Page 4 of Her Billionaire Protector

I run the case through my head again, all the admissible evidence, all the witnesses we’ve got on board.

The ones we’ve lost.

And it’s not enough, not by a long shot. I want to nail Harvey to the federal prison wall on the DA bribery charges too, but he’s stopped short every time. Even with all the trafficking and building violations, health and liquor law infractions, possible weapons charges, it’s not enough. He’ll pay some fines and walk. All those he’s killed, their deaths would be for nothing. He’ll keep on forcing women into prostitution with his bullshit rent scams, keep packaging up the debt on his slums for investors, buying more property, and on and on.

And he’ll keep getting away with it.

I ball up my fists in rage.

I stand there in the foyer of whatever this place is. Looks like a tech bro’s nouveau money nest. Not Armin’s style. But then again, he’s a billionaire. I always forget. Maybe he’s bulldozedthat little cabin in the woods by now. Maybe these days his whole style is money.

Money and a fake badge and a bulletproof SUV.

“You’re shaking.” He takes my fists in his hands, drags his fingertips across them, slow and careful, to open them, so that we’re holding hands.

I hate to admit it, even to myself, but it feels good,safe, my hands in his.

I shrug. “I’m scared.”

“That’s not like you.” He brushes my hair back from my face, rubs a lock of it between his fingers. “And neither is this.”

I bark a short, humorless laugh. “They told me blondes have more fun.”

“Well,” he says. “Are you?”

“I’m about to.” It takes all my acting skills not to cringe at my own lame line, something a sex worker would say to her John.

And, well, that’s how we started out, back in the tiny town of East Greenwich.

No. We started out in a fire. At Harvey’s club. Armin was a sheriff back then. He found me inside, unconscious from smoke inhalation, and carried me to safety. Saved my life. A few months later, after the lottery, he hired me as his escort for a gala. We never made it. I crashed my car out in the woods in that awful storm.

And he saved me again.

“Do you remember what you said to me in East Greenwich, when I asked how you found me in the fire?”

His eyes have a shine to them. “‘How do the worker bees know where to find their queen?’”

I lean in close, and lay my head on his chest. He sighs and runs his hands down my hair, one after the other, and clasps his hands together to hold me tight.

This idiot is going to get himself killed, despite all my efforts to save his life by getting far, far away from him.

“Why’d you leave?”

Because I’m an undercover FBI agent posing as a sex worker smack in the middle of a multi-year multi-state takedown of the biggest sex trafficking kingpin on the east coast.

And as much as I’d love to love you right now, it’ll only get you killed.

“Oh, I’m not a mountain girl.” I untuck his shirt, but he shakes me off.

“We didn’t have to stay at the cabin in East Greenwich.” He lifts my chin so we’re eye to eye. “I would take you anywhere you wanted to go.”

“And here we are.” I need this conversation to be over. “Together again.” So I do the one thing I know will pause it.

I kick off my shoes, reach up on my tiptoes, and press my lips to his. He takes me by the arms and pulls away from me. His eyes are disturbed, on the verge of angry. He’s sick of my shit. He wants more of a preamble. He wants to ask a thousand questions.

But the lust overtakes him, like I knew it would, his pupils wide in the dim loft, no light except the pale streetlights filtered through the tinted windows.

No curtains. I hope this glass is bulletproof, too.