Chapter 1
The phone rings at three a.m.
I think about ignoring it. Now that I have Chloe back in my arms—and my bed—I have no interest in moving for the next century. Certainly not until dawn breaks across the sky and I set things in motion for our impromptu trip to Vegas. I haven’t slept since she left me, not for more than an hour or two, and now that she’s cuddled up against me, her even breathing pressing her breasts against my side and her strawberry blond hair tickling my cheek, I’ve finally been able to relax, to breathe, for the first time in way too long.
But I’ve been waiting for a phone call and if this is it—if this is it, the last thing I want to do is miss it.
Without moving the half of my body that is firmly under Chloe’s, I reach blindly toward the nightstand. My hand collides with my phone on the second try and a quick glance tells me that I really do have to take this call.
Fuck.
“I’ll get back to you in five minutes,” I bark into the phone the second I accept the call, and then I’m hanging up. Running a hand over my face. Trying to blink myself into wakefulness.
It takes a good two or three minutes. Nothing like the abject relief that comes from holding the woman you love to finally put you under after a week of sleep deprivation.
I’m half-asleep and grumpy as shit as I slip my arm out from beneath Chloe’s head and try to slide over to my side of the bed. The fact that she moans a little in her sleep and clutches at me, her arms and legs wrapping around me like a vine, only makes it harder to leave. If it was anyone else on the phone—if the call was about anything else—I wouldn’t even think about it.
I soothe her back to sleep with a couple strokes of her hair and a few murmured words. And then I stumble to my feet and turn away, even though that’s the last thing I want to do. Even though I want to spend the next hour, day, year, beside Chloe, worshipping her beautiful body with my own.
I walk down the hall to her living room, pull out my phone. Dial the number. And wait for the private detective on the other end to pick up—and God willing, give me the news about my useless brother that I’ve been dying to hear.
There’s a click and then a terse, “Mr. Frost.”
“Yes.” A long pause, like he’s shuffling papers. Or taking a drag on a cigarette. Or tossing back a finger or two of scotch. Then again, that could just be my imagination running wild—I’ve seen a lot of old-time detective noirs through the years and right now it feels like I’ve stepped into the middle of one.
The idea makes me more uneasy than it should.
After all, I thought I was ready to hear whatever he had to say—was anxious to hear it—yet now that the moment’s here, there’s a part of me that just doesn’t want to know. Brandon is my baby brother. I’ve spent my life protecting him, trying to keep him safe, trying to fix his problems for him. But that was before I knew what he was. What he’d done.
Before I knew that he had raped the only woman I’ve ever loved…and gotten away with it.
It’s that knowledge that has me grinding out “Tell me,” even as I brace myself for the answer.
“You were right. Ms. Girard isn’t the only one.”
My blood turns to ice, just freezes in my veins as his words hit me with the force of a precision guided missile.
I knew it. From the moment my mom opened her mouth after seeing that picture of Chloe and me in the tabloids, from the moment I realized that Brandon was the one who—with my help—had nearly destroyed Chloe, I’d known that there would be more. That there would be others.
Brandon’s the type to take a mile when you give him an inch. When I believed his lies—my mother’s lies—and bailed him out, I gave him more than an inch. I gave him carte fucking blanche to do what he wanted, when he wanted, to whomever he wanted.
And the bastard ran with it.
So, of course there are more. Of. Fucking. Course.
For a moment, I can’t help thinking about those other women. Trying to put a face to them. A name. But that only makes it worse. Because I’ve held Chloe when she cried, I’ve seen how devastated she is. Knowing there are other women out there suffering as she has…knowing that my money—that I—pretty much gave Brandon the opportunity to do that…It makes me sick. Makes me rage. What happened to them is as much my fault as his.
And now the son of a bitch wants to run for Congress? Wants me to use my influence to help him win a term or two in the House of Representatives, before running for the Senate? And then, when he’s a little older, a little more seasoned, I’m supposed to help him make a grab for the golden ring? For the presidency?
Over my dead fucking body.
Not when the woman I love bears the emotional scars of his attack and everything that happened after. Not when other women have suffered the same fate. And not when it’s obvious that Brandon still doesn’t give a fuck what he did or who he hurt.
No. Fucking. Way.
“Tell me.” There’s no hesitation now, not when my blood is boiling and guilt is pressing on my chest like a cement block.
“There are seven other women who have leveled accusations of rape at your brother. Three of the seven accusations came before Ms. Girard’s, and like hers, are sealed since your brother was underage at the time the allegations were made and no arrest was forthcoming.”
“What about the others?”
“They’re from your brother’s time at Boston College—all dismissed, all with nondisclosure agreements signed on both sides.”
“Because my mother and his father paid off the girls.” Was it any wonder they’d been tapped out of disposable income by the time Chloe came around and needed me to pony up the money? Brandon had been working his way through the entire female population of Boston, one terrified young girl at a time.
The rage churns in my stomach. Makes me nauseous. Makes me burn.
“He’s been accused of rape eight times and none of the allegations have stuck?”
“Technically, it’s only been seven. In the last one, there was no rape complaint made—”
“Then how do you know about it?” I interrupt. Not that I doubt him or what he’s telling me. Because I don’t. But I damn sure want the big picture, want every one of my ducks in the fucking straightest row I can put them in before I decide what I’m going to do with the information.
How I’m going to use it to bring my baby brother down—and keep him from being elected to the House of Representatives, when he’s got good looks, slick charm and a hell of a lot of old-money donors on his side.
“I followed the money. She got the biggest payout yet. Almost three million dollars. But unlike the others, her medical bills took a pretty decent-sized chunk of that.”
“So he graduated from rape to rape and assault.”