Criminal Love: A Billionaire Romance

Criminal
Love

A Billionaire Romance

Part 1

By Monique Hodge

This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or places is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Monique Hodge

All rights reserved

Cover designed by Monique Hodge.
Image by Yuliya Yafimik. Fonts used are League Gothic and Existence.

No part of this book may be
reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form except as
excerpts or quotations less than 250 words. Parodies, derivatives, and fan
media adaptations for personal, but not commercial use are permitted.

First Edition: January 2016

Part 1

Hadley West checked
her gun, making sure that the blanks were in place rather than the actual
bullets her older sister had given her before they boarded the cruise ship. The
weapon felt like a dead weight in her hand. She should have been taking finals
at college, but instead she was sitting in a small cabin in the Gulf of Mexico
as her criminal family prepared for the biggest heist of their lives.

“Cheer up,” her
sister Piper said, cracking her knuckles. “Just imagine the cash we’ll be
swimming in after this. You’ll be able to afford med school no problem.”

Unlike the
mild-mannered Hadley, Piper and the rest of Hadley’s family reveled in their
life of crime. Hadley looked around. Her mother and father were standing over a
schematic of the boat, no doubt stolen from one of the emergency evacuation
maps in the hallways of the ship. She hoped it would not be needed, but then
again, her family had a way of inviting disaster wherever they went. That was
why Hadley had decided to come along, and she had managed to keep them in check
for the first five days of the cruise.

Tucker, her
younger teen brother, stood at the door waiting for his twin Tanner to come
back from scouting out their target. Tucker stood on his toes and peered out
the window. Everyone in Hadley’s family was eager for the night ahead. Eager to
take on Jackson Ward, the billionaire oil tycoon whom the West family were
going to extort a small fortune from.

But all Hadley
wanted to do was curl up on the bed and pretend that she was back in New York.
The last thing she wanted to do was threaten to kill a man who was wealthier
than some third world countries. If she was being honest, and Hadley usually
was when she could, she was scared of what Jackson could do.

She thought of
the last five days and the reconnaissance she had done for her family. She had
followed Jackson from a distance. It wasn’t difficult to spot him; he was
handsome. Almost six feet tall, blonde tidy hair, deep blue eyes, and a
perfectly tailored suit. He was every woman’s fantasy.

But the moment Hadley
saw Jackson she knew they were making a gamble.

Hadley still
remembered the way he moved from bar to bar on the ship, playing as hard as he
worked, but that wasn’t what set off her inner alarm. Nor was it the two
trained bodyguards that trailed him everywhere he went.

Jackson knew he
was being followed.

The
twenty-one-year-old college junior ran her finger across the barrel of her
pistol. It was cold and metallic. Cruel. And that is what she saw in Jackson’s
keen gaze as he scoped out each room he entered.

As well as the
number of times his gaze fell on Hadley, questioning what a nerdy looking woman
in denim shorts and a tee shirt was doing in the shadows of everywhere he went.
She wasn’t sure if he had seen the other members of her family, but she knew he
had seen her.
Really
seen her.

Hadley hadn’t
told her family, but it had been a challenge to
not
meet him. As much as
Hadley had followed him, he seemed to have followed her. When Hadley was free
from reconnaissance and spent time on the lower decks, normally populated only
by middle-class tourists, not the VIP passengers from the upper deck, she found
him peering down at her from the balcony.

It wasn’t
subtle. It was predatory.

And Hadley had
no idea what he wanted.

Does he know
what we plan to do?
Hadley wondered.
Or does he know I want something
from him?

No man went from
being the son of an impoverished ranch-hand to the CEO of an oil company
without knowing a thing or two about the world. Even if he had made his fortune
sincerely (and Hadley doubted it), he would know when he was in the midst of a
con.

But if Hadley
was being even more honest, what she was most scared of was what she could do
to him. The weight of the gun was a weight on her heart, but it wasn’t the only
one. She was scared of what she wanted to do
with
him.

She liked the
way he looked at her. It was the same way men looked at her older and prettier
sister. She loved it.

