With a heart like yours, you deserve nothing. But I didn’t say the words out loud. Instead I crushed the business card in my hand and turned to leave.

“Nadia.”

I paused, not wanting to look at him again. I didn’t think my stomach could take it.

“Remember what’s on the line here.”

I nodded, all my words choked down by rage, and then I got the hell out of there.

As soon as I returned to my workstation, I pulled my iPad out of my drawer and logged into my file. Quickly, I recounted everything that had happened in my boss’s office and saved it. The iPad trembled in my shaking hands. What was I going to do?

Maybe… maybe I could do a little digging. See what was there. Buy some time. Figure out how in the hell I could get Dick fired without losing my job at the same time.

Staring at my laptop screen, at the papers spread all over the desk in my sitting room, a measure of relief washed over me.

There was nothing here.

For the past two weeks, in my spare time, I’d been researching Caine Carraway. I’d also used savings I couldn’t afford to use on a private investigator. I had him following Dick everywhere in the hopes that he’d find something I could use to blackmail my boss out of blackmailing me. It made me sick to my stomach to even contemplate blackmailing someone but that’s how desperate Dick made me feel.

Since that moment in his office, I’d been walking around with a constant knot in my stomach.

I pulled at my ponytail in frustration but not at the fact that I’d found nothing on Carraway. That was the best news I had so far.

The woman Dick had slept with, Imelda Worthington, was refusing to take my calls. She’d hung up on me on our first call, and now she was screening me. I’d left a number of messages but so far, nothing.

As for Carraway’s history at Wharton, from what I’d discerned, he’d worked his way through business school as a waiter at a fancy restaurant on Society Hill. How he got the money to make his first investments seemed clear to me.

I pulled out a photograph of Henry Lexington from my research.

Henry was the son of Randall Lexington, the CEO of Randall Lexington, a domestic and offshore bank; he worked for his father, who happened to be Carraway’s business partner. Henry was where Carraway got his money to invest, I was sure of it, because Henry and Caine were good friends and roommates at Wharton. As far as I could tell, they were still close.

I stared at their photos. God, the two of them were annoyingly good-looking. Where Caine was tall, darkly handsome, and brooding, Henry was tall with light brown hair, had a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes, and overall polished, movie-star good looks. According to the society pages, he was a perpetual flirt, never seen with the same woman twice, and he was the ultimate catch. He and Caine were Boston’s most eligible bachelors.

But they came from entirely different backgrounds.

Whereas Henry had all the luxury and opportunities in the world, Carraway had not.

He grew up in South Boston, son of a construction worker and a shop girl. His mother’s body was found in a hotel room when he was a boy—a drug overdose. Three months later his dad walked into their cop neighbor’s home, took the cop’s gun, and blew his own brains out.

Carraway was put into the system.

A tragic early life.

It only made his successes more impressive.

I hated Dick. I hated that he would want to hurt someone who had strived so hard to put his past behind him.

There was no other scandal immediately to report. Carraway didn’t seem to have a lot of connections in his life. If anyone knew anything remotely private about him, it would be Lexington. My eyes flicked back to the photo of the handsome blueblood. It was from yesterday’s newspaper: a photograph of him at Richard and Cerise Anderson’s anniversary ball at their home in Weston. On his arm was a very attractive, tall, enviously slender brunette. She was named as Alexa Hall, Carraway’s PA. Henry had taken Carraway’s PA to the ball?

Wait.

Hall?

Something about her name bothered me and I fumbled to find the file I had on Carraway’s staff. As Carraway’s PA, Alexa would surely know more about him than most but I’d eliminated her as a possibility because she had only recently started working for Carraway.

But her name…

I pulled out her official employee file at Carraway Holdings. The file was confidential but my friend Joe had a friend who worked at Carraway Holdings and owed him a big favor. Joe and I met at college, we fell in love in a nonsexual way because he was attracted to men, and I rarely asked him for a favor so he cashed in this one for me. His friend got into the personnel files and made a copy for me. It had to be some big favor he owed Joe to risk his job like that, but Joe wouldn’t tell me what. Joe was a whiz with a computer, though, so I hope it wasn’t anything more illegal than copying some personnel files.

That’s how I ended up with Alexa’s file. And I knew why her name was bothering me.

Her file said Alexa Holland, not Hall.

Holland?

As in Holland Diamonds?

The Hollands were one of the oldest, bluest-blooded families in Boston.

Why would a Holland be working for Caine Carraway as his PA? And why would they lie about her name at the ball?

I Googled Edward Holland, the current patriarch of their mini empire.

There was no mention of a granddaughter called Alexa.

However, the story that caught my attention was his son’s. Alistair Holland. Disinherited twenty years ago, Alistair Holland divorced his wife Patricia Estelle Holland, leaving behind her and their son, Matthew.

But where did he go?

I drew up his picture and then folded Henry out of the photo of him and Alexa and put Alexa next to Alistair. “Hmm.” There was something in the chin and shape of their eyes… but not enough to say they were related.

Flipping back to Alexa’s file, I looked up her date and place of birth and called Joe to ask him for another favor. Ten minutes later, he called me back with results.

“Found her birth certificate. Her father isn’t named on it. But her mother is Julie Brown.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“I thought you didn’t need anything else from me,” he teased.

“I owe you another beer.”

“Nah, this is fun playing detective. Arthur and I are considering doing a PI bit.”

I snorted. Arthur was Joe’s husband, and they liked to play out a different sex scenario every week. “Have fun with that.”

“I’m thinking I’ll be the PI and he’ll be on the—”

“For future reference, I never need to know the details.”

He laughed and hung up.

And I immediately searched for Julie and Alexa.

r />   A few pages into the search, I found an article from eleven years ago, from a high school in Chester, Connecticut, a town about an hour from my own hometown of Beacon Falls.

Alexa and Julie had raised money together as part of a mother-daughter entrepreneurial challenge. All the money went to charity. They were photographed together at the high school and it was clear that Alexa looked more like her mother.

But that wasn’t what made my heart rate speed up.

It was the profile of a man who appeared to be walking out of the shot.

I looked at Alistair Holland and then back to the newspaper article.

It was the same guy. Alistair.

Alistair Holland was Alexa’s father.

He had to be.

But why didn’t anyone know this?