Only Her Page 8

  He wondered if it was a place keeper for her as it was with him – a reminder of where she'd been, a striking comparison to where she was now.

  This was another one of those things that he didn't feel he could "Dom" her into. She either wanted to live with him or she didn't, not that he was above subtly maneuvering her towards where he wanted her to be. He would have offered to pay for her old place if she wanted to keep it, once she'd moved in with him, but he knew that idea wouldn't be well received, either.

  So he settled for occasionally mentioning that if there was any furniture she wanted to bring to his apartment, he'd be glad to have someone – not movers, though, that sounded too blatant – over to futz with it for her.

  She didn't, of course. He'd seen her place. It was furnished in early poverty, so he didn't blame her one bit when she didn't take him up on his offer. Her family pictures were in her office at work, her clothes and computer and make up and perfumes and everything else vital to her daily survival was at his condo.

  Sometimes, he stressed casually how convenient his place was to work, the restaurants they liked, and shopping…

  And pointing out that she'd have more money for fun things she wanted to do – like traveling or buying technological gadgets – if she wasn't paying rent every month that she didn't need to pay.

  One night, though, it backfired a little on him and she got angry. In his experience, Anna really didn't get angry. When she was mad, she cried. She hated it, but that was what happened, every time.

  Except this one, apparently.

  Apparently, he'd brought it up one more time than she could tolerate, and she got up and began to throw things into the suitcase she'd opened on their bed.

  Dev came to stand in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his legs crossed at the ankles, trying to look casual.

  "Whatcha doin'?"

  She glared at him and didn't stop filling her suitcase, bringing handfuls of undergarments, jeans and t-shirts and stuffing them in haphazardly.

  Anna answered him as she stalked furiously around the bedroom, throwing things into her suitcase. "I get it. You want me to move in with you. But I'm not ready to do that, and so maybe I need to take your hints and spend some time at the apartment I'm – as you so kindly pointed out – still paying for."

  Dev straightened. That was not what he wanted to hear. He did not want her going back to her place. Not even for a night.

  So he stepped up and pulled the suitcase off the bed, laying it gently on the floor. Then, when she tried to collect it, he blocked her path with his body. He didn't touch her otherwise, but he didn't allow her to pass him, either.

  Then he took a step forward, which crowded him away from her.

  "Dev, stop!"

  Another step, and she was up against the bed.

  When she inevitably began to overbalance and fall with his next step, he grabbed her and held her against him, twisting to take the brunt of the fall on himself, holding her close to him.

  Cradling her to him, in the purest sense of the word, he whispered, "I'm sorry," against her hair. "I didn't mean to push you or pressure you."

  "Yes, you did."

  He had the grace to blush at having been caught out.

  "Okay, I did, but can you blame me? I want you with me all the time." Dev sought her eyes, but she avoided his, and his heart stopped for a moment as he asked, "Do you not feel the same way?"

  "What? No, I do, it's just that…well, I might be old-fashioned."

  "You are old-fashioned, but that's one of the things about you that's kind of cute –"

  "So are you – you're very gentlemanly with women, very protective, even when they're not yours."

  A small smile passed over his face. "I'll take that as a compliment."

  "Good, because it was meant that way." Anna sighed, fidgeting her fingers together and apart. "Well, old-fashioned me thinks that living together is a pretty big step when this – whatever we have – is only supposed to be a step above a one-night stand."

  He chuckled. "Honey, we passed one night stand about two years ago."

  "Yeah, well, I just can't see moving in with someone who hasn't even promised me that I'm the only woman he's going to sleep with. And I'm not asking for true confessions or declarations of love because I don't want to know about the first one and I know that the second one is not your style. But if we're going to take that step – if I'm going to give up the security – and it is security – of having my own place to come live with you, then I have to have that. And, since I went into this knowing how you felt about any kind of commitment, I've never felt that it was something I could demand from you. So all of this nattering at me about moving in with you is just…annoying, since I can't imagine that you'd want to do that."

  He gave her a puzzled look, eyebrows crinkled. "You can't? Not even with you?"

  Anna looked away and shook her head. "No. I've heard you rail against committed relationships for too long." She brought her eyes to his, looking serious and a little sad. "No, not for me. Not for any woman."

  Dev reached out and cupped her face in his big hands. "Well, then I apparently haven't been doing a very good job conveying to you just how special you are to me."

  "You don't have to do that, Dev. I'm not asking for things to change –"

  Dev kissed her quietly, reverently. "I know, baby girl. I am."

  From that night on, her home was there, with him. He did as he'd said he would – had movers go and collect what she wanted from the place, then had them box up the remaining stuff and put the rest of it in a storage facility he owned, which she tried to pay him for and he wouldn't let her.

  "It's gotten worse." Kurt strode into Dev's office with a pile of reports that he put down in front of the other man. "It had eased off these past couple of months for unknown reasons – there were barely any. But it's back again, with a vengeance. And I cannot seem to figure out how it's being done or what's happening to the money."