Hadley was already
compromised by Jackson, and they hadn’t even met. She swept her short red hair
away from her face and took a deep breath.

The door to the
cabin opened and Tanner walked in with a frown.

“I found the
target, but… well. I don’t think we’re going to get very close,” he said.
Hadley’s twin brothers were young, and they hadn’t completed too many high
profile heists at their age. Still, they were good in their assessments, and
she trusted them. Tanner looked down at his phone which held his reconnaissance
data. “His bodyguards? Totally armed.”

This was
unexpected.

It was almost
impossible to get guns on this ship, and there is no way they would have made
an exception for Jackson,
Hadley thought. She wondered why he felt the need
to have armed bodyguards.
Even if he has seen me on the ship, he didn’t know
before we boarded.

Hadley’s mother
swore.

“But,” Tanner
continued, smiling down at his cellphone. “I have a plan. Or at least an idea.
He spends a lot of time in the Cabana bar, chatting up girls. It looks like he
is trying to get a girl for the night. I
think
Piper could seduce him.”

Piper smiled,
because if there was one thing Piper loved more than stealing, it was sleeping
with men. Although Hadley knew her older sister had a good heart – outside of
family business that is – and most of the money she stole from their targets
went to her two daughters, Hadley’s sweet little nieces, who would one day
follow their crooked mother’s footsteps. It was something that broke Hadley’s
heart, and a future she didn’t want any future children of her own if she had
any.

But Hadley
paused at Tanner’s words.

Chatting up
girls?

It went against
the profile they had made the last few days on the ship. Jackson wasn’t against
flirtation, Hadley observed, but it seemed like a sudden change to try taking a
woman back to his cabin suite on the final night before the ship arrived to
port. She wanted to say something, that clearly something was off about their
plan, but Piper had set aside her pistol and had dove into her bag looking for
a slinky dress.

I can’t
believe this is my family,
Hadley thought.

“It’s good I
packed my cocktail dress,” Piper said, reaching into her suitcase and pulling
out a red, strapless body con dress. Their mother made a
tsk
sound, but
she was practical enough not to forbid it. “He seemed way out of my league before,
but I’m certain I can trick him for the night.”

Hadley was never
volunteered for seduction ploys. Unlike her sister, Hadley was plain and
studious, and if she weren’t wearing contacts she’d look even more dowdy in her
pink blouse and frayed denim shorts than she already did.

But as she
thought of Jackson – the target she corrected herself, since he was clearly a
threat – Hadley couldn’t help but think of the twenty-nine-year-old society
heartthrob. She had seen him in the glossy pages of her roommate’s gossip
tabloids for the last year. Everyone wanted to be around him, and because of
that he was frequently trailed by his bodyguards.

Never in those
articles was there any mention of one night stands.

There is no
way we are getting away with this,
Hadley thought. She imagined him in his
crisp, navy suit standing over her fallen body, her gun just out of reach of
her hand.
We’re missing something. There is no way we are going to survive
this!

But of course
the family that extorted together stayed together, and though Hadley didn’t
enjoy the family business, she would do anything for her family. In return, her
parents had sent her off to college so she could one day study medicine, though
they thought it was amusing she would choose such a poorly paid profession.

Hadley had only
agreed to join her family on this heist to make sure they came home. It was
supposed to be their last hurrah (though she sincerely doubted they could do
without the rush). If Hadley had any say in it she wanted to make sure this was
their last heist because they succeeded past their wildest expectations, not
because they were arrested or killed.

She thought of
her nieces. She thought of them having to visit their mother behind bars. She
thought of her twin brothers, still being home schooled but forgoing homework
in favor of petty crime. Even if she couldn’t save her parents and sister, she
thought she might still be able to save them.

Only now Hadley
had doubts this heist would succeed, and they were still barreling towards the
end as if it were any other heist. If the last five days had taught Hadley
anything, it was that they had finally met their match.

Her dad stood in
front of the cabin door. “Let’s get going,” he said. “Piper will pursue the
target directly; Tanner and Tucker will make sure she isn’t followed; your mom,
Hadley, and me will tail Piper and the target to his cabin and sneak in when he’s
distracted.”

