Behind Locked Doors (The Scottish Billionaires #18)

Prologue

SHELLY

My boys were laughing in the backyard, the kind of full-body kid laughter that carried through windows and walls, and I pressed my hand against the swell of my belly.

“You hear that, sweet girl?” I whispered. “That’s your brothers. They’re going to love you so much.”

Another kick, stronger this time. Seven months along, and she was already making her presence known. After everything. After three pregnancies that ended in blood, grief and silent drives home from the hospital, this baby was determined to be here. To stay.

The front door burst open, and Michael’s voice filled the house.

“Shell! Boys! Get in here!”

I turned from the window to find my husband standing in the kitchen doorway, grinning so wide his face could barely hold it. He had a bottle of champagne in one hand and a newspaper in the other, and he was bouncing on the balls of his feet like Fury on Christmas morning.

“It’s out,” he said, breathless. “It’s actually out.”

I grabbed the counter. “The piece?”

“Front page of the investigative section. Six months of work, and they gave me the cover.” He crossed the room in three strides and kissed me, hard, his hand finding the side of my face. “We did it, Shell. We actually did it.”

The boys thundered in from the backyard, kicking off their shoes at the door. Fury hit the kitchen tile and slid in his socks, nearly wiping out. Blaze was more measured but no less curious.

“Why is Dad yelling?” Fury demanded.

“I’m not yelling, I’m celebrating.” Michael swept Fury up with his free arm, making him shriek. “Your dad just published the biggest story of his career.”

“What’s it about?” Blaze asked. His blue-violet eyes, my eyes, were serious and attentive. Too old for nine.

Michael set Fury down and unfolded the newspaper on the kitchen table. The headline took up half the page:

EMPIRE OF BLOOD: Inside the Ochoa Cartel’s Network from Mexico to San Francisco By Michael Gracen

“It’s about a very bad man who hurt a lot of people,” Michael explained. “And about how we stopped him.”

Blaze studied the headline the way he studied everything. Like he was memorizing it. “Did you catch him?”

“The police caught him. I just told everyone what he did.” Michael’s hand found the back of Blaze’s neck, gentle. “Sometimes the most important thing you can do is tell the truth, even when it’s hard.”

Fury was already done with serious talk, tugging on Michael’s sleeve. “Can we have the champagne?”

“Absolutely not,” I said, but I was smiling. “You can have apple cider. Michael, get the glasses.”

We gathered around the table. Me in a chair because standing too long made my back scream, Michael pouring cider for the boys, champagne for himself and a tiny splash for me.

Blaze read the first paragraph of the article with his finger tracking the words.

Fury tried to climb onto the table to see better.

“To Dad!” Fury announced, lifting his plastic cup.

“To telling the truth,” Michael corrected softly. His hazel eyes found mine across the table. “And to family. The only things that matter.”

We toasted. Rose kicked so hard I gasped, and Michael’s hand was there instantly, spread wide across my belly.

“She knows,” he said. “She knows it’s a good day.”

It was a good day. The best day. My boys were healthy and whole. My husband grinning like a man who’d done something that mattered. My daughter alive and kicking under my ribs after everything we’d been through to get her here.

I let myself believe it would stay this way.

The phone rang while we were cleaning up dinner.

Michael answered it in the living room, and I heard his tone shift. The voice he used for sources.

When he came back to the kitchen, his face was different.

“Who was it?” I asked, loading plates into the dishwasher.

“My editor. They’re getting calls about the piece.” He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “Good calls, mostly. Other journalists wanting to follow up. The police department asking for clarification on sourcing.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yeah. It’s good.” But his jaw was tight.

I dried my hands and turned to face him. “Michael.”

He held my eyes for a beat too long. “There was one strange one. Someone calling themselves a ‘concerned citizen,’ asking questions about my family.”

My stomach dropped. “What kind of questions?”

“Where we live. Whether I have kids. How to contact me directly.” He reached for me, pulling me close despite my belly between us. “My editor shut it down. Told them the paper doesn’t give out personal information. But Shell—”

“It’s probably nothing,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like my voice.

“Probably.” But his arms tightened around me.

Rose kicked between us, and Michael went still.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said quietly. “To any of you. I promise.”

I believed him.

I believed we were safe.

San Ramon, California, January 1998

The subpoena arrived on a Tuesday.

