Page 3 of Free to Judge (Amaryllis Heritage #2)
CHAPTER TWO
ONE YEAR LATER
Boston smells like filthy snow and back-to-back cars in the winter. It doesn’t matter if it’s morning, noon, or night—the white crap that falls from the sky absorbs the scent of exhaust from the vehicles that trudge their way into the city at all hours of the day.
I keep my head down, walking carefully over the salted and cracked sidewalk from my apartment toward the front office of Byrne Litigation—a clean front for the laundering operation buried underneath.
Technically, I work for them now. Or at least, they think I do.
The reality is that I’m here to help Hudson Investigations clean house, investigate a string of dirty contracts and politicians getting rich off their name.
Not blow my cover.
Not get noticed.
Unfortunately, I’m good at my job—too good. And I spent the night out on my freezing balcony trying to make certain the backstory about my case history would substantiate what I found in the files I’ve been reviewing—that one of their own had been systematically ripping them off for years.
While I’m not here to make friends, I’m definitely not trying to get killed.
Coughing into my gloved hand, I’d also like to avoid too many conversations in below zero weather unless I want to pay for a trip to urgent care.
As tough as I know I am, it’s been years since I’ve gone through any kind of arctic training.
I stop to hack up a lung in front of an electronics store, causing the people in front of it to scurry by as if they’re afraid they’ll catch the plague. I want to reassure them what I have isn’t contagious, but something catches my eye from the wall of television screens through the glass.
And it’s not the StellaNova logo playing on each one.
It’s her.
Over and over.
She’s posing on the red carpet in an intricately pleated dress that shimmers navy and purple beneath the camera lights.
Her black hair, piled high, gleams as brightly as the jewels wrapped around her neck.
When she turns to give the paparazzi a better angle of the masterpiece she is, my tongue thickens in my mouth at the sight of all her creamy skin on display.
Someone says something to her off camera, and her eyes light up. Her smile broadens and her head falls back with genuine laughter.
I knew from the moment I saw her she was a force of nature. Seconds later, when her name flashes on the screen, I read aloud, “Kalie Marshall—Heiress to Lockwood Industries Fortune. Sports icon, philanthropist, and renowned attorney.”
I can’t move. Can’t breathe as I put the pieces together of who she is in my mind.
The household heiress mentioned in the news for her good deeds and charitable work, is Katherine Laura Marshall—the same womanI couldn’t take my eyes off during that long-ago Harvard Law graduation.
Still, I didn’t put it together until just now when I saw her name displayed on a wall of televisions.
After all, Kalie Marshall isn’t a name you forget.
Not anywhere in the Northeast—hell, not anywhere in America.
The Lockwoods and Marshalls are as intrinsic to the history of American wealth as the Waltons.
The family’s fortunes stem from their business empire built over generations and continues to grow year after year.
I force myself to back away from the televisions, muscles taut.
I can’t think about that day right now. There are too many balls to juggle.
Balls that, if they splat on the ground, will have my head lying next to them bloody soon after.
Today, I need to don the mask of skirting the law without actually breaking it.
Pushing forward, cold air scraping at my throat, I wonder how much my boss cringes every time his daughter is front and center of the world’s attention. Though, knowing her family, the banner from StellaNova likely has subliminal messages screaming “Stay away!” built within them.
There’s nothing they won’t do to protect their family, including hiring someone to blow up the mob from the inside when one of their own is threatened.
I trudge a few feet down the street before something compels me to twist my head back. All the monitors have zoomed in. Amid too many people, I fight through the bobbing heads and see only her. For all intents and purposes, the only two people on the street are me and her gorgeous face.
Just like we were for those precious seconds that day at the Tercentenary Theatre.
I wasn’t supposed to meet anyone like her. Hell, I technically don’t exist in her family’s world, even if I’m on their damn payroll.
If anyone knew, it could blow apart everything we’re trying to do, and I could end up dead.
A bad combination for a man who relies upon working the shadows to stay alive.
For now.