The Scandalous Billionaires Collection (61 page)

"The investor was no mystery, but he was
certainly paid back in full. Ernst came to me with an offer which
was impossible to refuse but also nearly impossible to accept.;
unlimited backing money for a 49% stake in our company. We all
finally agreed that we were willing to go ahead in the end."

Zach and Harrison nodded but they were
beginning to look concerned. Ernst and Jason had always refused to
reveal who the investor was.

"Do I need to tell you why we insisted that
our father became CEO of Demovic when he came back into our
lives?"

The younger brother's didn’t move. If what
Jason was implying was true then this news was seismic. Their
mother at the time had begged her sons to forgive their father and
Ernst Pitchford had argued eloquently for the instatement of their
father as a figure of gravitas to lead the company with the family
name. Jason had insisted that their father had the business acumen
and knowhow to lead the company effectively until his retirement
and that they should be mature enough to see this, put their
personal feelings aside and do what was best for the company. Their
father was already advanced in age, nearing retirement and his
position would only be temporary; just long enough to get them
fully established as a serious company.

"But if he only had 49% of the shares we
could have outvoted him." Harrison sounded calm but underneath the
controlled exterior he was the most enraged of all. He looked
around the room slowly, as though seeking an escape of some kind,
and then back to his brother Jason. He had never come as close to
hating him as at that moment. "How could you do that to me Jason?
What possible reason…" He couldn't finish the sentence. No-one had
resented their father's behavior more than him.

"He had 49%." Jason continued, readying
himself for anything his headstrong younger brother was likely to
do. "Mom had a 25% stake of the remainder. It was her who forced
the deal."

Harrison looked at his mother in
disbelief.

"After what he did to you? After what he did
to us?"

His mother shook her head but didn't
reply.

"I know what you're thinking Harrison," Jason
said, "I hated it just as much as you did--"

"I doubt that." Harrison said.

"--but I had no choice. My hands were tied,
but when father died and his share of the company was divided
between us I decided I had to do something."

"The lying, incompetent old son of a bitch
nearly ruined us."

"And I built the company back up--"

"
We
." Zachary interjected. "We built
it back up."

"Of course." Jason said. "We built it back
up, but that wasn't enough for me. I needed to get rid of
everything he had ever touched, everything he had ever poisoned and
that, to me, was 49% of Demovic--but then you all wouldn’t let
me."

"Of course not." Zachary said. "49%? He
didn't give us 49% of what he have today, not even close!"

"Look, I'm not saying it made sense or that
it was right, in fact, I think I was damn crazy to do what I did
but Melissa made me see that and now here were are today. Our
father is dead and we run the most successful company of its kind
in the world."

There was a stunned silence as everyone
digested the revelations.

Harrison could barely move with restrained
anger. It had been almost impossible for him to accept their father
as CEO, but when he had nearly ruined the company with his bad
decisions it had seemed like a vindication of sorts. To learn now
that the man he hated so much had owned a 49% stake in his business
and that his own mother had conspired to allow the man who
abandoned her to take executive control of his life's work--it was
almost too much to bear.

He took a long deep breath and unclenched his
fists--as much as he would have enjoyed using them on his idiotic
older brother. He was not going to be deflected from his goals, not
even by this.

"Okay, so you had your moment of truth Jason.
I hope it makes you feel better, but it doesn't change my position.
I'm in control of
this
situation and--"

"She's my best friend Harrison. Please." Suzy
pleaded with him. "Anything you can tell us, anything at all you
can remember that may have slipped your mind--"

"Nothing has slipped my mind." He said
calmly. "I remember everything and I know exactly why she's gone
but I am under an unbreakable obligation to tell you nothing, so
you can all stop wasting your time. Officially Bella is still not a
missing person. You've received emails from her account telling you
not to worry and that she will be in touch when the time is right,
so I suggest you take her advice and just calm down."

"Those emails could be from someone with
access to her personal information." Suzy objected.

"They're not." Harrison was emphatic.

"This is enough." Zachary stood up and was
followed immediately by Harrison, squaring off in front of him.

"If you don't like it then do whatever you're
going to do Zach. I'm ready right now." The brothers glared at each
other but Melissa intervened.

"This isn’t helping us get anywhere and it
certainly isn't helping Bella. Now let's just everyone calm down.
She's only been gone three days and she has assured us that she's
safe, at least we're reasonably sure she has." She looked each
brother squarely in the eye and pushed them gently backwards.

When they were both seated again she turned
to Harrison.

"Look, Harrison, for the record, I was
against this meeting, but now that we're here, is there anything at
all you can tell us that will help us to find her but which won't
compromise your obligation?"

Harrison looked at her and thought about it.
They needed to hear something, but he still needed to keep Bella's
past and what had happened between her and him a secret. He had
never intended to out her and he still believed passionately that
her disclosure would have to be made of her own free will. He
regretted now the pressure he had put her under--pressure that must
have added to her decision to steal his property. The watch had
been only worth a few thousand dollars and he had lied about the
value in the hope of frightening her into a confession. He did
indeed own a half million dollar watch but if he had been wearing
it that night, damn sure he wouldn't have left her house without
it. He had hoped the exaggeration would prompt her to come clean
but the tactic had backfired catastrophically.

"We're any of you aware that she was in any
kind of trouble?" Harrison asked the group.

They all shook their heads.

"Do either of you," he addressed Suzy and
Melissa, "know anything about her life before she moved to New
York?"

