Page 4 of Undeniably Corrupt (Boston’s Irresistible Billionaires #7)

I wasn’t in the club last night for her, nor did I know she worked there.

No. Last night I was in the club for Tommy Hardgrave and what he’s been doing behind the scenes to my friend and his costar, Loomis Powell, and my good friend, Keegan Fritz.

I was there to hack his phone and needed to be within a certain range of it to gain access.

I was there to ruin his life exactly as I said.

That’s what happens when people fuck with my people.

Whether that makes me good, bad, or indifferent, I don’t exactly care.

I started coding and hacking before I can remember.

My father is one of the best in the world, and though he swore he’d never teach me, he also saw I had the same aptitude for it as he has.

I’ve been called morally gray. Corrupt even. Except being corrupt is a matter of perspective. A matter of entitlement. A product of necessity and leverage. Only those who truly need something are corruptible, and only those who are desperate or possibly just evil seek to corrupt.

Maybe that’s why I’m able to live in the gray .

Not evil, but not good. Not corrupted but not corruptible. Broken but not breakable.

I didn’t do the creepy fuck thing and look Liora up.

I wanted to. I did. I’d thought about Liora over the years.

Anytime I’d return home to Maine or sometimes late at night when my mind wouldn’t settle, I’d wonder about her.

She never had any social media, and unless I hacked her, I wasn’t going to get much.

I didn’t hack her, though. Some things are better left in the past.

But there she was. Angel. A name I gave her when we were just kids because that’s how she always looked to me.

Like an angel. My angel, when that was always the last thing she was allowed to be.

I saw her enter the club, and for far too long, I didn’t know what to make of it.

I didn’t want to see her up there, and I told myself I wasn’t going to watch her dance.

But I also couldn’t look away.

The moment she stepped onto that stage, I was glued to her.

Her body has changed since I saw it last. Then again, she was just a teenager, and so was I.

Now she’s every bit a woman with larger, fuller breasts and curvier hips.

She danced, and I was a slave to her along with every other asshole in there.

And when that asshole— my asshole —went up to her and placed money in her thong, I was going to let it go.

I really was. I knew I was set to ruin his life and figured if she was dancing, she needed the money.

I don’t know any exotic dancers, but I can’t imagine it’s a job they take unless they have to.

Which got me thinking. Wondering.

What happened to you, Liora? How did you get here?

Are you simply paying your way through school, or is there more to your story that I’ve missed in the ten years since I saw you last?

Because her parents had plenty of money and always spent it on her, so her dancing for it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.

I’m not throwing shade. Hell, I commit a variety of felonies nightly and am in no place to judge anyone.

But I was dying to know. Curious for answers I’m not entitled to.

Then he requested her. And he teased her, practically calling her a whore, and I wasn’t going to let that stand.

I wasn’t going to allow him to treat her that way.

I certainly wasn’t going to let her dance on him and take off her bra to show him her perfect tits or make him hard.

He’d fucked with enough of my people, and I was done.

Loomis and Keegan are on their way home from Florida, and tonight Tommy will more than get what’s coming to him.

As for me…

“Hey, man,” Mason answers my call as I sit back in my office chair and spin around so I can stare out at the Boston skyline. “What’s up? You coming over tonight after you get Loomis and Keegan from the airport?”

“Yeah. For a bit.” I release a silent breath. “This stays between us, okay?”

“Sure. Always.”

“I saw Liora.” I rub my jaw, scratching at the stubble already forming.

He’s silent for a long beat before he replies, “Liora? As in your high school girlfriend, Liora? Cassian’s sister? The bloody angel wings girl?”

“One and the same.” Except the only people who knew she was my girlfriend were my Boston friends and my parents. We hid it from everyone else, including my best friend and her brother, Cassian.

“Huh. Wild. Where’d you see her?”

“At the café on the corner of my building. She also dances at The Landing Strip.”

“How do you know she dances there?”

“I wasn’t following her,” I explain, noting the accusatory and worried tone of his voice. “I was after Tommy Hardgrave to get access to his phone, and she was there dancing.”

“Shit. That’s a weird coincidence. Are you okay? Is she?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know.”

“Understandable. It’s been a long time since Cassian died, and she was a girl who got under your skin.”

