Billionaire Corruption, page 1
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Billionaire Corruption
New Adult Romance
By: Erica Frost
Table of Contents
Billionaire Corruption
New Adult Romance
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Bonus chapter
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Chapter One
Come Stalk Me!
Foreword
A chance meeting in an elevator with a random stranger derails Grace Bishop’s life in ways she could never have predicted. Fresh out of college, all she wants to do is to take care of her family and be sensible and responsible. But when handsome billionaire Paul McKinney comes across her way, the stakes change. Her accounting firm takes on an audit of McKinney’s multi-global company and Grace hopes the audit will clear him. But the investigation brings up shady deals and corrupt partnerships. When she uncovers a deeply-buried link with the Mafia, she has to face the possibility that the only man who has ever made her feel truly safe – may be very dangerous after all.
Chapter 1
Grace
I never told anyone about that afternoon.
Not because I didn’t want to.
I didn’t talk about it because I didn’t know what to say. How could I begin to find the words to talk about the few minutes that were both the most frightening and the most exciting moments of my life?
It had been so brief, our encounter in the elevator.
I never even got his name.
But I could not forget it.
I had gone to drop off a job application at a financial firm. I had just graduated college and was looking for a job, an exhausting process. It was late afternoon when I got into the elevator, pushed the button for the ground floor and didn’t look up. The elevator started going down but then, suddenly, stopped. The lights flickered on and off, which was unusual.
I looked at the man standing next to me, and he turned to face me, confusion on his face too.
“What the…”
The next moment, the lights went off again and stayed off.
The elevator fell.
It was horrifying, absolutely terrible. I remember thinking that I was going to die. Strange thoughts went through my head, like the fact that I had never called my mom back, that I wanted to make spaghetti for dinner that night. I worried about my brother and my father, which was odd because I didn’t often think about them. There were things I still wanted to do; I wasn’t done yet.
Then, abruptly, the lift stopped.
The lights came on.
I was sitting on the ground, having been thrown down when the elevator dropped. I was aware of my head hurting slightly where I had knocked it against the side of the elevator. The man was sitting right next to me, legs stretched out in front of him.
“Are you… all right?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“I think I’m fine too,” he said, sounding dazed.
Both of us were in shock.
“I thought, that was it,” he said, giving a sort of laugh, a sound of surprise. “End of the road.”
“I know. Me too,” I said, finding my voice.
I noticed then that we were holding hands, I had no recollection of grabbing his hand or him taking mine. But our fingers were interlaced, our palms melded firmly together. He did not try to take his hand away and neither did I. We looked at each other and then, just like that, we were kissing as if we weren’t strangers in an elevator, but as if we’d known each other for years, forever. It was a surreal moment of passion, and when the elevator gave a sudden shake, we drew apart, as if we were coming up for air.
The doors opened and arms were reaching in to help us out. We were stuck some distance from the next floor, and he helped lift me up so that I could reach the arms of our rescuers. I was covered in blankets, carried to chairs where a paramedic had a look at me. By the time I thought to look around for him, my elevator companion had already left.
My legs were shaking but I didn’t know if it was because of the shock of the fall or the kiss. I kept hearing how lucky we’d been. How if the lift had kept going on a few more floors, it would’ve crashed into the ground. Game over.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.
I tried to remember details about the man in the elevator, if he’d told me anything about his job or if I’d seen a company name or anything that could give me an idea who he was. But there was nothing.
He had vanished from my life as suddenly as he’d entered it. Yet, I couldn’t forget him or the few moments in the elevator.
But I went on with my life, looking for work, finally finding a junior job at an accounting firm, which paid next to nothing. Going home to my grandmother and teenaged brother, waiting for my father to text me from the oil rig where he was working.
Then one day, I was called into the senior partner’s office. We’d been given the job of investigating a big multinational firm for tax evasion and financial irregularities. We would be going over their accounts, scrutinizing invoices and checking every single item. It could take months. I was offered a place on the team, but I was warned that the hours would be long, was I up for the job?
My eye fell on the open file on the desk. There were photographs of the company’s management and I immediately recognized the man from the elevator.
I leaned forward, turned the page around to get a better look.
“That’s Paul McKinney,” my manager said. “CEO of Ladden Ltd. Want to help take him down?”
I found myself nodding.
