“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere you don’t end up in jail because you took the fall for Christo,” he replied. “If you stay here, you will be arrested, and you will end up doing twenty-plus years for securities fraud. There is no way out of it.”
“You’re going to tell them I didn’t do anything, though, right? You’re going to clear my name?”
Alex’s jaw was clenched tight as he shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“Then what are you doing, if you're not going to help me?”
“I’m getting you out of the country to somewhere they don’t have an extradition treaty.”
“You’re going to Snowden me?”
“Not quite. Snowden was a whistleblower. You’re just…” He glanced over at her, and didn't finish his sentence.
He wanted to say she was just a baby. But she wasn’t. She was a full grown woman who should have known better than to be manipulated by Christo and Carlyle.
His phone lit up with a message from Christo.
Get back here, we need you.
Alex ignored it. There was someone who needed him more. Someone he had no real obligation to, but he couldn’t help himself. From the moment he’d first laid eyes on Sophie, he’d been, for want of a better term, smitten. She was just the right blend of cute and professional, smart, and vulnerable. If he didn’t know better, he would have almost thought she’d been put in his path on purpose.
But nobody knew his type at Apex. He usually dated women with titles and houses, not MBAs. If they were trying to set him up, they’d pick some sultry siren, not a girl in an off-the-rack business suit who went all red-eyed and teary when she was set up to take the fall.
“You’re innocent,” he said, finishing his sentence in a more complimentary way. “And you don’t deserve what’s going to happen to you if I don’t help you.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
“Tell me,” he said. “You have any pets? A cat that needs to be fed?”
“No,” she shook her head. “I don’t have anyone who’s going to miss me really, that’s why I can work so late and not have to worry about it.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I would have picked you for a girl who keeps at least one cat.”
“You’re calling me a cat lady?” She was offended. She was cute when she was offended. Something about the way she lifted that round chin of hers. Even now, while she was trying to hold back tears. Fuck. He liked the way she looked with weepy eyes. It was the twisted part of him which made his cock throb and surge toward the zipper of his pants.
“I’m saying you’re caring,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing to have a pet.”
“Do you have a cat?”
“I have several in various households, and two dogs who travel where I go.”
He felt her eyes brighten. “Wow. Really. You’re an animal guy.”
“We’re all animals.”
“Some of us more than others,” she said bitterly. “Christo can’t get away with this.”
“Worry less about Christo and more about getting through the next few months,” Alex advised her. “Your life just changed forever.”
Chapter 10
“I put myself through college. I got scholarships. I worked on campus. Nothing was ever handed to me. Nothing. And now it’s all being taken away by that… that dick!”
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. She was in shock. One moment she’d been working late, the next she was having her life ruined.
The plane shuddered gently beneath her, riding light turbulence. Alex had wasted no time in getting them both to a private airfield. She had no passport, but it didn’t matter. When you were rich enough, boundaries, borders, and laws all became a complete irrelevance.
Alex leaned forward and brushed her tears away with the pad of his thumb. She looked up at him in shock, not expecting any kindness from him at all, let alone this unexpected tenderness.
“I tried to warn you, sweetheart,” he said. “These games aren’t for playing by girls like you. You can only get hurt.”
“Like fuck I can. I’m going to destroy him.”
Alex ignored her bravado. He turned stern and stoic again. “You’re not going to do anything besides what you’re told to do, you understand? What happens over the next hours and days, it’s going to be intense. But you’ll get through it as long as you’re a good girl and do as I say. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes.
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because we both know you’re innocent.”
There was something else. Something unspoken, but very much in the air between them. He wanted something from her. There was a chemistry she couldn’t deny, an intense pull which was all twisted up and fucked on her end because she didn’t know if she saw him more as a daddy rescuer, or a super-fucking-hot-alpha-male-sex-god. Both. She saw him as both. God. She was so fucked up. If he had any idea…