Ruthless (A Lawless Novel) Read online

  It was ridiculous. And slightly embarrassing since sometimes when she worked late and no one was around, she turned on the music and sang while she worked. She was pretty sure she did not sing as well as Ninety-sixth Street Oscar.

  While his associate made a thorough sweep, Riley shuffled through some papers, seeming to search for the right one. “This is a multimillion-dollar deal. We have to take security very seriously.”

  Thank God. He was being a paranoid weirdo. “I know this is a lot of money on the line, but it’s also kind of like a family business. Steven wants to sell his half of the company to me. He always planned to when he retired. He has a son, but Kyle is not the business type and honestly, they’re not close. He didn’t even know about Kyle until he was already in high school.”

  “Yes, you’re talking about Kyle Castalano. Mr. Castalano’s illegitimate child,” Riley said, not looking up from his notes.

  That came off a little judgey. And there she went again. “Kyle’s a good guy. He just came up rough, and Steven is trying to do right by him. I’m hoping they can get closer once Steven’s retired. Look, Mr. Lang.”

  His eyes came up, staring at her. “Riley.”

  Next time she hired a lawyer, she would make sure he wasn’t so gorgeous he flustered her. “Riley, I understand that you’re some sort of a shark. I’ve heard you’re in-house counsel for 4L Software. I know you’re used to working with paranoid people.”

  Riley laughed. “I assure you, Mr. Lawless is one of the least paranoid people I know. Everyone really is out to get him. He’s quite an asshole.”

  “He also has ears everywhere,” she heard Andy mutter under his breath.

  4L Software had revolutionized Internet security. She was completely fascinated with the head of the company and his reputation for being a complete recluse. But this wasn’t the time for gossip.

  “I’m simply saying, I’m not on the same level as Drew Lawless. You can relax. This is a mutually beneficial deal. I really just need you to look over the paperwork and let me know if it will hold up.” Maybe she’d made the wrong call. When she’d realized her father’s personal attorney was closing up shop, she’d called the number of the man he’d recommended. She hadn’t realized how high-powered he was until she’d already made the appointment with him. She’d had the head of StratCast’s legal department look over the contracts, but she’d been convinced she needed an outside opinion as well.

  “I don’t ever relax, and if I’m your attorney, I won’t let you, either. You need me for far more than the buyout contract. Now let’s talk about what I can provide for you,” he offered. “I want you to consider me a general in the war you’re about to find yourself in. Your general.”

  “This isn’t war, Mr. Lang. I need a lawyer to make sure the transfer of all assets is handled in a smooth manner, and after that I need you to basically oversee the legal department.” She’d read over his employment demands. They seemed a bit steep to her for what she needed him to do. “That’s why we really should negotiate some of the finer points of your contract as well. I thought we might go over that.”

  “Of course, Ms. Stratton, though you do understand that dealing with the preliminaries of the buyout is my way of showing you how helpful I can be, so why don’t we get right to it?” The smile on his face was gone, and he slid a stack of papers her way. She recognized the contract. From the flurry of sticky tabs denoting pages Lang had comments about, it looked like the man had a lot of problems with it. “This current contract will very smoothly transfer all intellectual property rights for the new cooling system straight to Mr. Castalano.”

  She felt her jaw drop. She suddenly couldn’t get those contracts in her hands fast enough. “What?”

  The new cooling system currently in development was supposed to double the running time of computer batteries and reduce overheating by two hundred percent. It was the jewel in StratCast’s current development crown. It was also a project she’d been shepherding.

  “You heard me correctly. He’s trying to walk out with your biggest project in his back pocket. It’s buried on page seventy-nine as a part of his retirement package.” Lang sat back, crossing one leg over the other. “Andy, did you find anything?”

  Andy placed a tiny disk on her desk. “That is a listening device. It was under the frame of your Wharton degree, so I think we can safely say it’s recent or you would have found it when you moved into this office. I’ve disabled it, but they’ll know we have it. The rest of the place is clean, but I’ll teach you how to use this device to make sure anyplace you have private conversations is bug-free.”

  She stared at the tiny bug. Someone was listening to her? Steven? She couldn’t believe it, but then there was the issue of the contract. How could he try to do that to her? “I don’t understand.”

  It made her sick to her stomach.

  “Ms. Stratton, this is business, and business at this level is always war.” Riley shrugged as though finding a bug in a client’s office was no big deal. “Now they’ll know we know. They’ll know that you are no longer unprotected. In some cases I would have left the bug in place and used it to our advantage, but you are right about this being fairly straightforward, and we need a show of strength.”

  Had Steven done this to her? Had he been listening in on her conversations? She knew he had a reputation for being ruthless, but he was a man she’d called Uncle Steven for most of her life. He’d been sitting by her father when she’d graduated from Wharton. He was the man who advised her.

  The ground seemed to be shifting under her feet. She counted on Steven, and now she had to question everything he said and did.

  She had to try not to cry. God, she couldn’t cry. “He’s the one who insisted I get outside counsel.”

