Love, Lies and Billionaires

“But you know you really didn’t have to tell Nella.”

“Come on, we both know you need someone to tell your pain aside from me. And Nella looks like the choice for that,” Mrs Sharppe said from the other side of the phone.

“No, she’s not. For all I know, she could be some psychopath who killed her ex-husband.” Maren muttered inaudibly.

“What was that?” Her mom asked.

“Nothing. I’m just saying you can’t just let her in on everything that happens to. I’ll do it myself if I want to do it.” She said and clicked away on her laptop, which was on the table in front of her.

“Alright, I’ve heard. But admit it, she is a pretty good listener.” Her mom said, but Maren didn’t reply. “So tell me, how’s Alexander holding up? How’s his dad?”

“Well, he’s-” she turned around as she heard the door click shut. She turned back to the phone on seeing the visitor. “Mom, can I call you back?” She asked, and her mom hung up the phone.

“Still not going to knock, are we?” she said, the clicking sound of her laptop filling the silence.

“You’re not supposed to be here. ” Alexander’s voice came, calm and deep.

“Well, it’s the weekend and I have lots of things to work on before Monday.” She replied, keeping her eyes on the laptop.

Slowly, Alexander sat at the edge of the table and closed the laptop. Making her sigh and get her fingers away from the keyboard so he could close it completely.

“My sturdy, my house. I get to tell you where to be and when”

‘Yep, he’s back’ Maren thought. “I just really need to meet the deadline. A deadline which you imposed. So if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to get back to it”

“Very well then, I guess nowhere in my house is wrong.” he grabbed her gently by her neck, rendering her helpless and made her look up at him, then leaned in to kiss her.

“Mr. Blackwood” a voice came after a knock on the door.

Alexander closed his eyes in anger at the interruption. He ignored it and proceeded with his deed.

“Stop, what are you going?” Maren asked, nuzzling him away.

“I don’t get it,” he said as he let go of her neck and sat up.

“Your guards don’t intrude this way unless it’s urgent”

“So what?” He asked, obviously trying to play dumb.

“It might be important,” she argued.

“Or could just ignore it”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” age said and stood up from where she sat. Alexander just tilted his head slightly and walked up to the door. “What is it?” She said to the guards, who stood really upright behind the door.

“I’m sorry to disturb, ma’am, but there’s a man outside to see you both. He says his name is Micheal Katz”

“Micheal?” She repeated. “What the hell is he looking for this time?” She asked no one in particular. “Alright, let him in. We’ll be down soon.” She said and turned back to Alexander, who was still where he was, arms folded.

“It’s the detective. Probably here to arrest you or something,” she said, still holding on to the door handle.

Alexander scoffed. “You think I did it?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know, we might probably find out in about five minutes” she said and walked out the door, whether Alexander was coming or not.

“Mr Katz,” Maren called as soon as she got to the base of the stairs. “Have a seat please,” she said to the man as he stood at the door in between two guards.

“Can we get you anything?” Alexander interrupted as the man took his seat on a sofa.

“A glass of water would do,” Micheal said, looking at Alexander, who signalled to a guard to go alert the maids.

“To what do we owe this visit Micheal? To not send me to jail I suppose?” Alexander asked, settling himself on a sofa adjacent to Micheal’s.

The glass of water arrived almost immediately and Micheal raised it to his lips and took heavy gulps as both Maren and Alexander exchanged a stare.

“Wow, I really needed that.” He exhaled and dropped the now empty glass.

“What do you have for us?” Maren asked.

“Well, if you’d noticed, I’m just returning from the scene, halfway on foot. But before then, we could apprehend the leader of the gang of harvesters, and we got him talking.”Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

Micheal paused and looked from one person to the other, enjoying the anticipation on their faces.

“Well, according to him, William did come to him for a favour, or rather a job offer. He wanted some of his staff to pledge their loyalty and silence when they discovered his hidden activities.”

“He said: William told him that he would have told his guards to do it, but he knew that’ll only mean extra heads would roll, eventually. So he told him to do it.”

“So what does that have to do with anything?”

“Unfortunately, one man died in the process and William refused to pay him in full, and that was how they became enemies. But here’s the thing, Gustavo had planned to kill him earlier but instead, someone beat him to it”

“How do we know if he’s telling the truth?”

“A man of his profession hardly tells lies,” Micheal replied, looking Maren in the eye and making her kind of uncomfortable.

“In summary, that led us nowhere. But we did get something from him.” He started again. “He said that on getting there and finding William dead, he decided to ransack the whole place. Which explained why the whole place was a mess when he was found”

“During his search, on getting to William’s bedroom, there was a piece of cloth which seemed to have been torn by the handle during an assumed struggle.”

Micheal reached into a little bag which he carried and pulled out a folded evidence bag from it and showed it to both of them.

“This here is a piece of cloth from our killer with his or her blood smeared on it.”