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THE BILLIONAIRE'S AFFAIR 203
The hallway exploded.“Connor!” I gasped.“Connor!” his mother cried out.“Mr. Templeton, get back in bed!” Dr. Sarpara ordered.Somewhere down the hall, somebody yelled into a phone, “Security!”“Come on, man, don’t,” Johnny pleaded, and tried to gingerly push him back into the room – But Connor stood his ground. He gripped the door with one hand to steady himself, and with the other hand pointed at his family like some sort of specter of death. “…get… these fucking people… OUT of here.”“Even now?!” his mother howled. “Even now, you attack us – ”“After you tried to ruin me?!” he yelled, his face wracked with pain from his broken ribs. “After you tried to destroy the woman I love?!”My heart swelled with so much emotion when he said that, I almost burst out crying.“You don’t love her,” Lenora Templeton scoffed, her voice filled with acid.“After you tried to have both of us killed?!” Connor shouted.“What?! Don’t listen to her!” Lenora screamed as she pointed at me. “Why are you
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I didn’t have to turn around, though, to tell who it was. I could see his towering height and imposing outline reflected in the glass, his body silhouetted against the white glow of the hallway.“How is he?” Mr. Templeton asked in a weary voice.I looked over my shoulder at him. Truthfully, I was a little scared.Make that a lot scared.“He’s doing fine,” I said in a quiet voice, trying to mask my nervousness.“Is he in much pain?”How can he even ASK that? I wondered – and then realized that the only image he had of his son was of him yelling at Mrs. Templeton from the hospital doorway.I wasn’t sure I should tell him – I was pretty sure Connor would be angry with me – but hell, he was a father asking about his son.“He’s in a lot of pain, but they’ve got him on pain killers. He’s sleeping right now.”“Good,” Mr. Templeton said, and he sounded like he meant it. Like he was relieved.He slowly walked over to the glass and stood by me, though he never looked at me once. He just gazed o
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“Jesus,” Sebastian muttered.The three of us – me, Sebastian, and Johnny – were all standing in the hallway outside Connor’s room. Sebastian had just finished playing the voicemail back on his phone. Johnny refused to leave Connor, so we’d had to move from spot to spot like we were using a divining wand until we finally enough reception to play back the message. It was muffled and staticky in places, but most of the conversation came through.Johnny frowned at me after it was over. “Why did you go outside?”“You know I went to go get the food!”“You could have walked through the hospital.”“I would have if I thought that psychotic bitch was going to be waiting for me.”“Yeah, well… don’t go outside unprotected again.”“You were going to send me home,” I pointed out. “She could have just as easily gotten me when I walked out to catch the cab, or when I got to my apartment. Besides, she didn’t do anything – and she’s not going to do anything, not when there’s this much heat on her from
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The cops came by shortly thereafter to question Connor. I watched them suspiciously the entire time, wondering which one might be getting paid off by Miranda. Connor knew about as much as I did – which is to say, not much more than he’d been shot. He repeated the story several times, but nothing interesting surfaced until one of the cops asked, “Did you recognize the shooter?”“No. Do you have any information on him?”The cops looked at each other. “Not yet.”“‘Not yet’? It’s not like he got away – you’ve got his goddamn corpse.”“His prints aren’t in the FBI database, the federal prison system, or any of the state prison systems.”“Of course not, somebody either hacked the system and wiped his record, or he’s from out of the country,” Connor snapped. “Have you tried Interpol yet?”The cops looked at each other again. “Uh… that’s our next step. All that about somebody hacking the system or him being a foreigner – why did you say that?”“Because the person behind this isn’t going to t
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After my impromptu round of 52 Pickup, I had to shuffle the cards all over again. As I dealt, he asked, “Remember our date in Santa Monica?”“And all the hot sex?”“I’m serious.”I looked at him askance, and decided he was.“Of course,” I smiled. “That was one of the best days of my life.”“Mine, too,” he agreed as he arranged his cards. “What did you enjoy about it the most?”I settled back in my chair and considered. “I think… that you got such a kick out of it. The fact that you got to be ‘normal.’ It was like seeing a little kid try ice cream or go to the circus for the first time. I loved that.”A look of peace and contentment filled his face… and then he looked at me quizzically. “Is this what normal people do?”“What?”“Play cards and just… talk.”“When they get shot as part of an assassination plot? I guess.”He gave me a wry look. “You know what I mean.”“Don’t you ever play cards with anybody?”“Well, yeah, but usually it’s poker at $10,000 a hand.”That took a second to pro
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I swept open the glass door of our office and cried, “Anh, you are not going to believe what that asshole did to…”I stopped in my tracks.Nobody was in.Even though the door was unlocked, nobody was inside.“Hello? Anybody here?” I called out as I checked all the smaller rooms.Nobody. Not Anh, not Susan, not Phuong – nobody.I was beginning to get scared.I whipped out my cell phone and dialed.Anh’s chirpy little voice said, “Hi, this is Anh Nguyen of Ross and Associates. Leave me a message and I’ll return it as soon as possible. Have a great day!”“Anh, this is Lily,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I paced up and down the main room. “Where are you? Nobody’s here, but the door to the office was open – call me as soon as you get this, okay?”I hung up and collapsed in an office chair, then swiveled around to stare out the floor-to-ceiling window at the trees.What the hell was going on?Was it Miranda?Was she targeting not only Connor, Johnny, and Sebastian, but my best
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He looked down at the floor. He wouldn’t – or couldn’t – look at me as he started.“Everything that happened two months ago… I handled that really badly.”I swallowed, hard. “Well… I could have handled it better, too… I guess…”He straightened up and looked me in the eye. “No, you handled it fine. You drew a line in the sand and you refused to take less than you deserved. I admired you for that.”I wondered if he knew where my advice had come from, but I decided now wasn’t the time to ask.What I did ask was what I’d been dying to know all that time:“Why didn’t you call me?”He looked away and began to pace slowly, methodically. I saw him wince, and realized his broken ribs must still be hurting him.“I asked myself that a lot, too,” he said. “I guess I’m just not very good with relationships. My father, my mother… we weren’t the kind of family that…”His words petered out, the idea left hanging in the air. He stopped walking and looked me straight in the eye.“No, that’s bullshit.”
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We moved in together almost immediately, and split our time between Connor’s Manhattan penthouse and an apartment we rented in Santa Monica. Ross and Associates became bicoastal, with Anh taking over West Coast operations and me handling the East. I spend almost all my time with her whenever I’m in Los Angeles, and we Skype at least an hour every day for business, so it’s not as though I don’t see her… but I miss her. That’s the one slightly melancholy note to everything else wonderful happening in my life.Connor asked if I wanted to give up the business, but it gives me something to do – something of my own. Something I can feel proud of building.The shooter was finally identified as one Johann Wurtzel, a former special forces operative in the German military. Apparently he went to the dark side after he got out; the investigative team turned up numerous mercenary jobs he had done. They also found a week-old $100,000 deposit in a Swiss bank account. It came from a small company he
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