Reckless (Fractured Farrells: A Damaged Billionaire Series Book 2) (18 page)

“Okay,” said Alex as they got on the elevator and pressed the button for the parking garage. “What did the email say?”

Robert brought it up on his phone and handed it over to Alex. He let him read it as he ran to the BMW rental and started it up.

“Would you just slow down? There’s nothing really threatening in here.”

“They burned down her house!”
How much more threatening did they need to be?

“So she says.”

“So help me, Alex, I will push you out of this car and I’m not going to stop when I do it.”

“Fine. Did you call Malia?”

Robert squeezed the wheel as tight as he could. “She didn’t answer.”

“Well, that’s not good.”

“She might just be mad at me.”

“You gave her a luxury trip back to the States and she’s staying in your house for free. Why would she be mad at you?”

Robert clenched his jaw and took a deep breath. It was time to tell Alex the full truth. In a rush, he went through how he’d manipulated Malia on the boat and how upset she’d been and the cash he’d given her that morning as a token to prove that his intentions had been honest.

Alex was silent for a few minutes as he took that all in. “And here I was worried about Nathan being the next one of us in jail,” he finally said.

“I didn’t think—”

“Yeah, I got that much. Damn it, Robert. This is bad. Malia could be at the police station right now. Do you have any idea how happy that would make the press?”

“She’s not at the police.” He didn’t know how he knew, but he was absolutely certain that Malia wouldn’t turn him in. There were plenty of misunderstandings between them, but she knew his methods, however questionable, had come from a fucked-up place of caring. But even if she wasn’t running to the police, that didn’t mean she was still at his house.

The mid-afternoon LA traffic was rough but not packed, so he made it back to his cliffside home in thirty minutes. The second he ran inside, he started to scream her name. But as the silence sunk in, he knew he had to face the truth.

Malia was gone.

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“C
ome on back.”

Malia blinked away her surprise at the words as she stood from the hard plastic chair she’d been sitting on for the past forty-five minutes. This whole trip had been so hastily planned and thrown together, she hadn’t really expected it to work.

Especially considering this was her first time at a prison. She followed the guard through the metal detector and through two other sets of heavy steel doors until she reached the visiting area.

She’d expected Logan to be at a country club-like resort. Where visitors would be in an open area with tables to talk openly with the incarcerated loved ones and relatives. But this wasn’t one of those prisons.

The guards were all dead serious, and the visiting area was where the civilians were on one side of glass and the inmates were on the other side. The only way to communicate was through a phone, and all conversations were recorded.

Logan Farrell was already seated and waiting for her as the guard led her to the right booth. Now that she’d met two other Farrell brothers in person, she could see the family resemblance: the dark hair, bright blue eyes, and killer cheekbones. Logan had a different mother than Robert, though, and those differences were in his jawline that came to a bit more of a severe angle, but still attractive. Very attractive, but really she should just come to expect that from this family.

She sat and tentatively picked up the phone. “Hello. I didn’t think you’d see me.”

“Not much going on in my schedule today,” he said with a sardonic curve of his lip. He wore a gray scrubs-looking uniform, and from the v-neck of the shirt, the tips of tattoos were poking out.
Definitely a change from Robert and Alex.

“I suppose so. I, um, I don’t really know where to start.”

He just stared at her intensely through the glass.

“I came here to... I recently met your brother. Robert.”

Logan nodded. “The good one?”

“From what I heard, there isn’t a good one.”

The corner of his mouth hooked up. “Been talking to your mother lately?”

Her eyes widened. “You know who I am?”

“Why do you think I’m here? They said Malia Martin was here to see me. I figured you wanted to gloat at my misery, but it still seemed entertaining enough to get me out here. So is that why you came? To gloat?”

She shook her head. “I would never do that. I don’t hate you.”

“That’s charitable. Are you one of those bleeding hearts who doesn’t believe in hate?”

“Oh no. I hated Walter Farrell. To this day, even though he’s dead, I still hate him for everything he caused. But you’re not Walter, are you? I think you might be the person he screwed over more than anyone else.”

Logan clenched his jaw. “So you’ve studied my family history.”

“It pays to know the enemy,” she said simply.

“So, I’ll admit that Walter was a son of a bitch. But you already knew that. Why are you here?”

And there was the question she really had. The question she couldn’t ask anyone else and the one that would help her figure out what she was supposed to do. “You know me. Who I am and what Walter did to me. Through a strange set of...coincidences, I’m in this relationship with Robert.”

He raised a brow and didn’t say anything.

“And I need to ask you something that no one else would be able to tell me.”

“I can’t promise I’ll have an answer.”

“That’s okay. I just—I need to ask someone because I don’t think I can trust myself.”

“You want to know if Robert’s anything like Walter.”

Malia swallowed as she looked up, meeting Logan’s blue eyes through the glass. “Yes,” she said softly. She didn’t know whether he heard her or whether he read her lips, but she could tell he knew what she said.

“I wish I could help, but I haven’t spoken to Robert in years.”

“You mean he hasn’t come to see you?”

“Because I cut myself off from the family the second I was put in here. I haven’t talked to anyone but attorneys since I was locked up.”

