The Wolf’s Billionaire by Layla Silver
Chapter 4 – Bastian
My office was a disaster, even by my relatively lax standards. Precarious stacks of contracts, financial documents, inter-company memos, and invoices covered every available surface. The little red light on my desk phone had stopped strobing and just sat at a steady glow, indicating that—as my assistant had grimly warned—my voicemail was full. That pretty much guaranteed that my email was the same, though I hadn’t condescended to look at it in a few days to find out for sure. Outside the bank of windows that ran along two sides of my corner office, the weather was dismal. Cold gray drizzle leaked from the sky, smearing the city skyline into a depressing blur.
I should have stayed in my darkroom.
Not that my favorite hideaway was providing any of the spiritual lift I could usually count on it to provide. Every dramatic photo I developed reminded me of Arizona and Arizona reminded me of Ainsley. Breathtakingly beautiful Ainsley, whose skin had tasted like sugar and rose cordial and whose curves and unrestrained sounds of pleasure still haunted my dreams.
Feminine and smart and sweet, she’d been a storybook princess come to life and the antithesis of nearly every other woman in my life. She’d been warm and sated in my arms when I fell asleep. When I woke, I was alone in my rumpled bed, the first rays of sun shining through the hotel windows. Ainsley was gone. The only proof that she’d ever been there at all was languid satisfaction lingering in my bones and the pair of lacy lavender panties I found among the pile of my own discarded clothing while packing to leave.
Everything in me had wanted to run to the front desk and demand that they tell me what room she was in or give me the phone number she’d used when she’d made her reservation. Give me something I could use to find her again. She was too perfect to just let go.
Only the knowledge that she’d had every opportunity to leave me her number if she’d wanted to stopped me. She could have woken me. Or she could have written her number or email on the complimentary hotel-branded pad of paper sitting in plain view on the desk. She knew my room number, which meant she could even have left a message at the front desk if she’d changed her mind about wanting something more after she left my room. But she’d done none of those things. Instead, she’d slipped away soundlessly into the twilight.
I had a lot of personality traits I wasn’t proud of, but I was neither a stalker nor a bully. If Ainsley chose to walk away after one night wanting nothing more, I’d respect her choice. Maybe not graciously, but I would.
I sighed. “Quit moping,” I ordered myself aloud, “and do something about this mess.”
Matt, my long-suffering assistant, had offered to tackle some of it on my behalf, but I wasn’t my father. I didn’t abuse the people who worked for me. This was my mess and I’d clean it up. Besides, I thought morosely, rolling up my sleeves. I could use a good distraction.
Excavating my office proved to be a good workout and it did distract me from my frustrations over losing whatever chance I might have had with Ainsley. It did nothing to improve my mood, however. Sorting documents into piles by project only renewed my entrenched aggravation at how little of the work on my plate aligned with anything that mattered to me.
I’d gone into financing because I’d learned young that having access to the right money at the right time mattered. It was the difference between doing powerful things in the world and seeing the most brilliant ideas in a generation die before they got off the ground. I’d promised myself that when I was controlling the money I’d make sure it got to the inventions and projects that mattered. I’d find the people doing good things and connect them to the other people they needed to make their dreams and goals and life’s work a large-scale reality.
To be fair, I’d done a little of that in the last few years. But those meaningful projects were few and far between. Most of what ate up my time—and currently my office—was standard commercial crap. High-yield projects that just shoveled money into the mouths of behemoth companies who were doing no good for anyone but themselves.
You could start your own company, my inner voice reminded me unsympathetically.
“Where?” I muttered to myself out loud with a snort.
Technically, my inner voice wasn’t wrong. I had the experience and contacts I needed now, enough that I could start my own business somewhere if I’d wanted to. But I was too rudderless to act on the option. I’d been all over the world visiting some of the most beautiful and thriving places on the planet. Never in all my wanderings had I found where I belonged. I’d always believed that I’d find a person or a place I couldn’t leave and that when I did I’d know it was time to move out from under my father’s shadow and make my own mark. But it hadn’t happened.
In theory, I could just start over anywhere. But some niggling, superstitious part of my soul that I tried not to acknowledge but couldn’t quite bring myself to ignore wouldn’t let me do it. Grumbling to myself, I started in on the train wreck that was my overflowing voicemail situation.