I wanted to take him down all right, but not in the way he was thinking. I was thinking things I couldn’t say out loud, things I had never even thought about before. I wasn’t that type of girl at all. I had always been good, respectable, and decent. But the things I thought about Paul McKinney were not decent, I knew. Still, I didn’t think he was involved in anything shady. I didn’t believe that for a second. I would never be attracted to someone who was involved in anything criminal or illegal. I trusted my gut one hundred percent.
I had been wrong, of course, before.
But I was certain that this time, I was not wrong.
I signed up for the Ladden Ltd. investigation and was told to report early the next morning at the company offices downtown.
I took down the address and noticed how fast my heart was beating.
I would be seeing him again.
More than a year had passed since that incident in the lift. In that time, I had often visited that building, hoping to walk into him. I’d go to the financial district over lunch, walk the pavement and try not to be too obvious. I even started talking to a guy in a food truck, a young actor called Jeremy, who after my third visit in as many days, came right out and asked me,
“Either you are addicted to my tacos, or you’ve got a thing for me. Which is it?”
Usually, I don’t talk to men I don’t know, but with him in the trailer, I felt safe.
“Actually, your food truck is parked in a really good spot,” I said, pointing at the three different buildings I could see from that corner.
Jeremy nodded, his dreads bouncing up and down.
“Got it! Stalking an ex? Don’t tell me, so been there.”
I laughed.
“Yeah, it’s a bit sad,” I admitted.
“Not if he’s the one,” Jeremy said, looking pointedly at me.
“You’re a romantic?” I asked.
He shrugged. “You gotta believe in something, right?”
It wasn’t something you heard a lot in New York, and I liked him for his lack of cynicism.
When I got the job at the accounting firm not too far from Jeremy’s food truck, I started coming by for actual lunch. We became friends. I found out about Jeremy’s struggles to land an acting job. He’d dropped out of acting school and was always talking about auditions he was going to, when he wasn’t trying to get me to come out on a date with him. I would laugh and shake my head; I had no time for dating. My life was about work, coming back to help with dinner and keeping an eye on my brother, who would soon be out of the house. My grandmother was supposed to be the responsible adult, but most evenings, her back hurt too much for her to get out of the chair and I would end up making dinner and cleaning up.
Even though I never did see my elevator guy again, I kept hoping for a glimpse of him. Every time I saw a tall, dark-haired man in a smart suit pass me by, my heart would beat faster. Then I’d start wondering if he hadn’t been shorter, or his shoulders were bulkier. In time, his face in my mind became blurry and I wasn’t seeing his features that sharply anymore. I doubted that he was as handsome as I remembered or that our connection was that strong.
But when I saw his picture lying on Mr. Henderson’s desk, I had all those strong emotions flooding me all over again. Looking at Paul McKinney’s face, I knew that that afternoon in the elevator was not a random moment after a scary event.
It had meant something.
I went home and googled him and found out that Paul McKinney became CEO of Ladden Ltd five years ago. The company had grown into a multi-national corporation over the past ten years, with a presence in several countries around the world. It was a massive retailer, with businesses ranging from furniture and transport to a shipping fleet.
I found out that the McKinney family was powerful and wealthy. There was a Frank McKinney, who was a property developer and an Agatha McKinney who was thin as a rake, with blonde hair that fell in movie star waves onto boney shoulders.
I tried to remember if the Paul McKinney I had kissed in the elevator had manicured hands or was wearing a handmade suit. I couldn’t. I hadn’t noticed any of that, not even the dark blue eyes, or the strong jaw that dominated almost every picture of his.
All I could recall was the way he had looked at me, like I mattered, in a way no man had ever looked at me. As if his life depended on whether I lived or died. Our lives had connected in a fundamental way. For, at least, four minutes. That was the time we’d been in the elevator, the technician had later said.
It had felt like a lifetime though.
I was aware of my thoughts, by the way, of how romantic and sentimental I was sounding. I tried to tell myself that this was lonely Grace imagining all sorts of intrigue for herself. This was a powerful man, who could have any girl he wanted. He probably wouldn’t even remember me. All this Hallmark drama stuff was in my mind. He’d see me and barely recognize me. No harm done, I thought. I would carry on with the investigation and cry quietly into my herbal tea. Nothing I hadn’t done before.
But I had to know.
Whether he’d remember me too.
Chapter 2
Paul
I pushed myself hard on the treadmill, turning up the speed until I could feel my muscles burn, my breath ragged in my chest. I liked punishing myself like this, seeing how far I could go.
Afterwards, I had a shower and grabbed a water, sank into my couch. My phone pinged with a message.