Everyone in
Hadley’s family gave an affirmative. They were a unit, except for Hadley, who
followed her family out the door reluctantly. Piper winked at her sister as the
door shut behind Hadley, holding the dress in hand, ready to steal some time
with Jackson before she had to hold a gun to his head.

Hadley didn’t
like how jealous she was that Piper was the one to be able to seduce him. That
she would even be able to do it.

But she was also
glad.

I don’t know
if I could handle the way he looked at me,
Hadley thought.

She made her way
to the upper deck to situate herself in one of the hallways. Because she was a
good shot, and she looked less suspicious than her hardened parents, she was to
be Piper’s primary backup. As it was, she could see the door to Jackson’s suite
from where she stood. She could almost imagine herself walking through those
doors…

Hadley
absently-mindedly read her family’s chatter in their group message on her
phone. She saw Piper’s eagerness as she wrote of her approach to Jackson. Her
brother’s observations of the two as they spoke.

She wanted to be
down there in the slinky dress, even though Hadley knew she hadn’t worn a dress
in her entire life.

A passenger in a
tulle gown passed by, likely heading to the same Cabana bar that Jackson and
Piper were probably dancing away in. Hadley frowned at the woman’s perfect
kinky curls and dark skin. She was the sort of woman Jackson probably went for.
The woman gave Hadley an unimpressed roll of the eyes as she passed.

Hadley knew she
stood out, and not just amongst the intricately carved wooden walls of the upper
deck. Nor just on the cruise ship. Hadley didn’t belong anywhere, even in her
own family. She picked at her denim shorts. At college she was just a normal
girl studying for the MCAT, but college was temporary. Her real world was
entirely different.

Her gun was
strapped to her holster and it was rubbing the skin underneath her blouse.
Hadley scratched at her side, wanting to remove it from her body. The gun was
hidden from view, but she worried that someone on the ship, maybe one of the
two bodyguards or Jackson himself, would realize she was packing heat.

Hadley read
about Piper’s ongoing seduction with a pang in her heart on her cellphone’s
screen. It was almost time. Everything could change in an instant, and they all
had to be ready… including Hadley.

“I’m in
position,” she typed. “Nobody but passengers on my end.”

Her father gave
an affirmative and she read the rest of her family’s final messages as they
started to prepare for the ambush. It all appeared to be going according to
plan until Piper’s new message arrived on the screen.

“He doesn’t
like me,”
Piper wrote.
“He said he was hoping for someone else.”

Hadley’s
brothers responded with an ill-timed
LOL
, and she felt a great burden
lift off from her shoulders. Although she couldn’t help but wonder who Jackson
was waiting for.

Me?
She
thought hopefully, but turned it down just as quickly.

Maybe we can
just go home now. Maybe we all lucked out. Jackson’s too smart and too well
guarded to fall for us.

Or to fall
for me…

But the mission
had changed. Hadley had been gone for so long that she almost thought her
family really would abandon the heist, knowing it was too risky, especially on
a crowded cruise ship, but then her father gave the order to continue with
normal protocol,
violent
protocol, if needed.

Hadley bit her
lip, mentally preparing herself for the inevitable gun draw. She thought back
to that dark fantasy she had of Jackson standing over her fallen body, her gun
just out of reach. She stepped away from the wall.

Only, she found herself
colliding with a tall, well-built man.

Jackson Ward.

He was solid and
real… not at all part of Hadley’s dreams or nightmares. She wanted to reach out
and confirm if it was reality, but she frozen.

Hadley
remembered briefly reading that he had stepped away from the Cabana Bar, but
her family had been so distracted that he must have slipped right past Piper
and the twins. Without his bodyguards.

Now Hadley was
the only one in her family who knew where he was.

“I… I…” Hadley
stuttered, not sure what to do. She knew that her parents would be rounding the
corner at any moment.  But seeing him standing in front of her in his tailored
suit and set frown changed everything. It was at that moment Hadley knew she
could make a decision that would change the course of the night. She had a few
minutes until her family found their target and continued with their heist. And
with that heist, Hadley and her family would be risking their entire futures.