White Rabbit: The Rise (The Kingmaker Saga Book 1) Read online

  She could be whoever she wanted to be when no one knew who she was or the family she belonged to.

  And that was exactly how she wanted it.

  She hadn’t minded moving into her one-bedroom apartment the size of a shoebox. It was hers. And her excitement at being away from home had only doubled once she got a job at the paper.

  But if eleven months as a reporter for The Gazette Post had taught her anything, it was that most days in New York, beyond the glitz and glamor it was known for, were exceptionally boring.

  If she wasn’t sitting alone at her desk, plugging away at articles that needed to be edited and proofread before Jerry did the final inspection, she was at home working on her secret project. But no matter which she was doing, she was usually sitting behind a screen, the blinking cursor always reminding her of a new beginning.

  During her first couple of months at the Post, she had written mostly about socialites on the Upper East Side. Their minor scandals didn’t make first-page news but still deserved a place in the paper.

  She hadn’t minded, though that type of thing held no interest for her. She knew it was because she was new, that everyone had written a story or two they’d found tedious and uninteresting. She had to prove herself—show what she was capable of when given a blank page and a topic of interest.

  Stumbling across a story that actually proven newsworthy had happened accidentally, but she was glad for it all the same.

  Because without that day, she would have still been writing about what rich women liked to eat for dinner rather than something thrilling.

  Except it had been two months since her big break.

  Two months since anything had happened that was worth late hours and sleepless nights.

  Now, she found herself staring at the phone on her desk, willing it to ring, anticipating a tip or a clue or something that would get her out of her chair and actually doing something.

  Swinging around in the black swivel chair that was more comfortable than it first appeared, Karina propped her feet up onto the edge of her desk, briefly glancing over to check the time.

  It was only ten in the morning—though it felt much later than that since she had gotten up at a quarter past five—and she briefly considered calling it a day and working from home. Greasy fast food and her favorite pajamas were calling her name.

  “Ashworth!”

  Karina perked up at the sound of her name.

  Camilla stood in the doorway of her office, wearing her customary red dress that was vibrant against the backdrop of black and white furniture behind her. She gestured with a flick of her fingers for Karina to join her before disappearing to sit behind her desk.

  “Looks like you’re in trouble,” Samantha, her friend and work neighbor, whispered with a nod of her head in Camilla’s direction.

  Between her time working and getting used to living in a new city—very different from the small countryside estate where she had grown up—Karina hadn’t had time to actually go out and experience the city. Having a girl her age working alongside her had proven helpful where that was concerned.

  It had only taken a couple of days and a love of morning coffee before they had their first conversation, and less than a day after that for them to exchange numbers.

  Now, she was arguably the person Karina was closest to in this city, though they rarely spent time together outside of work. Something she really needed to work on.

  The whole reason she had wanted to come here in the first place was because she wanted to step outside of her comfort zone. Experience a life that would otherwise be foreign to her if she gave in to what her mother, Katherine, wanted.

  Expected was the better word.

  “Whatever it is,” Karina muttered as she stood, “I’m blaming it on you.”

  Sticking her pen in the messy bun on top of her head, Karina walked across the office floor, curiosity sending her thoughts scattering as she tried to anticipate what Camilla wanted to discuss with her.

  It had to be about a potential case, if she were to wager a guess.

  Certainly nothing about her or the lies she had told to get this job, even as that fear always lingered in the back of her mind whenever she was called into her editor’s office for a private conversation.

  Camilla was still on the phone when Karina entered the office, nodding along with whatever she was being told as she scribbled on a notepad. She didn’t interrupt in any way, waiting silently until her boss ended the call and hung the phone up.

  When she did finally look up, her expression was a mixture of intrigue and ... something else Karina couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Though Karina had very little experience in the workplace—this was, essentially, her first real job—she couldn’t imagine that Camilla was like any other boss out there.

  Never mind that red was her signature color, and she wore it daily, but it was the way she carried herself. Her shoulders back and head up, her strut always confident and sure. Looking at her, one wouldn’t have thought she was nearing her late fifties, or even that she was the editor in charge of a regional paper.

  She could have been the editor of one of those glossy magazines Karina looked over when she was in the store, or the mother of one of the socialites she wrote about.

