Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Tristan
Mike Wilson wasn’t the only name Parker’s ex-fiancé went by, but it was his legal name.
He was also Giles Wilson and Michael Sanders.
I’d found him quickly and uncovered a number of semi-illegal activities he’d participated in when he was fresh out of university.
He’d refined his MO over the last decade and Parker seemed like his first attempt to marry for money.
She’d been lucky to escape without Arthur having to pay him off.
Earlier today, I’d tracked back the cameras in Parker’s flat to a laptop used by Wilson and discovered what he was trying to achieve.
Tonight, I’d tell Parker. I wasn’t quite sure what her reaction would be, but I knew she’d want to know.
I’d picked up cream puffs from a French patisserie in Knightsbridge when I’d called round to see Dexter earlier and they were already in the fridge, along with bottles of wine and champagne I’d pulled from the cellar in case she felt like celebrating.
“I’m back,” Parker called as she let herself in the front door. I stood, wondering where I should start.
I stepped into the hallway and watched as she took off her coat. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what it was, but something was up. She was tense. “Hey. Good day?”
“Hi,” she said, voice a little more clipped than I was used to. She avoided meeting my eyes as she passed me in the corridor and headed into the kitchen.
“You okay?” I asked, turning to follow her.
She pulled the fridge door open and stared at the wine and the patisserie box. “I went to see my father today. He told me you both were in on our fake marriage from the beginning.”
My body drained of heat. She was pissed off. I hadn’t known what to expect this evening, but this wasn’t it. “Yeah, he figured it out. He knows you pretty well.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Her voice cracked. Instinctively, I went over to comfort her. I slid my hand to her back but she shrugged it off and spun to face me.
“Parker, I’m sorry. He asked me not to mention it to you.”
“What else have you not mentioned to me?” she snapped.
“Nothing.” I pushed my hands through my hair. I hated seeing her so upset over something I’d done. “Seriously, Parker. I’m not keeping anything from you.”
“I just need to know what’s real after everything that happened with Mike. Don’t you get that?”
The expression in her eyes almost killed me.
“Everything with me is real,” I said. I understood that she carried scars because of what Mike had done to her, but I wasn’t him.
“I barely knew you when you proposed. I’d known your father for years and owed him a great deal.
Not only did I think he had a right to know you were prepared to game the rules of the trust, but I was worried about another man taking advantage of you.
At the time, I didn’t know I’d be the one to marry you.
In my shoes, wouldn’t you have done the same? ”
“I thought you said he guessed what I was doing.”
“He did.” She wanted honesty, so I’d give it to her. “But if he hadn’t, I’d have told him. Arthur Frazer is a good man and he deserves my loyalty. There’s no way I would have married you under the circumstances without his blessing.” My hands stung like I’d struck her. It was harsh but it was true.
Silence stretched between us like a glacier.
“Now you know,” I said, still almost defiant.
“Now I know.”
I sighed. “There are things I need to tell you. You need to sit down.”
“More?” Her eyes grew wide and she backed up to the kitchen counter.
“Nothing to do with you and me, but I’ve found out what’s been going on with your apartment and the rose and the payments from your bank account. Let’s sit down.”
I grabbed a bottle of wine—this was clearly not a celebratory moment—and two glasses and followed her to the kitchen table. We sat across from each other.
“It’s taken me a while but it’s beyond doubt that Mike Wilson has been snooping around your flat. He’s the one skimming off the payments from the bank accounts, and he’s the one who hid cameras at your place.”
I couldn’t imagine how she felt, having agreed to marry a man who turned out to be a criminal. But I was going to end up making her feel worse before she felt better.
“I actually don’t think they’ve been there that long. He’s been trying lots of different stuff.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“I hacked into his computer and his email. He hid the withdrawals well, but once I was in his system, he’d barely covered his tracks. He’s out of cash. His quest to find himself a rich wife in Monaco was fruitless, and from what I can make out, he thinks he let you and your family off too lightly.”
“Too lightly?” She shook her head, incredulous.
“He’s a con man, Parker. He doesn’t think like the rest of us. Anyway, he’s managed to fund his lifestyle with a series of small cons and getting payoffs from the families of women he’s dated once they’ve checked him out and figured out what kind of man he is.”
“Payoffs?”
“To make him go away and avoid unnecessary drama. He’s dating high-profile women from wealthy families. They don’t want the exposure. They don’t want him anywhere near them, so they pay him off. It’s the way he makes the money he needs to life the live of a wealthy man.”
She frowned. “My dad would have had him checked out. How come he didn’t find anything?”
“You two were engaged a long time ago. He was only at the start of his con-man, grifter—whatever you want to call it—career. He didn’t have any kind of track record.
After you, he got more sophisticated. I guess he figured out what he wanted and how to get it.
Anyway, from what I can make out, he feels like you got away scot-free and that your father should have given him some money to go away, just like all the families of the other women he’s been involved with since. ”
“So he decided to take it for himself? Direct from my bank account. And from Sunrise.”
“Yes, he seems disorganized and a little erratic. He’s been searching for an angle in respect to you for a long time.”
“An angle? What does that mean?”
I didn’t want to hurt her but she needed to know this guy was dangerous. “A way of extorting money from you or your family.”
She frowned. “You’re sure?”
“Completely. I can show you what I’ve found if you like. I just haven’t worked out what his next move is. As soon as I do, you’ll be the first person I tell.”
“I . . .” Parker shook her head. “It’s been a long day. I’m exhausted. I need some time to think. Some space.”
