Sex and the Billionaire Crime Boss - Season 3

Ch. 25: Irresistible

It feels so familiar. Waiting outside my office building, and watching Max glide up in his fancy sports car. I take off my suit jacket then set it in the back with my purse as I slide into the passenger seat, and he smiles at me.

"You look stressed," Max says. "Gorgeous, but stressed."

"It's been a day."

"Tell me what happened," he says as he eases the car back into traffic.

"Where are we going?"

"Maybe a drive along the coast?" He glances over at me. "I don't trust myself to take you home with me. If we go to my apartment, I'll have you in my bed in five minutes. If we go to my family home, Rina will feed you. Then I'll have you in my bed."

"We never did make it upstairs when you were giving me the tour of your family home."

Suddenly I'm wondering what Max's bedroom looks like. The one he grew up in. Are there still souvenirs of the boy he once was? Or is it completely transformed to the man he is today?

"Don't tempt me, Hadley. You know how I feel about peeling you out of that lawyer suit."

I notice with equal parts relief and regret that he's heading toward the coastal highway, not the club or the family estate. Because I know how I feel about him peeling me out of my lawyer suit, and I can already feel tingles of arousal racing through my body.

Then I imagine me telling him that Dylan deleted his files, and Dylan ending up dead with his body dumped in the Everglades never to be found. And arousal is replaced by dread.

"Well?" Max looks over at me again as we leave downtown Miami behind.

"I'm trying to decide how much to tell you," I say honestly.

His hands grip tighter on the steering wheel momentarily, but his voice stays calm.

"The answer to that is tell me everything."

"Some of it is just supposition."

"Let's start with the facts."

I tell him about the fact that someone has hacked into the firm shared directory from my laptop, and that they installed a device that gave them remote access. How only my files were targeted - specifically, the files on the art gallery. Plus anything I had saved or uploaded for about a week on my other cases.

"So someone deleted files?"

"Yes, I know, it doesn't make sense. They could have copied them and I never would have expected it because we have state-of-the-art security from the IT department that, honestly, we all take for granted. So why delete them and tip us off that the files had been hacked?"

"It could be a number of things. Someone sending a message, or someone just wanting to cause you trouble. I'm leaning toward the first."

"So am I. But I don't know if it's a message directed to me, to you -since they were your files - or to my grandfather."

"You're holding back something. What is it you're not telling me, Hadley?"

I stare down at my hands in my lap, not sure how to answer.

"I can't help if you don't tell me everything." I can hear the control in his voice. He's annoyed, but he's trying not to show it.

"It's just that I thought I knew who did it, but now I'm not so sure."

"Why the reluctance to tell me?"

"Because I don't want an innocent person - or even a guilty one, for that matter - to end up dead in a swamp because I fingered them to my boyfriend the crime boss." Ex-boyfriend, but I can't bring myself to say that.