  They both poured over the information he'd brought, well into the night. Dev's first response was to want to call Anna in on it, because she had such an intimate knowledge of the very systems they were looking at, but Kurt stopped him from doing that, suggesting that as few people as possible should know they'd discovered the discrepancies.

  "Don't you trust Anna?" Dev asked, surprised at Kurt's response.

  "It's not a matter of trusting Anna. It's a matter of suspecting everyone who's not you or me until they're proven innocent. The fewer people who know, the more likely it is that we'll catch whoever is doing this."

  Dev had snorted at the idea that Anna could be involved in any way, and he continued to think that, but he went along with Kurt anyway, knowing in his heart that it couldn't possibly be his Anna.

  It made him feel uneasy not telling her about something to crucial to the business they had essentially come to run together. She'd been working there almost since the first day Aces opened, and he knew she was just as invested in its success as he was. So he steadfastly maintained his disbelief throughout their investigation.

  Right down to the day that Kurt brought in a financial forensics guy who gave him some startling – and deeply upsetting – information.

  Dev could tell he wasn't going to like what he was going to hear as soon as Kurt walked in and refused to look at him. The forensic specialist – and a computer guy who had come with him – didn't have any idea about who Dev was involved with, so they simply laid out all of the facts for him blatantly.

  "You can see where the withdrawals were made here, the tracks from those transactions covered from here, and the money ending up overseas – Switzerland, I believe – in a numbered bank account. The access codes for the computers that were used, for the transfers, and the information from the bank account all match one person."

  He was good with numbers – not as good as Anna was – but pretty good just the same, but what was being said with all of this was just mind-boggling to him, and he could barely foll
ow the trail they were creating for him. He'd deliberately created Aces with an atmosphere for the employees that was familial – creating the family he'd never had as a kid at work. And no matter how big they'd gotten, he still clung to that, and it was a punch in the balls to think that anyone he trusted – and it had to be someone who was relatively high up in the management team, he realized, so it was someone he knew well – had betrayed him in such a way.

  And when they told him whom it was that they suspected of doing it, he knew he didn't want to follow it.

  "So whose credentials were used?" he asked blithely, unaware of how that the information he was about to receive was going to change his life forever, flushing the cozy little world he'd created right down the crapper.

  The forensic guy referred to the notes on his computer. "Annabelle Valente."

  Dev stood, feeling all of the color drain from his face. "No, you've got to be mistaken. It couldn't be her."

  "Oh, there's no mistake, Mr. Greco. The trail leads right to her. I can show you exactly when she logged in, what she did, and when she logged off one system and into the other to follow the money and direct it where she wanted it to go."

  "There's no mistake? There's no way this could be a hoax? A setup or something?"

  "It's highly unlikely, sir. There's no suggestion that anyone else had a part in or even knew about what she was doing, and it was all done from the computer terminal in her office – there wouldn't be any video of it because there are no cameras in management offices. But I'm quite sure of what I've found." He cleared his throat. "Time is of the essence, sir. The longer we sit on this, the more likely it is that she'll realize we've found her out and try to bolt. We can contact the police department right now and give them the information we've found – they'll send someone down here right away to arrest her. The city of Las Vegas and the state of Nevada take a very dim view of this kind of crime. She'll be put away for a very long time, as I'm sure you'll be glad to hear."

  "No." It was soft, but it stunned everyone else in his office into silence.

  The computer guy chuckled. "No? Don't you want this criminal to be arrested?"

  Dev stood, towering over the two smaller, bookish men. "I said no. No one calls the cops without my say so."

  "All right," the forensic guy agreed reluctantly. "But you should do it as soon as possible so she doesn't take any more money, and we have a financial duty to report this. If you don't do it, we will."

  "Get. Out," Dev snarled, and everyone but Kurt nearly stumbled over himself to do as he commanded.

  Kurt stuck around, knowing he was probably risking his life doing so.

  Dev turned towards the big one-way window behind his desk, the one that showed the busy, brightly lit casino floor. As luck would have it, Anna was walking back from lunch with her friends, laughing and chattering and interrupted every few feet by a fellow employee who wanted to hug her or tell her a joke or talk about their day with her.

  "Dev?"

  Kurt jumped at the sound of his boss's fist hitting the safety glass.

  There was nothing more he could do for the moment, and he might as well get it over with. There was no avoiding what he had to do, and he wouldn't even try to. He was going to force himself to be there for the whole sordid thing.

  "Call the cops, Kurt. Might as well catch her before she gets back to her office."

  At the dull, dead sound of the older man's voice made him just as happy to leave to make the call from his own office.

  Sinking down into his chair with his hands over his face, Dev was having to fight his first instinct, which was to protect her. He could call her right now and tell her that they were on to her, that she should leave and go some place with no extradition, some place no one would look for her.

  Some place he knew he would want to join her – if he could.

  But he knew he couldn't, although he left his hand on his phone for a very long time.

  The knock at the door, a few minutes later, was Kurt.