I’d slogged through the first ten messages when I was blessedly interrupted by a knock. I hit the pause button on the message playback as my office door opened and Meredith popped her head inside.
“Do you have a minute?”
“For you, I’ve got lots of minutes,” I said, happily abandoning the notepad on which I’d been scrawling myself shorthand, profanity-laced notes about my voicemail.
“Uh-huh,” she replied, unimpressed by my charm. Stepping inside and closing the door behind her, she looked around with undisguised disapproval. “What the hell happened in here?”
“Oh you know.” I smiled breezily. “I took a couple of days off.”
She favored me with a dubious expression but said, “how would you like to take a few more days out of the office?”
Suspicion and interest sparked in tandem. Meredith was a type-A personality. She never just suggested that people take time off. Not unless she had a plan to get something out of it.
“Doing what?”
“Going north.” She glanced at the door, then around the office as if checking to make sure there was no one listening.
“I’m not hiding anyone behind my piles of paper,” I promised, amused. I quirked an eyebrow mischievously. “Or under the desk.”
She rolled her eyes and folded her arms. “Malcolm wants me to go to the middle of nowhere New England the day after tomorrow.”
I frowned, trying to think of what projects we had in that area. I could think of several centered in Boston and a couple of others in Providence, but nothing outside of those major population centers.
“What for?”
Her lips pursed. “You’re familiar with the Carrington Foundation?”
“Who isn’t?” I couldn’t keep the sourness out of my voice.
I’d had the displeasure of working with the organization more than once and had hated it every time. Sure, it got things done—if by “things” you meant “making more money than god for a handful of already over-rich investors.” The representatives were unpleasant and the eponymous Ms. Carrington doubly so.
Meredith made a face. She may not have liked them either but that didn’t mean she approved of my open disdain for clients that made us a lot of money.
“The Foundation seems to have acquired a rival.”
“What?” That was interesting enough to make me sit up out of my dispirited slouch.
“I don’t know.” Meredith waved an annoyed hand. “Malcolm’s being cryptic about it. It honestly sounds like a family thing. One of Ms. Carrington’s sons got married recently—to a nobody, as far as I can tell—and the new couple proceeded to get massive financing for some kind of vacation property project. We sent some analysts but they swore it was a disaster and refused to fund it, so either the funding they got came from venture capitalists with no idea what they’re doing or there’s something shady going on.”
“Shady,” I repeated. This was getting better by the moment.
“You know,” she waved impatiently. “Blackmail. Fraud. Shady.”
“Uh-huh.” I leaned forward, propping my elbows on my desk. “And Father wants you to do what about that, exactly?”
She lifted a hand and ticked the items off on her fingers. “One: get the dirt on what the vacation property project is and why someone else thought it was so worth funding when our analysts didn’t. Two, determine whether this project or the people running it represent a threat to any Carrington Foundation interests we’re invested in. Three: find out if this venture is something we need a finger in—either for our own profit or for leverage over the Carrington interests.”
“And why don’t you want to go play Nancy Drew?” I asked, confused. “Because I’d love it if he volunteered to pay me to go be nosy for a while.”
“Yeah, I figured.” The look she gave me was both amused and fond. “But in case you haven’t noticed, not all of us like wandering around in the middle of nowhere with a nebulous agenda that very possibly includes getting caught in the middle of a dramatic family feud.” She paused then continued reluctantly, “That and Wayne and I had plans this weekend.”
I beamed. Meredith blushed. Wayne was attached to the United States Diplomatic Corps, which meant that discretion was paramount to his career. He was also madly in love with my step-sister, which meant that while he spent most of his time traveling, he went out of his way to make their assignations memorable whenever their schedules aligned.
“Not a word!” she ordered. “It’s strictly off the books.”
I mimed zipping my lips shut, twisting a key in the lock, and tossing the key over my shoulder.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” I assured her. “If anyone asks, you heard there was no wi-fi or cell reception in the middle of nowhere and ran screaming from the thought.”
“You are an ass.” She smiled. “But you’re a useful one, so I guess I can’t complain. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” I told her, meaning it. “Where am I going and when do I leave?”