  “Perhaps he intended to try to pay me off. Or send you to another lawyer. Or this could all be a mistake. Perhaps his own lawyers are being too aggressive and he doesn’t understand what they’re asking for. I don’t know. All I can tell you is the clause is there and we’re not going to agree to it.”

  She forced down the pain the betrayal caused her. Yes, it was buried, but he had to have known she would find it. Perhaps he was uninformed. Maybe. “No, we can’t agree to that.”

  “I’ve made notes on the contract,” Riley said, his voice softer than before.

  She looked up, and the lawyer was looking at her with sympathy in his eyes. That was the last thing she needed. She hardened her resolve. “Let’s go over them.”

  “Ms. Stratton . . . Ellie, why don’t you take some time and read through them. You could probably take the afternoon off. I understand that what we’ve pointed out to you is probably quite disturbing. It’s easy to see you’re unsettled.”

  Weak. She looked weak. She schooled her expression. If there was one thing a woman at her level wasn’t allowed to do, it was show any weakness. It was better to be the bitch than show any softness. “Not at all. I’m perfectly fine. Now obviously I won’t sign away rights to what will be the company’s most profitable development. How do we counter? Should we counter?”

  “Oh, we’re going to counter. I’ve hired a firm that will help us with information gathering about your opponent. I’m meeting with them after we leave here. McKay-Taggart is one of the world’s leading experts on security and intelligence.”

  She’d certainly heard of them. They were all ex-military or CIA agents who handled twenty-first-century security problems. God, it boggled her mind that she needed a firm like that to look into a man who had treated her like family.

  “Excellent.” At least it seemed like Riley had a firm grip on the problem. Though she was embarrassed by her naiveté, she seemed to have made the right call by bringing them in. “I’m going to spend the afternoon firing the head of my legal department. He okayed this deal.”

  It would be fun. She would have him escorted from the building. She really hoped h
e gave the big guards trouble.

  “I would advise against that.” Andy took the seat beside Riley.

  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “That man went against the best interests of this company.”

  “Until you buy him out, Castalano is the company. He can outvote you. Your father left you in a perilous position. He left your sister some of his stock.”

  She still shuddered at the thought. Her dad had left Shari a voting share of StratCast. Shari didn’t have a brain in her head. “I vote my sister’s shares. Don’t worry about dealing with her.”

  Riley’s brows climbed up as though he was confused. “From what I understand, she recently sold her stock.”

  “What?” For the second time that day, she felt her stomach take a deep dive. Shari only owned five percent of the company stock, but that voting share was something Ellie counted on. “Who? Who did she sell it to? Why wouldn’t she tell me? I don’t have control without that five percent.”

  He held a hand up. “You can easily build a coalition. I can help you with that. Your sister sold the stock to an individual. I haven’t run that name down yet. It won’t matter if you successfully buy out Castalano.”

  He had her paranoid. She needed to calm down.

  Riley closed up his briefcase and looked down at the Rolex on his wrist. “As to firing the head of your legal department, in this case, it’s better to go with the devil we know. You can fire the man after we finish the deal. I would actually advise you to fire anyone who you suspect was loyal to Castalano, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This is going to take a while. I need to go and meet with Taggart. What do you say I pick you up for dinner at eight and we can talk about what he discovered?”

  Dinner? With him? That seemed like a bad idea. A really bad idea. “I think we should probably meet back here at the office.”

  “Where someone planted a bug to listen in on you?” Riley asked, standing and giving her a bland smile.

  Put like that, it did seem like a bad idea. “All right. Um, let me give you my address.”

  The blandness was suddenly gone and there was a certain heat in his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I think I can find you. Eight o’clock.”

  He turned and walked out, Andy hard on his heels.

  The minute they left, it felt like Ellie could breathe again.

  Then she caught sight of the defunct bug, and her stomach was in knots. How had everything turned upside down over the course of one morning?

  “Ellie? Are you all right?” Her assistant walked in with a mug in her hand. “I saw the male models walking out the door and decided you could use something to calm your nerves. They looked intense.”

  Lily Gallo was her personal gal Friday and all-around best friend. Ellie’s father had advised her not to hire a friend, but they’d been close since college and she wasn’t sure what she would do without Lily. Sometimes Lily was all she had.

  “My sister fucked me over.”

  Lily set the mug down. “That is her way. You no longer have a husband, so she can’t be sleeping with him. What did she do now?”

  “Sold the stock Dad left her.”

  Lily’s eyes went wide. “That bitch.”

  It felt like more of a betrayal than Shari having an affair with Colin. After all, Ellie loved the business more than she’d ever loved Colin. “It gets worse. It looks like Steven is trying to walk away with the cooling system.”

  Lily slumped into the chair in front of her desk. “No. Oh, Ellie. I’m so sorry. And that’s not tea. It’s vodka and cranberry. Like I said, I thought you would need a drink.”

  She took a long sip. This was why they were such a great team. Lily always knew what she needed.

  Business is always war, Riley had said.

  “You want to split this up with me?” She handed Lily half the contract.

  Lily might not have graduated from Wharton, but she had a hell of a business mind. “Yep. Let’s go over this with a fine-tooth comb.”

