Chapter 4
Riley’s gone when I exit the conference room and make my way to the front lobby of Wright and Co. I’d hoped to see her again, make her squirm a little more, but it’s not a big deal. I know where she works now, and as soon as I look at the paperwork Tracy emailed over during my meeting, I’ll know where she lives currently, and where she’ll be living come next week.
Adam and I didn’t make a deal today–not that I thought we would. I’m trying to buy tens of millions’ worth of real estate from him. These types of deals take time. Not to mention, I knew he’d play hardball.
He doesn’t want to sell, but he has to. His investment firm has had five consecutive quarters of losses now, and several of his large clients are getting anxious. I know, because they contacted Jax about investing in our portfolio instead.
Plus, his soon-to-be ex-wife is about to take half of everything he owns. I’m essentially offering to bail him out. He just has to hand over two apartment complexes and a few office buildings downtown.
He’s managing the apartments wrong, too. They’re in a great location, but he’s making pennies on the rent because they’re small, outdated units. For someone supposedly so successful, he lacks common sense and a basic understanding of product desirability. That, or he’s completely out of touch with whoever is managing those apartments, and doesn’t realize they’re less than desirable in their current condition.
As soon as I have them, I’ll be demoing and reconfiguring both buildings. The plan is to combine two units into one large unit, cutting the amount of total units, and therefore tenants to deal with, in half, all while drastically increasing rent to reflect the new, spacious luxury design. I’ll make sure to add all the nice touches you’d expect, too–chef’s kitchens, large master suites, the whole nine yards. An added up front expense that will more than pay for itself in the long run.
I head out the door and down the street to my Porsche 718 Spyder RS. It pained me to leave it on the street, knowing how assholes drive in this city, but I figured my luck can’t be any worse here than it was in New York. Plus, I want to be able to enjoy driving with the top down for as long as the weather will still allow.
Getting in, I pull out my phone and open the email Tracy sent with all of Riley’s info. I make sure to add all her contact information to my phone, then look over the purchase agreement for the place she’s buying.
I’m surprised at what I see when I pull the house up to take a look at it. If you can even call it a house. At less than 1,000 square feet, it’s smaller than many apartments. I scroll down through the property details and see that the small cabin is on ten acres. I’m guessing that’s the draw.
I type the address into GPS and see it’s an hour and a half from Riley’s office. Interesting. Is she really planning to commute three hours every day for work? Maybe she’ll get tired of it and find another job.
I can only hope.
It made my skin crawl to learn she was Adam’s employee. My research into the guy uncovered his misdeeds with his former secretaries, and the thought of him fucking Riley pissed me right off. Not because she deserves better, but because now that I’ve seen her, I want her. Which means she’s off limits to anyone else.
Tossing my phone aside, I pull away from the curb and head over to the brokerage.
The Frenshaw Group has been around for ten years and has become the go-to brokerage for luxury real estate in the tri-state area. We’re headquartered in Alexandria, but do just as much business in Maryland and West Virginia as we do in Virginia. Most of the realtors are licensed to work in all three states as well.
Blake had texted me this morning asking that I swing by the office to talk about a new client, and it’s got me curious as to who it might be. Usually a new client doesn’t warrant an in person discussion with my broker. Then again, I’ve only been with the brokerage for about a month now, so I’m still considered a new guy, regardless of my prior successes in New York. Blake probably just wants to make sure that I don’t fuck up the first client he passes to me.
Pulling into the parking lot, I grab a spot near the back, then head toward the entrance and directly to Blake’s office on the second floor. I find him working on his laptop at his desk, and take a seat across from him, pulling out my phone before stuffing it back into my pocket.
“Hey, Emmett,” he says, looking up from his screen. “Can I grab you a drink?”
“Sure,” I reply, already knowing he’s got a damn good collection of whiskey in his office from my prior meetings with him. Since I joined the brokerage, I’ve made it a point to swing by at least once a week for a drink and to shoot the shit with him. It always pays to have your business associates on your good side. Not to mention, if I get this deal closed with Adam, I’ll probably hire the apartment demo and remodel out to his brother, Skye, who owns a construction company, Frenshaw Construction.