“I know you’re upset with me, Parker, but I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was in a difficult position.”
She didn’t react. “I’m going to sleep in the guest room tonight.”
Disappointment crashed over me. I wanted to pin her down and make her understand that I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but hopefully Parker was telling the truth when she said she just needed some space. I needed to respect that and give her what she was asking for.
“I’ll take the guest room,” I said.
She offered me a half-smile. “Thanks.”
I swallowed and watched her leave. Realistically, I probably wouldn’t make it to bed tonight anyway. Mike’s trail was hot and I wouldn’t rest until I figured out his next move.
I headed back to my study to be met with half a dozen notifications that I’d set up to alert me if there were any purchases on Mike’s credit card or any emails sent from his accounts—he had three, and only one was encrypted.
I checked his credit card first. It was a charge from BA for a flight to London tomorrow morning. I shivered and my heart rate ramped up. London might be a city of eight million, but it was still too near for my liking. And why had he only just booked his ticket? What had changed so last minute?
Tonight was going to be a long one. I wasn’t going to rest until I’d uncovered every last detail about Mike Wilson and his plans for my wife.
Yes, I’d been up all night. Yes, I was tired. But that wasn’t the reason why I was so completely and utterly furious.
It was just coming up to eight in the morning and I headed into the kitchen to find Parker eating her breakfast at the dining room table. She didn’t look up as I came in.
She thought she had a right to be pissed off that I had told her father she was marrying to get access to her trust fund? She had some kind of nerve.
“Doing anything today?” I asked, wondering if she’d tell me what she had planned.
“Going to work,” she said, still not meeting my eye.
“That all?” I asked.
She shrugged and took another spoonful of muesli.
“Not planning to tell me how you were meeting your ex-boyfriend for coffee this afternoon?”
Her spoon clanged against the bowl as she dropped it. “You’re spying on me?”
“Yes I’m monitoring your emails. But if I hadn’t, I’d have seen your reply to him in his emails. I’m also monitoring his credit cards, his—”
“You’re monitoring my emails?”
Of course I was monitoring her emails. What did she expect? “I’m trying to keep you safe. How else was I supposed to figure out what was going on with the false transactions on your bank accounts?”
“It’s one thing to keep an eye on my bank accounts, but my email? Without my permission? That’s a step too far, even for you.”
“Not like creeping off to meet your ex who walked out when he decided you weren’t rich enough.”
“I’m not creeping off anywhere, and I’ve not even decided whether or not I’m going to go.”
“Why is it even a consideration? You should have come to me right away when you heard from him. I told you yesterday that he was the one taking the money and breaking into your flat. You didn’t say anything. Why not?”
She stood and headed to the dishwasher. “I had other things on my mind. Just because I said I’d meet him doesn’t mean I was going to. I hadn’t decided. I still haven’t.”
She had to be kidding me. “What do you mean, you still haven’t?”
“Well now I need to confront him about the cameras, the rose, and the payments.”
“Jesus Christ, Parker. Why would you deliberately put yourself at risk like that?” I swallowed down my frustration. I really didn’t want to tell her the next part, but she deserved to know the truth. And if it would keep her from meeting Mike, she needed to know.
“It’s a public place. What harm can I come to? It’s not like I’m going to be taken in by his charms again.”
“You should know that he’s planning to kidnap you. He’s formulated an ambitious plan to . . . take you from your flat.” I had to push down the urge to vomit at the thought.
“Take me?” Realization sheeted across her face. “Kidnap me?”
I nodded. “Hence the cameras. He could make sure you were alone and at your most vulnerable.”
“Are you sure? Mike was shallow and selfish, but I can’t believe he was capable—”
“He’s gotten himself into debt. And he’s been in contact with some people who—well, some dangerous people.
” If she asked, I’d tell her more, but she didn’t need to know that after he’d gotten his money, he’d planned to sell her to a third party rather than release her.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the thought.
“We need to go to the police with what I have—although a lot of it I’ve obtained illegally. I also want to speak to your father.”
“You’ve not done that already? I would have thought he’d have been your first call.” She was still angry. “The last twenty-four hours has been . . . a lot. A lot of revelations. A lot of old memories. I need some time to take it all in. I think I might go to a hotel for a night.”
My body turned to stone. I couldn’t move. “Stay,” I pleaded.
“I just need some time to process all this. I’ll go to my parents’. They have security. I’ll be safe there.”
The churning in my gut that had been there since she’d walked through my front door yesterday evening, her face full of disappointment and anger, took over my entire body. “You’ll be safe with me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know who I can trust at the moment. I just want to— I want to go.”
She was safe here. With me. She could trust me.
But that didn’t matter. She’d been prepared to put herself in danger in a way I couldn’t comprehend and I would never be able to live with.
It was better that she went back to her parents.
If I hadn’t seen the emails between them arranging the coffee, she may have been taken—kidnapped—and who knew what else.
Every version of the future we might share could have disintegrated in an instant.
“What?” she asked.
What could I say? Her leaving was for the best. She’d be safe from Mike and I’d be safe from my world burning to the ground if anything ever happened to her.
I’d spent my life not getting attached to women for this very reason.
My feelings for Parker had crept up on me.
Maybe the space she needed would give me room to extinguish them.
“Nothing,” I replied. “You’re happy for me to talk to the police and your father?”
“Yes,” she said, disappointment in her tone.
“I’ll get Sergei to drive you. He and his team are outside. You’ll be safe with them.”
This was better. Saying goodbye now would be easier, even if it was still sure to rip out my heart.