  Ellie took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the contract in front of her.

  It looked like it was time to join the battle.

  Two

  Riley walked into the cool confines of the office building that served as their New York headquarters. It had a very lovely-looking nameplate on the outside that proclaimed it to be the home of Lang and Associates.

  There was a perfectly manicured and coiffed receptionist who would explain to any and all who wandered in that Lang and Associates was very exclusive and not accepting new clients.

  The truth was Lang and Associates was just Riley Lang, and he only had one real client.

  And one fake client, who might mean the end of his law career. He’d gone to law school because Drew needed a lawyer he could trust. There hadn’t been any thought in Riley’s mind to do anything else. He didn’t know what he would have done, had he been given the choice. He’d been focused on helping his family. Now he was licensed to practice in two states. Texas, where the firm’s main office was located, and New York, where so many parts of their game needed to play out. If Ellie Stratton pushed at the end of their game, she could likely get him disbarred. But then he’d known going in that revenge was worth any price he had to pay.

  So why had seeing her start to cry hit him so squarely in the gut?

  “Good afternoon,” Drew said to the receptionist as they entered.

  Gayle was good with calls and handling wayward members of the public who happened to wander in. She was also excellent with any number of weapons. She’d served her country in Iraq and came highly recommended as a bodyguard. “Good afternoon. They’re waiting for you in the conference room.”

  Riley had noticed she rarely used their names. Likely because it was hard to keep up with all the aliases. “Thanks, and if Ellie Stratton calls trying to get hold of me, tell her I can’t be interrupted and I’m looking forward to seeing her tonight.”

  “Of course.” Gayle nodded and went back to her computer screen. He’d always wondered what she did during the long hours she put in. It certainly wasn’t typing up documents for the boss.

  He did everything on his own because he trusted no one.

  Drew slapped his back as they walked past the secured door that led into the office that wasn’t really an office. “You afraid she’s going to cancel your date?”

  He didn’t bother with correcting his brother. It wasn’t really a date. At least it wouldn’t be to Ellie’s mind, but he intended it to end that way. The safest way to ensure he got what he needed from her was to secure her loyalty. The easiest way to secure her loyalty was to become her lover. “I’m not going to allow that to happen. Besides, calling it off at this point is merely a sign of her embarrassment. She got very emotional when I pointed out what was happening with her sister and Castalano. It would have more to do with that than any issue with me. She was definitely attracted to me. That office was not cold.”

  Ellie Stratton was turning out to be quite different from what he’d expected her to be. Having made a case study of her father for years, he’d expected Daddy’s Little Girl to be a lot like the man himself—cold, distant, intellectual. He’d expected any beauty she had to be aesthetic only. He definitely hadn’t expected a warm sensuality that clung to her. He hadn’t counted on her smile to be so damn inviting.

  Or her nipples to look so ripe and round under that dress she’d been wearing.

  He’d steeled himself to do his duty. Now he wondered if his duty might not be fairly pleasurable.

  “Maybe she was actually attracted to me.” Drew pushed through the double doors that led into the conference room, where it looked like everyone had gathered.

  “No. It was definitely me she wanted.” He didn’t like the flare of jealously that snaked through him at the thought of Ellie flirting with his big brother.

  Yeah, he certainly h
adn’t expected that.

  They opened the door to the elegant conference room with a view of Central Park. It was the kind of conference room that impressed people, which was exactly why they’d bought the space. It was one more set in their well-thought-out play. When they were done here, they would sell it again and he would go home to Austin.

  It appeared they were the last to arrive, but then Drew always liked to make an entrance. The whole group was sitting around the conference table. Bran on one side, with Mia and Case on the other, their hands entwined.

  “Mia, Case, I’m so glad the two of you could make it.” Drew held out a hand to the massive, stone-faced dude their sister had recently married. “I hear you had some trouble in Dallas. I’m sorry to take you away at such an awkward time.”

  Case stood and gave Drew’s hand a manly shake. “Anything for Mia’s family.”

  Mia grinned and hugged Drew. Of all the siblings, she seemed to be the only one who had come out of foster care with all her sweetness intact. She’d been adopted by a couple within months of their parents’ deaths, and they’d given her the stability she’d so desperately needed.

  If only they’d been able to do the same for Bran. They’d attempted to take him in, too, but the judge they’d dealt with for Bran hadn’t been so friendly to the two women. They’d lucked out with Mia’s adoption. The judge thought a boy couldn’t be raised by a lesbian couple.

  Politics had fucked them all over.

  “And awkward doesn’t cover it,” Case Taggart said, his voice deep. “My younger brother came back from the dead. It happens more often than you would think. Especially in my family. Anyway, I didn’t want to let Mia come up here alone. She gets into trouble when I let her roam free-range. We’ve got a few days before we’re needed back in Dallas. My oldest brother sent along a report.”

  His oldest brother was Ian Taggart, a legend in military and intelligence circles. Riley had met a lot of scary dudes in his life, but Big Tag, as they called him, was the scariest. He still had trouble reconciling his smart, funny sister being madly in love with the brother of Ian Taggart.