"Sure," Suzy said, "she's from a small town
in Minnesota. She lived there all her life but moved out East when
she lost her mother. As far as I know she has no family left,
that's why I don’t believe for a minute that this is a family
emergency. She's never spoken about family in all the years I've
known her. This is totally out of character for Bella. We have to
find her, let her know that whatever is going on in her life, that
we are going to help her through it and everything is going to be
fine."

"We already have people in that town." Jason
said. "If she shows up there we'll know right away."

"She won't go there." Harrison said. He knew
the story about Minnesota was a fiction, but knew he had to be the
one to find her so he had no intention of sharing this information
with his brother.

"God damn it Harrison, tell us what you
know." Jason growled.

"I'm going to find her--you just have to
trust me. All I can say at this point is that I know some things
about Bella that you all don't. However, I repeat that it is not my
place to reveal them, so stop asking me."

He glared at his brothers.

"This is bullshit." Zachary stood up again.
"This is one of Harrison's crazy adventures with women and I've had
enough. I'm getting Demovic security on this and they won't need
your information to find her. Screw you Harrison. Come on Suzy,
let's go."

Harrison watched them leave, Suzy trailing
reluctantly behind her new husband, her eyes pleading with Harrison
to relent but he didn't move a muscle to call them back. His time
was now considerably shorter. Demovic security would soon run the
same security check on Bella as his private investigator Lacey
McMahon had and they would find out about her criminal background
and true family history within hours. His only chance to save her
from being exposed and to bring her back in was to find her first
and do it right; without scaring her off.

Jason and Melissa made their exit as well
leaving only his mother in the room with him. She watched him
relentlessly until he turned his head to look at her. She
recognized the expression of pain in her youngest son that nobody
else had seen. Only she could see it because he had always been the
same, ever since he was a little boy, and he could hide nothing
from her.

"I hope you can save this one Harry." she
said.

"Trust me mom,
this
one is worth
saving." He looked back at her defiantly, still in shock as to the
revelations about her role in re-instating his father as head of
the family.

She held his gaze.

"Son," she said, "so was your father."

********************

Bella was exhausted from her first day at
work. It hadn't taken her only a single day to find a temp agency
and to get contracted. All they cared about was her typing speed
and appearance; background checks and verification of references
didn’t seem to matter a damn. As soon as she had found a motel on
the outskirts of town she had sent a text message with just a
street address to Stacy's phone hoping that even if Steve saw it he
still wouldn't be able to figure out the city or state--Stacy would
already know that part. Next to the address she had put a time; 9pm
and then 'any day'. She would go to that spot every day until Stacy
showed up. She could watch from a safe distance just in case Steve
had decided to tag along.

The night she had delivered the watch to
Steve he had brought Stacy with him. He was as vile as she had
imagined him to be; unwashed, hunched, slovenly and with the most
disgustingly evil, selfish eyes she had ever seen. He was pleased
with the piece, happy that he could raise even a couple of thousand
dollars from it, but of course it was only a temporary measure and
wouldn’t satisfy him for long. He brought Bella to the waiting car
to show her what condition Stacy was in and the woman had looked
truly awful. In the four years since Bella had last seen her, the
ex-con had aged terribly and her face was bruised as though from a
recent beating. She was handcuffed to the inside of the car. In the
few seconds that Steve let them communicate Bella mouthed the name
of the town she was planning on running to and told her to get
there as soon she could escape. Steve had then roughly jerked her
back from the car and told her to get going and not take too long
about getting him something with a higher price tag. The watch, he
said, would only keep Stacy accident free for a limited time.

It was heartbreaking to see her old protector
reduced to this, but there was nothing else Bella could do. She
prayed that Stacy would use some of the resourcefulness she had
shown in prison to free herself from Steve and then catch up with
her so they could start a new life together. At least with Stacy
she wouldn't ever have to lie about her past again; there would be
one person with whom she could be totally honest.

As tired as she was Bella dragged herself
from the bed in order to carry out her duty of checking to see if
Stacy had found her yet. It had only been five days since she had
seen her and three days since she had arrived in town but she
couldn't afford to miss her and risk never seeing her again. It was
a long way to the meeting point from her motel but she made her
there and waited until she as satisfied that there would be no show
tonight.

The bus ride back was even longer, lonelier
and definitely more scary. She still knew no-one in town and even
the bus driver seemed untrustworthy. When she finally arrived got
back to the motel she was aching to get inside her room. As bleak
as it was, it was the only space in the whole world that she could
call her own, even if only temporarily. She put the key to the lock
but then froze; there was a light on inside her room. She checked
the room number. Definitely the right one.

She peered through the narrow slit in the
drapes and when she saw the man pacing back and forth inside she
drew back sharply in fear.

How the hell did he find me so fast?

She looked around and saw a brand new
Lamborghini parked directly outside her room. He must have bribed
reception to let him in. She started to walk away as silently and
as quickly as she could. Harrison would eventually get tired
waiting and she would return to get her few belongings once the
coast was clear.

In the meantime she had to disappear.

She heard the door open behind her and
quickened her pace.

"Bella." The voice shook her. It had only
been three days since they had been together and the memory of that
same voice groaning ecstasy into her ear was vivid.

"Bella, come back."

She started to run but he advanced quickly
and in a moment he was right behind her.

"Let me go damn it, just let me go, let me
be."

"It's okay Bella, it’s okay." He scooped her
up from behind in a huge bear hug and then carried her, struggling,
back to her room. Once inside her wrestled her to the bed and then
released her to lock the door behind him.

She huddled up on the bed, her eyes darting
around for an escape route, her breath coming and going in sharp
blasts, threatening hyperventilation.