Malachi waited patiently. almost able to see the wheels turning inside Lara’s head as she tried to decide what and how much she should tell him.
Everything, was his answer.
He’d meant it when he said it didn’t matter what the problem was. He intended to help Lara solve it in whatever way it needed solving. She just had to learn to trust him enough to know that as clearly as he did.
Probably telling her you want to be her househusband a short time ago has unnerved her a little, he heard Adam or one of his brothers—any or all of them!—say succinctly inside his head.
Maybe, but he didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding as to what he wanted from Lara. Because he wanted everything. All that she was now and all she would ever be. He wanted to be there at her side through all of it.
He was almost brought to his knees by a vision of Lara, naked, her belly round with his child, suddenly popped up inside his head. “Do you want children?” he blurted.
Her eyes widened until he could clearly see the whole of the white surrounding the blue iris. “I— You— What?” she finally managed to splutter.
“I’d never thought about being a father until today,” he told her honestly. “But now my cock has become hard at the thought of seeing you pregnant with our baby. Too much again?” He winced when Lara’s eyes just seemed to grow wider, and a deep blush appeared in her cheeks.
“Way too much,” she whispered.
“Okay. How did you get that scar over your right eye?”
“How did I…? Malachi, you can’t ask me how I feel about having your babies in one breath and then ask about the scar over my eye the next!”
“I believe I just did, and I don’t think it was as sudden as you’re implying.”
Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him before giving a slow shake of her head. “You sometimes say shocking things on purpose, don’t you? Because you know you can get away with it.”
He grinned appreciatively at her perception. “Sometimes, yeah,” he acknowledged before sobering. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not curious about the scar.”
“I fell off my bike when I was ten.”
He winced. “Ouch.”
She shrugged. “I remember the gravel that had to be cleaned out of the scrapes in my knees more than the cut over my eye.”
“Double ouch.”
She released a deep breath before continuing. “The reason I stole Gerard Taylor’s wallet is because I thought there might be something in there that could be…useful.”
“My compliments on the sudden change of subject.” Malachi gave an acknowledging nod. “And was there?”
Her jaw tightened. “No.”
“What exactly was the something you thought might be in Taylor’s wallet?”
“The code to the safe hidden behind a picture—so cliché!—in his study.”
Malachi was now incredulous rather than surprised. “In my experience, people don’t usually write the combination to their safe down on a piece of paper so they can carry it around with them in their wallet waiting for it to be stolen.”
“Obviously, I know that now,” she sighed. “But I didn’t want to just assume it might be the date of his birthday and then find out it wasn’t.”
“Let me see if I have this straight. You were going to break into Taylor’s house, then open the safe in his study,” he said slowly.
“Yes.”
“How do you know he has a safe in his study?”
She seemed lost for words for a moment before replying impatiently, “I know, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay,” Malachi bit out, disturbed at the thought of Lara, sometime in the past, having been inside Taylor’s house. “What are you hoping to find inside that safe?”
Her gaze no longer met his. “A…friend of mine made the mistake of going out on a date with him several weeks ago, and he…he…”
“A friend?” Malachi demanded in a hard voice.
“Yes.”
Lara’s lashes remained lowered so that he couldn’t see her eyes or read the expression in them. “And what happened when this friend went on a date with him?”
“He drugged them, and then undressed them and used his phone to film them naked on his bed posed in increasingly compromising positions!”
“What the hell…!” Malachi’s hands had clenched into fists.
Lara’s eyes were awash with unshed tears when she looked up, her face deathly pale. “The two of them went out to dinner, and sometime during the meal, the bastard must have put a roofie in the wine because the rest of the evening is a blank for them.” Her expression had become bleak. “At least, it was, until they received an invitation to Taylor’s house so that he could give them a personal viewing of the recording he’d made and stored onto a memory stick.”
“Which he removed from inside his safe,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
Malachi didn’t doubt for a single second that Lara was telling him the truth.
Just as he’d been telling the truth when he’d said he was usually slow to anger. But the thought of Taylor drugging someone and then taking advantage of the fact they were in no condition to say no when he undressed and posed their bodies how he wanted was enough to fire a blaze of fury deep inside him.
Malachi utterly despised anyone who used any form of sexual coercion. Filming someone when they were drugged and incapable of defending themselves was just another form of rape as far as he was concerned.
His nostrils flared. “Did he physically rape her too?”
“A rape kit says he didn’t. But that doesn’t make the violation any less real.”
There was something about Gerard Taylor that Malachi had instinctively disliked from the beginning of this assignment. An arrogance and confidence to the other man that indicated he didn’t expect anyone to ever say no to him.
Especially women, it seemed.
“Was it you?” he barked, knowing that if the other man had done those things to Lara, that there was no “friend,” only her, then Taylor was a dead man.
Malachi would still be outraged if it was another woman Taylor had violated, but he might allow Taylor to live and face charges and go to prison if that was the case. Maybe.