I swallow at that. At all of it.

“A lot can happen in people’s lives that we don’t know about,” he continues.

“Hacking is a federal crime in all fifty states and is considered to be an invasion of privacy.”

Mason laughs. “You can’t hack her, brother. Get that tempting flower out of your head right now.”

I sigh and lean back in my chair, allowing my weight to rock me. “She didn’t recognize me.”

“That’s because you probably looked like Jesus’s less attractive and more unwashed cousin since I know you hadn’t left your closet or whatever in a few days. It’s also been… what? Ten years?”

“Yes. I was eighteen, and she was sixteen. The last time I saw her was before I left for MIT.” When I broke up with her.

When I broke her heart and came to realize that leaving her was a special form of hell piled on top of her brother’s death.

Before I learned the taste of betrayal at the hands of people I considered friends.

People I foolishly trusted. And the fabric of my being shifted yet again.

He clears his throat. “So you saw her, and she works at a café and a strip club. So what? Are you planning to go back to the café? Regardless, you’re not showing up at the club. You don’t regularly go there, and that’s stalking.”

“What’s with all these rules? No hacking, no stalking?”

“If it were Katy or Keegan or Tinsley or Wren? Would you want one of their random-ass exes doing any of that with them? Think about what my wife’s ex did with her and the shit you had to do to get us out of.”

Fuck.

“Fine. I won’t show up at the club, and I won’t hack her,” I grumble.

“Good man.”

I bounce back in my chair and cover my eyes with my other hand. “I’ve never claimed to be a good man. In fact, I pretty much know I’m not.”

“I disagree with that. You’re one of the best men I know.

You’re the one we all call when we need help.

And you’re always there. Always. No matter what.

You drop everything for everyone and fix all our messes without expecting anything in return.

You’re fucking Batman, dude. We get it. Don’t do something creepy and dark just to prove that. ”

“I won’t. But I’m not happy about it, and I can’t promise I won’t do something minor.”

He sighs. “Why don’t you just go and talk to her? You know, like every normal human does.”

“Because I’m not normal, and I’m sure I’m not ready for that yet.”

“I get that. Just do the right thing. I’ll see you tonight after you get Keegan and Loomis.”

“Yes. Thanks for the morals pep talk.”

“Much good it did you. Later.”

He disconnects the call, and I get to my feet and pace to the window.

Cassian and I had been best friends since we were little kids.

We weren’t the boys nice girls like Liora brought home to their parents, and despite Cassian telling all of us that he’d kill us if we ever touched his sister, I did. For two years in secret, she was mine.

She lived that secret with me, pushing to keep it harder than I did.

But I said things. Made her promises .

Then Cassian died, and I couldn’t keep those promises anymore.

She told me she understood, but that didn’t stop her tears or heartbreak, and it didn’t stop me from being hungover on her for longer than I care to admit. Or from getting the tattoo the night I hit my lowest point with it.

Her parents hated me. They had no clue about my family’s money or how we could have bought theirs ten times over because that’s how we liked to keep it.

I was the bad boy who rode dirt bikes and motorcycles and had a tattoo artist for a father.

I was the smart, nerdy kid who never fit that role.

I smoked weed and drank and came to Boston half of my weekends to see my other friends.

I hacked anything and anyone I could, though she never knew that, and neither did anyone else.

The only people who know what I do are my very inner circle and no one in Maine.

But I liked her. A lot. Actually, I loved her.

I dated her longer than I’ve dated anyone else, before or since. She just had this way about her that made everything better, whether it was bad or not. She was my angel. My first everything.

But she’s not that person anymore, and neither am I.

Okay, I’m not stalking her. I swear I’m not.

I just wanted a cup of coffee and maybe a muffin to clear my head after my conversation with Mason.

But in fairness to me, if I had hacked her, I would have known her schedule, and I could have planned accordingly.

Because it’s one in the afternoon, and the last time I was here at this time, she wasn’t.

I didn’t expect her. I’m actually a bit blindsided by it. Again .

It’s not a good look on me, and it’s not something I take in stride.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to see me yet. The real me, not the gross-looking dude. Now I don’t have much of a choice, as I’m in line and there are two people ahead of me. I could go. I could turn around and pretend like none of this is happening.