  Her mother’s words always whispered in the back of her mind: Dress as if you want to conquer the world.

  Wise words to live by.

  “I have a case for you,” Camilla said, tearing the sheet from the notepad she’d been writing on before sliding it across the desk. “You know where the Paxton Industries building is?”

  “The big ostentatious building near Times Square?” Karina asked, already picturing it in her head. “Yeah, I know it.”

  As well as the CEO it was named after.

  Her morning was looking up.

  “What about it?” she asked next, quickly scanning the note Camilla had passed over. “Wait … someone found a body?”

  “Police arrived fifteen minutes ago, so I need you there now. Get me everything you can.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. And Karina?”

  She had turned her back, all but ready to walk out the door and grab her coat before hailing a cab, but she paused and looked back at Camilla whose gaze was level on hers.

  “I’m trusting you can handle this.”

  That was part of the job.

  And more, this was her chance to prove herself. To show that she could do more and take on the important stories.

  “I won’t let you down.”

  A sea of blue and red lights was all Karina could see as she stepped out of the taxi. Yellow police caution tape stretched from one building to the next, dividing the police presence from the small crowd of pedestrians and reporters observing them with curious eyes as they worked.

  Some actually took pictures, which was alarming in and of itself.

  A police officer stood in front of the tape wearing a blue uniform, his hands clasped in front of him and his expression grim.

  Officer Pinkerton was his name.

  One of the two arresting officers of Rebecca McRalph, a rich girl from the Upper West Side, nearly a month ago. He was a rookie with less than a year on the job when he and his partner at the time had arrested her and booked her for a DUI.

  Rebecca’s father had tried to get the man fired because he’d believed the officer was out of line—though he had never acknowledged the fact that his daughter had, in fact, blown well over the legal limit and was only sixteen—but when Karina’s article on the matter became public and drew a lot of publicity, the father had quietly backed away, and Pinkerton had been able to keep his job.

  Afterward, he’d said he owed her one.

  Keep friends in all places—one of the ten commandments her sister, Isla, lived by.

  Tucking her hands into her bag, she felt the cool metal and leather that made up the camera tucked away inside. She didn’t always bring it along—Camilla didn’t require it sin
ce there was a photographer on the payroll—but she had started bringing it with her wherever she went as of late.

  She wanted to capture her own vision to look over later.

  To see what she might have missed the first time around.

  It took a bit of effort to make her way to the front of the spectators, most graciously moving aside when they saw the name tag hanging around her neck, but unlike some of the other reporters who worked alongside her, she didn’t try to venture beyond the tape to get that exclusive shot that would sell papers and create buzz.

  It only made their jobs guarding the tape harder.

  And she liked to think she erred on the side of caution.

  Played by the rules.

  A reason, she thought, that Pinkerton gave her a slight nod of acknowledgment once he noticed her and covertly took two steps to the left, blocking someone else’s shot while giving her a good view of what was going on behind him.

  At first, all she could see was the sea of red and green, the poppy flowers breathtaking in the bright morning sunlight. They swayed gently with the blowing breeze, beautiful if not impossible.

  Poppies weren’t in season, if she wasn’t mistaken, but somehow, William Paxton managed to have a field of them outside his building. She could only imagine how much it had cost to have them imported and maintained.

  Staring through the lens of her viewfinder, she captured a few images of the detectives talking amongst themselves; a medical examiner making notes on a clipboard off to the side; and the quiet, but intense, conversation between a detective she didn’t recognize and a security guard. Only when she aimed her camera downward did her finger hesitate over the capture button.

  She couldn’t see the body, not when it was draped completely by a white sheet with a black body bag stretched out lengthwise beside it. It didn’t matter that the woman’s identity was virtually hidden beneath it. Or even that Karina had no idea who she was.

  The sight still made the fine hairs along the nape of her neck stand up.

  She swallowed, thinking back to the last time she had seen a dead body.

  Even now, she could almost feel the chill on her face. The pain in her fingertips. How she hadn’t been quite able to catch her breath before she’d taken a step forward into the blanket of snow where a harsh splatter of red clung to the ice …

  Shaking her head to clear the thought away, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand rather than distant memories. As the examiner gave the all clear for them to load the body up, she tucked her camera away.