How R U?
It was an unknown number.
I looked at the message for a moment, then tossed the phone aside. I never answer texts from people I don’t know, especially from women. Especially since that article appeared in a big city magazine about my last bonus at Ladden, which pushed me into the billionaire income bracket. Suddenly, I was the hottest new young billionaire in town. I was constantly harassed by beautiful women looking for a rich boyfriend to pay their way. I had learnt to be careful about the women I dated.
Don’t you remember me from last nite?
I looked at the message and tried to recall the night before. I had been out, where again? It came to me: a dance performance, my sister Elise asked me to go with her, she had an extra ticket. It was an excruciating interpretative performance with plenty of dramatic lighting and loud music, which gave me a headache. During the interval, I made my way to the bar, not intending to go back for the second act. My sister came out to join me.
“I’m so sorry! I had no idea it would be this tedious!” she rolled her eyes and smiled merrily at me. One of her friends came towards us, “Oh, my God! I thought the interval would never come!”
Elise had a friend on stage, we were there as support, but I felt I had done enough by sitting through the first half. “Have you got some blow?” my sister’s friend asked me, tapping her nose as she dropped her voice.
I shook my head and she turned to the bartender, calling over a young woman with an eye-catching tattoo of a snake on her neck. I turned away as the two of them engaged in conversation. I told my sister I intended going home.
“What about Sami?” she asked me, pouting, while looking over at her friend who was coming back from the bar.
“Don’t you like her?”
I understood that my sister was trying to set us up.
“I got us a round of shooters!” Sami said, whispering loudly, “It’s the strongest stuff I could find.”
“Not for me,” I said, a bit stiffer than I probably needed to. “I’ve some work left to do.”
“What do you do?” Sami asked, but I could see right through her. That feigned interest in my work, the artificial brightness in her smile. She was on something already, I thought. Just another one of my sister’s vapid friends. I had no energy to even engage with her. I turned to the bartender and asked for a whiskey. I’d have one and head home. Call it a night.
“Not one for dancing?” she asked me, as she handed me a glass.
“Was that what it was?” I responded, turning back to face the lobby where most of the guests were beginning to return to their seats. She chuckled softly.
“I told your friend I don’t have what she was looking for, but that is not exactly true.”
I turned back to look at her. She was giving me a smile and a sidelong glance that was definitely a come on.
“Oh?”
“You don’t tell everyone, everything, all of the time, do you?” she said with a shrug. Then she smiled, very invitingly, at me.
“I get off at eleven,” she said. “We could go find some real entertainment?”
But she had said something that got stuck in my mind.
The bit about not exactly speaking the truth.
It reminded me of something one of our exco members had said during the meeting on Monday morning, a few days ago. One of the vice-presidents didn’t show and nobody knew where he was. I asked about him at work and got some vague answers about him taking some personal time. Finally, I called his home and got hold of a housekeeper who said the boss had gone away, she didn’t know how long or where.
But Daniel Calderwood had not taken any leave.
He was overseeing some important company agreements and he wasn’t answering my calls. Eventually, I called our head of security, a rather tough-looking ex-cop type called Don. I asked him to find out what was going on.
He had called me that morning, said it appeared Daniel had up and left town. His wife and kids too, gone. It looked strange. He’d asked around, nobody knew where he was.
I had a bad feeling and called our company lawyer, who told me that he had been contacted by an agent from the IRS, who’d requested certain documents.
“It looks like they want to launch an investigation.”
“What?”
“It could be routine, or it might be something more. I’m not sure. I’ve asked someone to look into it. They are particularly interested in the South American companies.”
That was Calderwood’s domain.
“They have asked questions about some of the revenue from our branches in Brazil.”
“What does Jim say?” The head of our tax people.
“He says, we’d better comply.”
I called the Chairman of the Board, Brock Brenneman, who said he would find out what he could.
“It’s probably very standard,” he said, trying to reassure me.
But I wasn’t so sure.
One thing I had learnt in my job as CEO, was that nothing was ever quite as it seemed. The good deals often had something hidden in the small print and the toughest agreements often turned out to have advantages that I couldn’t have foreseen. Being in charge of a multi-national like Ladden sometimes felt like I was the main keeper at a crocodile park, trying to feed the monsters while not being eaten at the same time.
It was nerve-wracking.
I couldn’t think of anything but the IRS investigation. I texted the girl that I was busy and turned off my phone.
I had to keep my head clear.