***
When Meredith had said “the middle of nowhere,” I decided, she’d been only half right. The quiet, mountainous little corner of New England I found myself in was certainly no metropolis but it was on the map and it did have an extended-stay hotel. That meant that it either had something going on or had until recently.
The hotel itself wasn’t much to look at, but first impressions suggested it was impeccably managed by someone who knew what they were doing. Everything was clean, the clerk at the reception desk was polite and efficient, and the room was comfortable enough for the price.
Depositing my things on the table in my room, I wasted no time in grabbing my camera, my phone, and my keys and heading back out. I’d rented a Land Rover Discovery Sport in a burnt-orange shade and purposely driven it through some mud before I got far enough north that everything was still half-frozen. Robust enough to handle any terrain and respectably dirty, it would fit in with my standard freelance photographer cover story.
After mostly unearthing my office, I’d run a few internet searches based on the information Meredith had forwarded to me. There wasn’t much to find, but some persistent digging had produced The Slopes, an abandoned ski resort at the edge of town. It was the perfect target for a photographer looking to score some haunting and unique “urbex”—urban exploring—photos for their portfolio.
With that solid excuse for being in town, I was all clear to spend a few days poking around before anyone would have reason to get suspicious. I did, if fact, look forward to getting some photos of the place in and around my “official” task, but for now it was time to get the lay of the land.
With an old-fashioned paper road map folded up and stuffed in my back pocket and a heavy, well-worn, army-green Carhartt jacket over my jeans and sweater, I looked the part and was ready to go.
I started my surreptitious investigation by driving around. I used my phone’s voice-activated note-taking app to track my thoughts.
“Small,” I said as the device recorded. “But nice. Still a lot of quaint, old-town America touches. Main Street’s half dead, but there’s a lot of what looks like rehab-able space if you could find something to draw people in. Note to self: check how far this is from Boston, again.”
That would be key to investment potential—and the Carrington Foundation’s interests. Oddly, though, I didn’t see any signage about new building projects or big investments. Not even any advertising for local festivals that might have been a draw.
Perversely, that only piqued my curiosity more. If Ms. Carrington’s son was launching a new project, why be quiet about it? Or was Meredith right and the whole thing was a cover for some kind of fraud? If it was, this trip might take longer and get far more interesting than I dared hope.
Eventually, I located signs pointing the way toward The Slopes but the sun was setting fast and my stomach had started to growl so I decided to not to trek out of town tonight. The site would still be there tomorrow when I could attack it with a full day to spend and fresh energy to invest.
Turning around, I found an unremarkable restaurant squatting not far from the hotel and ordered a burger and fries. The food wasn’t impressive and the staff was too young and too absorbed in their phones to draw into conversation, even when subjected to my usually reliable charm. It was an all-around disappointing experience and, as I paid my check, I vowed to find somewhere else to eat tomorrow.
Stepping outside, I discovered that the weather had taken a sharp turn. It was more than just dark out—the sky had gone black, all the stars blotted out by heavy gray clouds. It had started to snow, too; thick, wet sleety stuff that stuck to the vehicle and slid off the windshield in sheets when I started the wipers. I made the short drive back to the hotel at a crawl and was grateful to shove the SUV into park and be off the roads.
Hurrying into the hotel, I shook off the snow coating my hair and coat in the vestibule. Starting across the empty lobby, I abruptly stopped in my tracks.
“No, it’s fine, I understand,” a woman’s voice said. “You shouldn’t try to come in with the roads like this. It isn’t safe. It’ll be fine.”
The voice was… familiar. I couldn’t place it but everything in me stood to attention too much to ignore it. Slowly, I stepped forward, angling myself so that I’d be able to see the front desk before whoever was there saw me. Another step and the person behind the desk came into view. My heart stopped then slammed back into motion as if trying to pound out of my chest.
Ainsley.
She was wearing a boring business-professional blazer that seemed out of place on her and her beautiful hair was pulled back into a perfunctory bun, but there was no mistaking her lovely face or the natural grace with which she moved as she wrote something on a sheet of paper while she talked.
This is it, I thought, dumbfounded. This is the sign.
Fate had brought her across my path not once but twice, just when I most needed an escape from the trials of my everyday work and life. Ainsley was the new direction I’d been looking for—the anchor I’d been meant to find. This time, I wouldn’t let her slip away.