Malia looked down. Of course Logan couldn’t help her. She didn’t know what she was expecting. It was stupid to even come here. “Okay. I’m sorry to bother you with this.” She started to hang up the phone but Logan motioned for her to bring it back to her ear.

“What I can say is that he’s nothing like Walter. He always tried to keep us...separated from him. It’s why he’s the head of the company. So he would work with Walter more than any of us. It wasn’t because he wanted the prestige or the money. He wanted to keep us from Walter’s influence. So if you’re asking if he’s anything like Walter, the answer is no.”

Malia let out a sigh of relief. That was what she wanted to hear. Obviously there were still issues with Robert and his control issues, but it was so comforting to know she wasn’t being completely stupid with him. To know he wasn’t fooling her with his nice guy act.

“Thank you, Logan.”

“Any time. You’re going to come back to visit, right?” he said with a hint of a smile.

She couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. “You won’t talk to your brothers but you’ll talk to me?”

“To be fair, you’re prettier than them.”

She tilted her head as she considered him. “Alex and Robert were talking about you today. I don’t know what they said, but they could be working on your case.”

“Maybe. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.”

Malia nodded, knowing better than most that hope could be the most depressing thing in the world. “Thanks for your help, Logan.”

He nodded as he hung up the phone. She wished she could promise she’d visit, but she didn’t know where this thing with Robert was going, and she didn’t even know what state she’d be in over the next few weeks. For now, a sincere thanks was all she could offer.

Once she was led out by a guard, she arranged for a car to pick her up and take her back to Robert’s house. She’d kind of hoped that Robert and Alex would still be out doing whatever the hell it was they were doing, but she saw a car in the driveway and knew her luck had run out.

Not that she was surprised. Between the drive to the prison, the waiting period, and the ride back, she’d been gone for hours.

The front door was open when she walked inside and she cautiously called out for Robert. She heard footsteps in the kitchen and headed in that direction as Alex ran to the entryway and stared at her. “You came back?”

From the shock in his voice, she was willing to bet that Robert had shared some of the details of how she got to the mainland. “Apparently. Where is Robert?”

“Looking for you.”

Her eyes widened.
Looking for her? Where would he even start?
Then realization hit her and the blood drained from her face. She’d told him that her mother lived here... “Tell me he didn’t go to—”

But before she could finish the sentence, Alex pulled his keys from his pocket and crossed over to her. “We need to go.”

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R
obert pulled his car to a stop in front of a well-manicured lawn in a suburb well outside of LA. It was one of those newer subdivisions where the houses were all close together and every third house looked exactly the same, and considering the drought going on, the suburb must be spending a fortune to keep the grass as green as it was. He stayed in the car for a few minutes as he looked for any sign of Malia. This wasn’t going to go well, but it was necessary.

If she was determined to stay away from him, that was one thing. But he needed to make sure she was safe. If that meant hiring someone to look out for her, so be it, but he wouldn’t let her go unprotected until he knew who was sending these threatening emails and letters.

If he was lucky, Theresa wouldn’t know who he was and this whole thing would go smoothly. But he had a feeling he wasn’t getting lucky any time soon.

He stepped out of the car and glanced around him as he walked up the drive. He’d racked his brain and couldn’t think of anywhere else Malia would be. She didn’t know anyone around the area except for her mother and her mother’s new husband. It had taken a while, but his private detective friend got him the address and Robert had left immediately.

He walked past the green lawn and the trimmed shrubs until he got to the blue front door and pounded on it. No point in being subtle. He was getting Malia and getting out.

The man who opened the door was middle-aged and looked as if he fit right into suburbia, from the khakis to the blue polo shirt. But before Robert could get a word out, Theresa had seen him.

And he knew she saw him because she let out an angry, guttural scream. “Get out!”

He squared his shoulders and looked past her husband to meet Theresa’s brown eyes.
The same exact color as Malia’s...
“Where’s Malia?”

She rushed past her husband and out the door, pushing Robert back with both hands on his chest. “My daughter is none of your business. You get off my property right now, you son of a bitch.”

Her husband stepped out. “Hey, hey. What’s going on?”

“He’s not welcome here!” screamed Theresa as she stared daggers at Robert.

“I’ll be gone as soon as I get Malia. I know she’s in there.”

Theresa stared at him as if he had three heads. “My daughter, not that it’s any business of yours, is in Hawaii. Far away from the likes of you.”

Robert stepped forward, refusing to back down. “I know she’s here. I brought her myself. Now tell her I need to talk to her. Now.”

Theresa’s brows drew together. “You brought her here? What does that mean?”

“It means I brought her here. I don’t know what she told you, but I need to see her. Now where is she?”

Theresa’s face paled. “Malia would never have given you the time of day. I raised her better than that.”

He didn’t have time for this. “I swear that if you don’t bring Malia out here right now, I’m going inside myself and not you or your new husband or any cop in the world can stop me from getting to her.”

A switch seemed to flip in her as Theresa let out another scream and broke out of her husband’s grip.

Robert was at a complete loss as the tiny woman came at him. He knew how to fight, and he more than knew how to defend himself, but there was nothing he could do but hold up his arms to block her blows as she smacked and hit and punched at him.