Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(58)

Her blood chilled. “And you think a hundred thousand dollars can tear us apart?”

“Yes, I do. I believe this will work and even when Spencer comes home after his next six months at sea, we’ll have had time to fix any leaks we might have. He won’t find the same information again. He can look, but we’ll have done a better job this time.”

“Why not just show him those damn pictures?” She wouldn’t be able to. Just the sight of them had made her sick, but she was so confused.

“I would in a heartbeat if I thought it would truly change things. No. I think I’ve chosen the right set of moves. It’s like chess, you know. In a few moments Captain Spencer will be confronted with your betrayal. He’ll also have to think about the ramifications of the case being opened again. He thought he could do it quietly. I’ve shown him that’s not likely. Even now someone will probably be calling him and throwing around words like scandal and exposure and optics. Of all the men in the world, politicians and their ilk are really the most predictable. He’ll go to his boat and lick his wounds and decide that perhaps his sister and his mother and his friends are worth more than a dead man’s memory. The scandal will fade again. The Hayes administration can stay on task instead of answering questions about their employee’s family. And my boss gets to stay out of the spotlight as well. We’re all happier with the investigation closed. Even the captain, as he never has to see those photos. Everyone is better off. Well, except you.”

It could work. She still didn’t know what was going on, but Dax might shut down the investigation if he thought it could hurt his sister. “I’ll talk to him about it. I’ll get him to see reason.”

Dax would put his family first. Surely. She could make him see it was their only choice.

“I doubt that,” came the reply. “When the captain comes to confront you, I hope you’ll remember that old saying: sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Good-bye, Special Agent. This is the last time we’ll speak. The next time, I’ll use more than words to deal with the situation.”

She’d never felt more helpless than she did when she heard that line go dead.

What the hell had that man done? It couldn’t be good. Her stomach clenched, tears starting to pierce her eyes.

A hundred thousand. Someone had paid a whole lot to set her up. But set her up for what?

The door opened and Dax stormed in. His normally perfect hair was slightly disheveled and his eyes wide. “Holland!”

She moved into his line of sight. “I’m here.”

He sighed and stepped toward her, pulling her close. “I was so worried about you.”

“Worried? Why?” She clutched him close for a long moment, breathing him in. She had a sudden feeling that this embrace might be their last.

“Sweetheart, I need you to go and look at your bank account. I think someone’s fucking with us, and we need to figure out who it is. I’m going to tell you something disturbing, but I want you to stay calm. I need you to understand that I’m going to make everything right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She had to force herself to breathe. Not playing along with the mobster’s scheme meant something terrible would happen to him.

She stepped back, her heart in her throat. “What are you talking about?”

She was fairly certain she didn’t want to know.

“Someone wants me to believe that you’re trying to sell photos of my father and Amber Taylor together in bed,” he explained, his mouth a flat line.

“The girl he was accused of raping?” She could still see those photos. The hollow look in the girl’s eyes would haunt her for the rest of her days. Dax thought he’d known his dad, but those pictures reminded her that no matter how well she thought she knew someone, she could never know the depths of their darkness.

If they got out into the public, the Spencer family might never recover.

A single brow rose over his left eye as he took another step back. “The girl he was accused of sleeping with, yes. Apparently someone stole the pictures and whoever wanted to destroy my father is now threatening to release them and blame you.”

God, her mystery mobster had released the original blackmail photos and set her up to take the fall, hoping that Dax would be so overwhelmed by her betrayal he would walk away from the investigation. They hadn’t sent them to Dax himself. Dax had made it plain that he was investigating what he believed was his father’s murder. The potential belief that his father was guilty of the crime hadn’t thrown Dax off.

But the idea of those photos being out in the world might. The idea that the woman he loved had betrayed him utterly could derail him and send him right back to his ship where he couldn’t cause trouble. Not any the mob couldn’t control. If he sent private investigators, they would be bought off or blackmailed. They’d proven there were very few people they couldn’t get to.

They’d put her in a horrible position. She’d meant to put him on a boat in a week and then she would have had six months to figure out how to handle the situation. She would have come up with something, some way to gently turn his mind away or to try to prove to him his father really had killed himself.

Now she had nothing. If she defended herself, he could die.

“Where are they releasing the photos?”