Page 1 of The Redemption of Alex Cade
CHAPTER ONE
ALEX
I hadn’t set out to be a criminal. As a kid, I’d wanted to be an astronaut; later, I was just grateful to have survived. But, as I stared at the spreadsheet’s endless columns of transactions, at all the names, the dates, money in, money out, I couldn’t deny what I’d become.
The numbers told a tale that was as far from being a bedtime story as you could get. Payments for sex and drugs—the origin and still the core of the business—but also for under-the-table deals, bribes, blackmail, and intimidation. My life distilled into cells and formulas, a digital confession of what I was. Only three people knew of the file’s existence: me, Kelvin, who was my oldest friend, business partner and a whole lot more, and Ibrahim, our shit-hot accountant, an upstanding member of the community, and a family man, who just happened to be the star of a very, very dirty and illegal show. The grainy film and photographs of his performancewere housed in a secure vault, known only to Kelvin and me. If the man’s very particular peccadilloes came to the attention of the law, expulsion from both the golf and Rotary clubs would be the least of Ibrahim’s concerns.
My lips twitched. The accountant’s secrets weren’t the only ones lying in the darkness of the security box.
I pushed away from the desk, the movement sending my chair rolling back a few inches, the groan of its wheels swallowed by the low thud of bass vibrating up through the floor.
My gaze shifted to the monitors mounted on the wall, showing the live but silent feed from the club below. Euphoria was alive tonight, a writhing mass of bodies under the relentless assault of strobe lights. Sweat-slicked skin gleamed, arms punched up into the air, hips ground hips, cocks rubbed cocks, everything in time to the hard, primal rhythm. The air down on the dance floor would be thick and heavy with heat and chemicals, the kind that made people throw away the constraints of day to day life, if only for a few hours. My fingers twitched. I could almost taste the salt and musk, feel the crush of bodies, the tension of hands on my skin. And I’d be down there later, prowling through the crowd, finding the prettiest faces and tautest bodies. I’d have my pick, just as always.
A bottle of whisky and a couple of heavy crystal glasses sat on a shelf, and I poured myself a large shot, taking a moment to breathe in the aroma before my first sip. It hit me with a smoky burn, warming my throat and chest. The second, slower sip, let me savour the peat and grain, the way the rich and complex flavours unfolded. Slumping back into the chair, I closed my eyes.
The thud from the club was faint but insistent, the regular beat of a heart or the first throb of a headache. I rubbed my forehead to massage away the first signs of the ache that wasnow an almost daily occurrence. Maybe some light relief from a warm and willing body would be enough to banish it. The human equivalent of a painkiller, somebody to numb me, providing an escape that was always temporary. I opened my eyes and stared at the spreadsheet, and wondered where the kid with the dreams of flying to the stars had faded away to.
The door burst open behind me. Only one man would come in like that. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. The scent gave him away first. Heavy, woodsy, earthy, his cologne secretly made me think of dark forests. The scent always lingered, making his presence felt even after he was long gone. It suited Kelvin because, like him, it was overpowering and impossible to ignore.
“You look like shit.” Kelvin’s voice was rough and deep, yet holding a hint of laughter.
I snorted as I swung my chair around and looked up at him. “Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Kelvin.”
“And you’ve got a headache.”
Of course Kelvin knew I had a headache because he could read me like an open book, or at least that’s what he always said, and I let him believe it. It was more likely that my hand, rubbing now at the back of my neck, and my tense shoulders, were the really big clues.
Kelvin crossed the room in a few long strides, his presence filling the space as if the office had shrunk around him. My hand was firmly pushed aside as his own planted on my shoulders. Without a word he set to work.
Kelvin dug into the knots of tension I never seemed to be free of. Rubbing, kneading, pushing into all those places between bone, muscle, and sinew, working their way up my neck and through my hair, massaging my scalp in small circles, with the precision of someone who had done this hundreds, thousands of times before. My muscles began torelax, the tension melting like candle wax. I groaned, because I always had and always would when Kelvin did this to me, giving me the pain relief he’d been providing for years, even if the reason for the pain had changed.
“That is so fucking good,” I murmured, my voice low and guttural, as Kelvin’s fingers probed and delved. “Yeah, right there.”
His answering laugh was a deep rumble. “Better, babe?”
I answered with a grunt, the release making me feel floppy and boneless.
His hands lingered for a moment before he planted a hard kiss on top of my head. Then, stepping back, he circled around the desk to drop into the chair across from me. He leant back, legs spread wide, his grin somehow both sharp and easy, his dark eyes glittering. I studied him, narrowing my gaze. Was Kelvin on something? Had he taken a chemical sharpener? But there was none of the rapid movement, the jitteriness, the fast meaningless chatter. I dismissed the thought. We were at work, this was our business, where Kelvin liked to be in total control. His eyes glittered because they always had.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said.
“Can’t a bloke be happy and filled with the joys of spring?”
“Spring was months ago.” I wrinkled my nose. Beneath the cologne, there was something else. A spicy, meaty tang. I sat up straighter. “You smell… Turkish.” Anger, sudden and hot, burst deep in my stomach. “You’ve been with that bastard Mehmet Aksoy, haven’t you?” My voice sharpened, the tension creeping back into my shoulders.
The tiny shrug was the only answer I needed. It was so small, so subtle, no one else would have caught it. But Ialways did. Kelvin lurched forward in his chair, across the desk, but I held myself rigid.
“We could double, treble, maybe even quadruple our profit?—”
“Kelvin,” I warned, my voice harsh. “Don’t fight me on this. I told you. No deals with him or his kind. Not now. Not ever.”
His eyes narrowed. For a moment, I braced myself for the explosion, the heat and fury Kelvin was so capable of unleashing. But it didn’t come. Instead, he leant back, his calm more unnerving than loud, explosive rage.
“Just keeping the lines of communication open, that’s all. One businessman to another. It’d be stupid not to.”
It’d be a hell of a lot more stupid, and dangerous, to get into bed with the likes of Mehmet Aksoy. I pressed my lips together in a tight line. I was in no mood to get into another argument with Kelvin over this.
“Okay, okay.” He held his hands up, palms out. “I know how you feel about Aksoy. All I did was have a drink with him, so don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