Michael stood in our kitchen holding it, his face completely shut down.

Behind him, through the window, Blaze was pushing Rose on the swing set Patrick had built last summer.

Her squeals drifted through the glass. Two years old and fearless, demanding higher, higher in the voice that meant she’d throw a fit if she didn’t get it.

“When?” I asked.

“March fifteenth.” He set the paper on the counter like it weighed something. “The trial’s been scheduled. They’re calling everyone who contributed to the investigation.”

I wrapped my arms around myself. Sunshine pouring through the kitchen window, and I was freezing. “You knew this was coming.”

“Knowing and seeing it in writing are different things.” He turned to me, and I could see it. Something grinding him down that he’d been hiding from me. “Shell, I need to tell you something.”

“What?”

“There’ve been new... incidents.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Letters to the paper. Hang-up calls on my direct line. And I think someone followed me from the office last week.”

My knees went soft. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Well, I’m scared now!” My voice came out louder than I meant it to. Through the window, Blaze’s head turned toward the house. I dropped my volume. “Michael, Ochoa’s people don’t just send letters. You documented what they do. You wrote about the bodies, the threats, the...”

“I know.” His hands found my shoulders, and they were steady even though mine wouldn’t have been. “I know what they’re capable of. That’s why I’ve been careful. That’s why I talked to the FBI field office, why I told my editor, why I’ve been varying my route home.”

“The FBI?” I stared at him. “Jesus, Michael.”

“They said it’s probably nothing. Miguel ángel Ochoa is locked up. Most of his network is scattered. The ones still loyal are focused on keeping themselves out of prison, not...”

“Not what? Not killing the journalist who exposed everything? Not silencing the witness before trial?” I pulled away from him because I needed space to breathe. “You wrote about what they did to that accountant who testified. They killed his whole family, Michael. His whole family.”

“That was different—”

“How? How is it different?”

Through the window, Rose tumbled off the swing and landed hard in the wood chips. For a second she was still, and my whole body seized. Then the wail started, more surprise than pain. Blaze was already there, helping her up, brushing off her pants.

“Because I won’t let anything happen to you,” Michael said quietly. “To any of you. I promised you that the day the piece was published, and I meant it.”

I turned back to him. This man I’d loved since I was twenty years old. Who’d held me through three miscarriages and never once let go. Who looked at our children like they were gifts because to us, they were.

“What if promising isn’t enough?” I asked.

Neither of us had an answer for that.

Michael crossed the kitchen and pulled me into his arms. I pressed my face against his chest and listened to his heartbeat. The same rhythm I’d been falling asleep to for fourteen years.

“Then I won’t testify,” he said. “If you want me to walk away, I’ll walk away.”

I pulled back to look at him. “You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it more than anything I’ve ever said.” His thumb traced my cheekbone. “You and the kids are everything. The story, the trial, justice. None of it matters as much as you do.”

I thought about the piece he’d written. The victims he’d named. The families destroyed by the Ochoa cartel who’d waited years for someone to say their names out loud.

I thought about what he’d told Blaze that day two years ago in the kitchen: Sometimes the most important thing you can do is tell the truth, even when it’s hard.

“You have to testify,” I said.

“Shell—”

“You have to. Because if you don’t, what are we teaching our children?” I looked toward the window where Blaze was carrying Rose on his hip, pointing at something in the yard. “That you run when things get scary? That you only tell the truth when it’s convenient?”

“I’m teaching them that family comes first.”

“You’re teaching them that fear wins.” My voice cracked. “Those people Ochoa killed, they had families too. Families who deserve justice. And if you don’t testify, if you let them scare us into silence...”

Michael kissed me. Slow and deep, his hands in my hair, and I held onto him like I was trying to memorize the shape of him.

When he pulled back, his eyes were wet.

“I love you,” he said. “God, Shell, I love you so much.”

“I know.” I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you too. That’s why we’re doing this. I’ll be right there with you.”

The next few weeks passed in normalcy.

We didn’t talk about the trial date. We didn’t discuss the new locks or the changed routine or the way Michael checked his mirrors twice before pulling out of any parking lot.

We focused on ordinary things. Fury’s basketball games. Blaze’s science fair project. Rose’s expanding vocabulary and her stubborn refusal to eat anything green.