  "Sir, the police are here. Do you want to –"

  He brushed by his assistant and walked downstairs to the casino floor, seeing Anna still slowly making her way back to her office and two men that he could clearly see were plainclothes policemen coming in the nearest entrance to her.

  They approached her just before he got to her, although she had already seen him and was heading towards him, but he hung back, forcing himself to watch the dreadful scene unfold in front of his eyes.

  "Ma'am, are you Annabelle Valente?" the smaller of them asked.

  Anna smiled as he'd known she would and said, "Yes, I am. How may I help you?" she asked, as if they were lost tourists or something.

  Both men then flipped their badges at her and the bigger one reached for her arm, saying, "I'm afraid you're under arrest for embezzlement, ma'am."

  Her eyes found his immediately as she still wore a look of comic disbelief. "I'm afraid you must be mistaken, officers. I've been an employee here for –"

  "There's no mistake, ma'am."

  The smaller guy began to read her her rights.

  "But Mr. Greco – he's right there – he'll vouch for me. This is just some kind of stupid mistake –"

  Her eyes pleaded with him for a long moment, then, seeing that he wasn't going to be any help, they shut down, and she didn't look him in the eye again, even when she was marched right by him.

  Now, he was in his old apartment, where he'd spent so much time with her while they were building his casino together. He was roaring drunk but nowhere near numb enough to get that stricken look she'd given him when she realized that he wasn't going to protect her this time – this most important time – out of his mind.

  He didn't think he'd ever be able to get it out of his mind.

  But as he sat there, he became more and more determined that this had to be a setup, and he would spend any amount of money necessary to prove that.

  He'd turned his phone off when he'd left the building, for the first time since he'd started Aces, he didn't care if his lifetime of work – what he'd poured his blood, sweat and tears into, crumbled into a heap behind him.

  But he became more and more determined to prove them wrong.

  When he turned his phone back on, there were almost a hundred text and phone messages, the majority of them from Kurt.

  He ignored all of them and called him. He sounded incredibly relieved to have some contact with him, finally. "Dev, Jesus, where have you been? I've been calling you –"

  "I know. Bring me up to speed. Did you bail her out?"

  Kurt's groan told him that it hadn't gone well.

  "I did. She tried to refuse and stay in jail, but they wouldn't let her. I stayed until they released her, like I thought you would want me to, to give her a ride home and see if she needed anything."

  "Good man," Dev interjected. That was exactly what he would have wanted Kurt to do.

  "Yeah, well, she looked right through me. She didn't say a word to me, just used her phone to call an Uber and spent the rest of her time in the ladies' room, where I couldn't go. She must've gotten a text or something that her ride was there, because she came out just as it pulled up, got in, and left. I assume she went home."

  "I'll head over there –"

  "No, you can't, boss."

  He was incensed at being told he couldn't go and console the woman he – Dev swallowed hard – the woman he loved, at a terrible time in her life, for which he was directly responsible.

  "I what?" he asked, his tone downright deadly.

  Kurt didn't back down. "You can't. You're the owner of a casino. You can't be seen going to the apartment of the woman who allegedly stole from you. This thing is already a PR mess. We don't need it compounded."

  Dev was holding the phone so hard in his fist that he was seconds from crushing it, unwilling and unable to accept the idea that he couldn't see her.

  "You need to stay away from Anna, Dev." Kurt knew they were together, he even had a bit of a
n idea just how much she meant to him. Yet he said the absolutely truth to his boss anyway, knowing it was going to kill him. "Don't call her, don't text her, don't email her – there'll be a full investigation, and you shouldn't be associated with her. It looks bad enough that she's living with you. Stay away from her."

  Dev actually growled into the phone and then was silent for a moment. "Are you at work?"

  "Yeah, and all hell's breaking loose. Anna was very well liked, and no one wants to think that she's done it and they're pretty pissed at you."

  "Neither do I," Dev agreed, closing the apartment door behind him as he spoke. "But there's someone in the organization – who is not Anna – who's doing this and framing her for it. For the moment, you are the only employee I trust. Everyone else is a suspect. I'm going to come in through the back door and go to my old office in the old part of the building. Meet me there. Tell no one where you're going or what you're doing. Get Alysse to do crowd control and handle things as best she can." He slipped behind the wheel of his car, saying, "You're going to help me find the real culprit, if it takes us every penny I own and every hour of every day for the rest of my life."

  His car roared out of the parking garage and onto the street, cutting off several lanes of traffic as he did so.

  Chapter 8

  Meanwhile, Anna was in a motel that was barely a step above the ones that charged by the hour. She no longer had her old apartment to go to for solace, since he'd convinced her to move in with him. She'd had the presence of mind to pay for her room in cash – although they did take her credit card for incidentals – to make herself less traceable, not to try to avoid the police, but to make it harder for him to find her.

  She couldn't even think his name without weeping.

  Not that she thought he was necessarily going to be looking. She'd seen his face when they'd cuffed her and she'd turned to him for the protection he'd always provided her in the past, but there was none. His face was a careful blank, and she knew she was truly on her own.