“How’s business?” he asks, pouring a drink from the bar cart behind his desk.
I reach out and grab the drink from him, noticing the heavy pour. I get the feeling he’s either going to ask a favor he knows I’m not going to want to do, or he’s got something important going on. I take a sip of the dark liquid, savoring the burn it leaves down my throat.
“Good,” I respond. “Working on a personal deal to acquire some apartment complexes and office space downtown. Got a couple local clients lined up, and a few from New York looking to move down here.” I take another sip of the whiskey, just as impressed with this one as I was the one he served me last week. “Oh, and helping Tracy close one of her clients next week while she’s out of the country,” I add on as an afterthought.
“The Riley Miles transaction?” he asks, sitting back down at his desk.
I nod, surprised he’s even aware of it. A transaction that small is like pocket change to him. Most of the brokerages” deals are in the tens of millions, not hundreds of thousands.
“Tracy give you the full story on that one?” he asks vaguely.
Intrigued now, I set my glass on the edge of his desk and lean forward, resting my elbows on my thighs. “Care to fill me in?”
Blake lets out a huff. “Riley Miles had shit credit, no work history, and about three hundred dollars to her name when she moved here six months ago, and Tracy told her she should buy a house.”
This is all new info to me. “So how’d she qualify for the place?”
“She didn’t.” He leans back in his chair, swirling the drink in his glass. “Who do you think is financing her purchase?”
I stare at him. “You?”
He laughs. “No, Tracy is. But she needed my help to pull it off. Riley tried three lenders before giving up. Tracy told her she’d find a solution and came to me. She put up the cash, and I set up a shell company to purchase the property. Riley will essentially pay rent to the company until she pays Tracy back. She has no idea the ‘lender’ she’s been working with is just my assistant.”
“Christ,” I mutter, running a hand down my face. Blake’s shell company will actually own Riley’s place. “You guys didn’t think this would be important information for me to know? What if she came to me with questions about her mortgage?”
“I told Tracy this deal doesn’t leave my office. I didn’t expect anyone else to get involved. But now you know.”
I study Blake for a minute before asking, “And why did you agree to this? What do you get out of it?”
It doesn’t make sense to me that he would set up a shell company just to purchase some cheap property under Riley’s nose. It seems like an unnecessary risk. Not to mention an added complication, having a middleman involved. Hell, half the paperwork is probably fraudulent at this point. Either that, or the paperwork is legit, but Riley isn’t reading what she’s signing. Seems like it’d be easier to just tell Riley what’s going on and have her make payments directly to Tracy.
Blake leans forward, face now serious. “You and I are more alike than you realize, Emmett. Tracy begged me to help, giving me a sob story about Riley’s past and how much she needs a fresh start. That she doesn’t want Riley to know what’s actually going on. Something about not hurting her feelings or some bullshit. That’s all fine and dandy, but what I saw was a chance to get leverage over one of my top agents. Tracy’s a doll, but she’d drop me in a heartbeat to start her own brokerage or go elsewhere. She’s threatened to do it in the past.”
He reclines back in his chair and takes a sip of his drink, regarding me before continuing. “I don’t like competition, Emmett. So, you can either be on my team or get crushed. If I have to hold something over your head to keep you where I want you, I will.”
I consider him. “Seems like a stretch to me that this would keep Tracy from leaving. I’m sure Riley would forgive her for lying about paying for the house if they”re that close.”
I go to take another sip of my drink, when he says, “I set up the shell company in her name.”
My drink pauses halfway to my mouth. He’s setting Tracy up. If she steps out of line, he’ll turn her in for fraud. The fucker.
I resume taking a drink of my whiskey and take a minute to collect myself before responding. “Why exactly did you call me in here today?”
He leans forward and grabs a file from his desk drawer, tossing it over to me. “Like I told you earlier, I have a new client for you.”
I set my drink back down to grab the folder and look through it. It’s got some properties of interest in it, contact information for the client, all the usual bullshit that he could have just emailed to me.
“Who is this exactly?” I ask, not recognizing the client’s name.
