Page 138 of Lust & Lies

In our case, there were three or four sides since so many people had interfered with our lives. Because of Noe, I’d learned to keep my relationships private and keep people out of our business.

That was what she’d wanted to do in the past. It was I who’d wanted to step into the light, who’d wanted to escape with her. If I’d done like Ethan planned to do, if I’d just waited, things would’ve turned out much differently.

I placed my hand on the door as if that could make me feel closer to her. It didn’t. Sighing, I shoved my hands into my pockets and strode to my office. I pulled up the local news website to watch the live news as I scrolled through my phone, searching for Julian Cattaneo’s number. I turned the computer’s volume up a little to listen to the broadcast.

“Police were called early this morning to Clark Construction after three decomposing bodies were discovered by staff,” the reporter stated. “The company has not made a public statement yet, but police sources confirm an investigation is underway.”

“Hello,” Julian answered.

“Are you watching the news?” I asked, leaning back in my seat, suppressing a yawn.

“Yeah. Just turned it on. It seems your brother’s girlfriend did her job well.”

“Yeah, she did. He took it a step further, though. He had her plant a bug in both Clark offices, Senior’s and Junior’s. We’ve been listening in for the past few hours.”

“And?” Julian asked.

“The news is just now reporting things, but those bastards have been busy for a couple of hours trying to cover their asses. Here’s what we’ve picked up so far from conversations between Senior, his lawyer, and his right-hand man.”

I filled Julian in on everything my team had told me.

“This is all on Junior,” I told him. “Junior fucked up big time about a month ago. He called his old man around three a.m., crying like a little bitch. He said he messed up badly. At the time, he had a room in one of my resorts. He was there to get a feel ofthe place, take pics of the décor, and try to find out whether he could convince our chef to come work for them.”

Basically, he’d come to my hotel to study it and try to replicate it. Had even tried to poach members of my staff. Had I known that, I would’ve banned him from all Bak Hotels & Resorts.

“But instead of doing his job,” I continued. “He did his usual, fucked, and got drunk. After calling and telling his dad he’d messed up badly, Aaron Clark Senior showed up at the hotel and found Junior high out of his mind, blackout drunk, with three women dead in the room. Two hookers and one hotel employee from Bak Resorts.”

“Damn,” Julian said. “One of those women was one of your employees?”

“Yeah. Which means I’ll have to be careful about how I handle this. I can’t say anything until after they identify the bodies.”

“Right. How did your staffer get involved?”

“According to what we heard via the bug, she was working that night Junior stayed at my hotel. The front desk kept getting noise complaint calls. She went to Junior’s room to tell him about the complaints and ask him to keep it down. Junior dragged her inside, violated her, and forced her to take drugs that killed her. My staff is recording the conversations going on at Clark Constructions. On the recording, you can clearly hear Senior telling his right-hand man to make sure Junior hadn’t kept any of my staffer’s personal items, like her badge. Apparently, Junior likes keeping items that belong to the women he kills.”

How sick was that? I knew this world was full of sick and cruel motherfuckers. But to hold on to keepsakes of your victims so you can constantly be reminded of what you’ve done makes you beyond evil, beyond saving in my book.

The employee who worked for me should’ve been safe in my establishment. I felt guilty for what happened to her. The fact that no one noticed she was missing for the rest of her shift let me know I needed to investigate my staff properly.

“I can’t risk asking the guy who worked with her that night about it because it’ll show that I know something,” I told Julian. “I have to wait until the bodies are identified before I can bring it up. But no one has reported her missing. She’s listed as fired in our records.”

“Which means someone on your side is in with the Clarks,” Julian mused.

“Yeah. And when I find out who, I’m going to fuck up their entire world.”

“Did you hear anything else? Does the police suspect Junior?” Julian asked.

“Yeah, there’s more to the story. After arriving at the hotel room and seeing the crime his son had committed, Senior panicked,” I told Julian what my staff had told me. “He didn’t want to call any of his own people in to clean up the scene because he hadn’t wanted them seen coming in and out of the hotel. So, he called Louis, who had apparently been working for them for a while. Senior told him to get rid of the bodies. Louis agreed, then Senior stopped him and told him that this was their chance to take out the hotel and construction competition. He told Louis to hide the bodies on one of our Bak job sites. Louis said he couldn’t, stating it was too risky. So Senior threatened to kill Louis’s family if he didn’t dump them at one of our job sites.”

“But he didn’t do it right away,” Julian mused. “The sick fuck kept the bodies.”

It seemed Louis had already confessed his dirty deeds to Julian the day Julian beat him at the gravel pit. Louis had been beyond sick for defiling those bodies. Those poor women had suffered in life and in death because of the Clarks and Louis.

I would make sure their killers paid for what was done to them. I would also make sure their families had nothing to worry about for the rest of their lives. It wouldn’t ease their pain, and it wouldn’t bring their loved ones back, but I still wanted to help in any way I could.

“Right,” I told Julian, agreeing that Louis had been a sick fuck for what he’d done. “When Senior didn’t get a visual confirmation of the job being done, he roughed Louis up. Louis finally stopped fucking around with the corpses and tried to get rid of them. And that led us to our current predicament. Your guys did a great job positioning the bodies at the Clark office. According to the secretary, there had been one in her seat, one in Senior’s office, and the last one in Junior’s. The secretary freaked out and called Senior. He told her not to call the cops. She said it was too late, another employee had already called them. My brother’s friend had already called the police.”

“Yeah, your brother was definitely right to get his girl involved.”