Although the fact Taylor hadn’t recognized Lara at the theater two nights ago implied she hadn’t been talking about herself.
Unless Taylor was so much of a monster, he couldn’t remember the face of the woman—women?—he’d drugged and abused? Malachi had a feeling it was in the plural rather than singular. The whole evening sounded too slick, too practised, for this to have been the first time Taylor had done something like this. Besides, he had to have hired Kingston Security to protect him from someone, and Lara had assured him it wasn’t her.
Whatever the answer was, as far as Malachi was concerned, and he knew his brothers and cousin would feel the same way, the other man was finished no matter how many victims there had been. Financially, socially, in every way that mattered to him, Taylor’s life as he knew it was over. Because Malachi had no doubt that once they knew the truth, every member of the Kingston family would do everything they could to ensure that Taylor was ruined before he was arrested and sent to prison.
He reached out to take Lara’s hands in his. “Please tell me it wasn’t you,” he pleaded when she didn’t answer him the first time.
Her expression softened. “I love that you care so much.”
“Then answer me.”
“It wasn’t me.”
He studied her searchingly. “But it is someone you care about?”
A nerve pulsed in her tensed jaw. “Yes.”
Malachi could only think that it must be a member of Lara’s family for her to risk being caught stealing Taylor’s wallet. “Your sister?”
Lara’s wasn’t sure how much she should tell Malachi, felt that perhaps she had already said too much.
She had been devastated when she initially learned what had happened, then infuriated when she learned of the repercussions from it. The violation was bad enough without the things Taylor was now demanding for his silence and discretion. Because, as it turned out, the bastard was a blackmailer as well as an abuser.
But no matter how outrageous—and emotionally and physically disturbing—Malachi’s bluntness of speech could be, Lara still didn’t really know him. She had no doubt she could trust him, but this wasn’t only her secret to tell.
“You think the recording is still in the safe?”
Lara’s breath caught in her throat as Malachi’s sudden change of tactic once again wrong-footed her. “I’m sure it is, yes.” She swallowed down the bile that had risen into her throat. “He didn’t just pose, he touched too, but it’s apparently been filmed in such a way that Taylor’s face is never seen. The same can’t be said for his victim, and he—he makes sure nothing is left to the imagination.”
“And he showed your sister a copy of this recording because…?”
“He’s threatening to release it onto the internet if…certain conditions aren’t met.” She shuddered. “We all know what it will mean if that happens.”
Her mouth twisted with disgust for the way in which some events that were posted on the internet invariably ruined lives, whether victim or perpetrator. And Taylor had made damned sure nothing on the recording he might release revealed him as being the latter.
Lara had seen the sudden flare of anger in Malachi’s eyes earlier, but now his gaze had turned icily cold, nostrils flared, lips thinned, his jaw tightly clenched.
“What conditions?” he bit out from between gritted teeth.
“Your client is seriously into drugs. And I’m not referring to the roofies he gives his victims. He also doesn’t like to pay for them if he can get them some other way,” she added with disgust before frowning. “The amount he’s asking for, I think he might also sell some of them. To his friends. Maybe other people.”
Malachi’s eyes narrowed to icy slits. “He deliberately targeted your sister, is blackmailing her into asking you to steal drugs for him from the hospital, with the promise he won’t release the recording of her online if you comply?”
Lara could see how he might have reached that conclusion. It was the logical assumption to have made. It was also inaccurate.
She looked at Malachi searchingly, seeing only that blunt honesty in his eyes and expression. Which was reassuring, but still not enough that Lara felt she could tell him the whole story. It really wasn’t her secret to tell.
Her top lip curled back. “Taylor has very generously allowed until the end of the month for his demand to be met. If, at the end of that time the drugs aren’t forthcoming, he’s going to release the recording online.”
“He’s a fucking predator who needs to be taught a lesson before the evil bastard gets thrown in jail and the key is thrown away,” Malachi grated.
Lara’s grimace lacked all humor. “I know that, and now so do you, but it doesn’t change the fact he has that recording.”
“Not for long,” Malachi assured grimly.
Lara eyed him sharply. “Pardon?”
“I’ve been protecting him for the past two weeks. In that time, I’ve learned he’s the sort of privileged bastard who completely ignores the people who work for him—his cook, the cleaning lady, me—because he considered them as being less than. His inferior. What the hell your sister saw in him, I have no idea.” He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “Anyway, as far as he’s concerned, I and the other guys from Kingston Security, are all just pieces of furniture. Which means, during the times I’ve spent guarding him, I’ve been able to observe him opening and relocking his safe several times.”
Lara’s throat moved as she swallowed. She was almost afraid to hope. “Does that mean… Is it possible… Do you…”
“Know the combination to his safe?” Malachi finished evenly. “Yes, that’s exactly what it means.”
“You can…retrieve the recording?”
“Not only can I, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”