“Congressman out of West Virginia. Elected last year.”
I snort. “And how does a newly elected member of congress afford a fifteen million dollar estate in Loudoun county?”
“They don’t.” The smile Blake gives me has me pausing.
Jax and I have done some questionable shit in our days. Hell, we’ve done a lot of illegal shit, especially when we were younger, before we got into real estate. But once we left that life behind, everything we did was kept between just the two of us, and I’ve always been the one to make the final decision. That way, if anything goes south, the only person I can blame is me. The fact that Blake is about to pull me into something that I don’t have total control over has me nervous. I haven’t known him long enough to be able to fully trust that he won’t fuck me over.
“You”re running this through the shell company, aren’t you,” I say, though it’s not a question.
“No, you’re running it through the shell company.”
“And who’s actually funding it?”
He grins. “I am. And in exchange, Skye’s getting a two-hundred-million government contract. So make sure the paperwork is all legit, Emmett, because it’ll be your name on it.”
“Pulling me into your web?” I ask bluntly, not about to dance around what’s really going on here. He’s getting leverage over me, just like he did setting the shell company up in Tracy’s name. Not to mention, if this comes out, it will look like I was involved in bribing a politician for a political favor.
“Like I said, either you”re on my team, or...” He shrugs.
I lean back in my chair, hands casually resting on the armrests, and smirk. “You’re right, Blake, we are more alike than I realized. Only you forgot one thing.” I dig the cell phone out of my pocket that’s been recording the entire time. “You’re not the biggest shark in the city anymore.”
It’s nearing midnight by the time I finally start heading back to my penthouse. Blake and I ended up leaving his office on good terms and went to grab dinner together.
Well, as good of terms as possible. We’re two sharks circling each other, trying to determine if the other is an ally or an enemy.
He’s still pulling me into his shady deal with the West Virginia congressman, and I’m still saving the phone recording of our meeting. But we have a mutual understanding right now. He knows I’m here to play hardball, and I know the same about him. Neither of us are afraid to get our hands dirty, and it could either make us wildly successful together, or we’ll crash and fucking burn.
Regardless, by the time we wrapped up, we had a plan moving forward for the shell company to further leverage our business relationships. I’ll funnel his shady deals through it, and he and Skye will pull me into their construction ventures.
It’s a win-win. Blake gets to keep a degree of separation from the shell company by having my name on all the purchases we push through it, and I have a contractor I can utilize for my personal endeavors at a deeply discounted rate.
Tracy is the one who gets screwed over by all of this. She’s about to become an unwilling participant as the official owner of said shell company. And she has no choice other than to go along with it, or Blake will make true on his threat.
I met up with Jax at his place after dinner. I needed to fill him in on everything that went down with Blake, and we had a new investment opportunity to go over. A couple drinks and a cigar later, we finally decided to call it a night.
I’m just about to pull off the freeway toward my place when I decide against it. I had managed to push thoughts of Riley out of my mind while I was dealing with Blake and Jax, but now she’s all I can think about.
I keep imagining the way her chest turned pink when I walked into her office this morning. The way she held her breath when I had her trapped against the conference room table. The feel of her silky hair as I pushed it over her shoulder. I wonder how she’d look bent over in front of me, that silky hair wrapped around my fist.
I pass the freeway exit that would have taken me home and instead pull up my navigation. I route myself to Riley’s apartment and park a block down from her building. Getting out of the car, I toss my suit jacket into the passenger seat before walking toward her building. It’s cold out tonight, but I”d stand out like a sore thumb even more than I already do with a full suit.
Riley lives in a run-down apartment complex. There’s four buildings, all with cracked sidewalks and those shitty, plastic blinds that like to break hanging in the windows. The buildings are all brick, but it looks like they haven’t seen a power washer in at least a few decades, and the railings to all the balconies are chipping paint. Some of the windows have cracks, and I wonder how their landlord gets away with not fixing them.
When I get to her building, I make my way inside. Unsurprisingly, there’s no security in here. I turn left after passing through the entryway that has all the tenants” mailboxes, and look for unit 105.
The cheap green carpeting running the length of the hallway has a musty smell to it, and I spot more than a few stains that look like blood. Half the doors are missing the apartment numbers on them. The only reason you can tell the unit number is by the grimy outline on the door from where the number once stuck.
Her unit is the third door on my left, meaning it faces the street. I’m surprised to find it’s one of the few that still has the numbers stuck to the front, right under the peephole. Unable to help myself, I grab the handle of her front door and give it a gentle turn.
It’s locked. Good girl. The crime in this part of the city is high, and I’d hate for her to get taken advantage of by someone else.
Heading back to the front door of the building, I exit and make my way down the sidewalk until I get to her patio–if you can even call it that. It’s just a small cement slab sitting in front of a sliding glass door.
I don’t like that she’s on the first floor. It makes her an easy target if someone wants to break in, especially with the patio door there. Thankfully, she’ll only be living here a few more days.
Walking up to the door, I peek through a crack in the blinds and see all the lights are off. It’s late, so she’s probably sleeping by now. Taking hold of the handle, I give a gentle pull and am startled when the door silently slides open.
It wasn’t fucking locked.
Glaring at the handle as if it were the one responsible for being unlocked, I ever so slowly pull the door open enough to part the blinds and stick my head in.
Just as I suspected, it”s completely dark and silent inside. I make my way into her apartment, careful not to make any noise as I push past the hanging blinds.
Riley’s apartment is small. The patio opens to a meager living area, and there’s a kitchen with a little island beyond that, right next to her front door. The other side of the front door looks to be a small room of some sort. Too small for a bedroom, so probably a laundry room or bathroom. There’s a hallway off the living area to my right, and I’m guessing that’s where her bedroom is. Silently closing the patio door behind me, I make my way further into her apartment and am surprised at the lack of personal items.
Blake had mentioned earlier that Tracy gave him a sob story about Riley’s past, and her apartment looks like that of someone starting with nothing. Besides the lack of personal items you’d expect to see lying around, there’s very little furniture. Her kitchen island has two mismatched bar stools pushed up to it. There’s a small couch and coffee table in the living room, and one end table with a lamp on it. A TV on a beat up stand sits opposite the couch, next to the patio door.
I creep closer to her kitchen. The countertops are empty except for a bundle of browning bananas and a small coffee machine. Her purse and keys sit on the kitchen island. All the walls are empty.
Surveying the room again, the sob story Tracy gave suddenly holds a lot more merit to it. Someone who’s been here for six months would surely have more personal items in their home. Sure, she could have most stuff packed away for her move, but her apartment should still have more evidence of life to it. It makes me wonder what could have brought Riley back here with nothing to her name.
Making my way across the living space, I see a door on either side of the short hallway. Moving on silent feet, I reach the door to my left first and see that it’s a bathroom. Continuing on a few more steps, I stop at the door on my right, looking inside.
Riley lays in bed, fast asleep. I can just barely make out her form in the dim light from the streetlight outside her bedroom window. She’s sleeping on her back, with her arms thrown up over her head. The covers are pushed down around her hips and the t-shirt she’s wearing has ridden up, giving me a view of her smooth, flat stomach. My cock stirs in my pants as my eyes move up her body. I can make out the swell of her breasts under the t-shirt, and it takes everything I have not to touch her.
I inch further into the room, taking in the surroundings. Her bedroom is just as impersonal as the rest of her apartment. The fuzzy pink slippers next to her bed are the only thing in here with personality. There are no clothes lying around. The top of her dresser is bare. Her nightstand has a lamp and her cell phone rests beside it, plugged in and charging. Her closet door is closed, and I’m half tempted to go look inside, just to try to spot some form of life in here. I know from the outfit she wore to work today that she likes bold colors, so how is the rest of her apartment so dull?
The more time I spend looking around, the more of a mystery Riley becomes. The soft, timid girl I met this morning is a stark contrast to this cold, empty apartment.
I take another step toward her bed when she stirs, and silently curse to myself, wanting more time here. Backing out of the room, I move down the hallway and across her living room, slipping out her patio door and into the night.