  Biding her time, she waited until some of the crowd had dissipated before walking over to Pinkerton. After ensuring her phone was clearly visible in her hand, she stood just out of view of the other officers.

  “What can you tell me?”

  Pinkerton was very good at keeping a straight face, and she might have thought he hadn’t heard her if he hadn’t finally whispered, “Not much to know, really. She didn’t have anything on her that would give us an ID. I heard Peterson”—the lone female detective standing among the others— “say the vic was wearing pearl. La pearl?”

  “La Perla,” Karina corrected, thinking of how much the designer cost.

  No ID. Expensive lingerie.

  “Do you remember what she was dressed in?”

  “Black dress. Heels.”

  An escort, maybe?

  “What’s the early report?”

  He cleared his throat, glancing past her a moment. “Strictly off the record?”

  “For you, yes.” Whatever he told her, she would eventually learn anyway.

  “They think she might’ve jumped,” he said, a tinge of pity in his voice. “But she’s got a few bruises, so the examiner is being thorough.”

  “And she jumped from Paxton’s building?” she asked, though more to herself as she craned her neck back to look up toward the top of the building.

  While it wasn’t the tallest building in New York City by any stretch of the imagination, the top of it still seemed pretty far up.

  “Any witnesses?”

  “No one saw her come in, but when Paxton arrived at eight, she was there.”

  That was enough to make her blink twice. “The CEO found her?”

  “Not really sure on the details. It might have been him or one of the security he keeps with him. Either way, he was there.”

  Interesting.

  It wasn’t every day that a billionaire CEO stumbled across a dead body, and while she couldn’t be sure, she was sure she had heard Paxton’s name recently. Though, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember where.

  But she would find out.

  2

  The Fixer

  One week ago …

  The pursuit of power was never an easy road, but it was one Uilleam was determined to follow through with all the same.

  Which was why he was here at Paxton Industries, of all places, at four fifteen in the morning.

  It was too early to be awake and too late to fall asleep, but Uilleam would have much rather been back in his bed rather than entering the chrome and glass building in lower Manhattan.

  Frankly, men like William Paxton weren’t worth much of his time.

  The security desk to the left was vacant, despite the hour, and a glance up at the security cameras in the upper corners of the lobby showed they were all turned in opposite directions away from the front doors.

  As far as anyone would ever know, his being here had never happened.

  One of the many rules he abided by.

  Swiping the plain white security card he’d been sent against the sensor, he stepped through the turnstiles, the mercenary that followed at his heels close behind and walked over to the bank of elevators.

  They waited in silence until the mirrored doors slid open. One press of his finger took them up to the twenty-second floor where his newest client awaited him.

  A client he’d fully intended on ignoring until he had learned of his connection to someone that was worth his time.

  Which was why he had reluctantly agreed to meet on this cool, dark morning, but his mood wasn’t completely grave. There was something about the promise of a new job that sent anticipation rushing through him. Puzzles had always fascinated him since he was a boy—the more complicated, the better.

  He liked to analyze and decipher—taking two things that seemed opposite and bringing them together. And the more skilled he became at them, the better he was able to translate the same process over to people.

  Taking what someone thought they knew and manipulating it into an image that better reflected what he wanted them to see.

  That was what he did.

  Who he was.

  A fixer.

  The fixer, for those of discerning means.

  This was his pride and joy, but lately, he had begun to long for more. He’d reached the precipice and now he was ready to ascend beyond it.

  But there was time for all of that later.

  Right now, he had something else he needed to handle.

  Twelve hours ago, he had received an encrypted email, sent through a number of proxy accounts that would never, if someone chose to track it, trace back to him. It was a summons, of sorts, from a man with far more money than he clearly knew what to do with considering he was requesting Uilleam’s assistance for a potential job.

  He’d hardly started reading over the simple inquiry—one that hadn’t told him the full nature of what the job would entail—before a sizable retainer had come in the midst of it.

  Two hundred thousand dollars, no questions asked.

  Considering he didn’t get out of bed for less than five times that, he’d elected to ignore the email. Except, before he’d had the chance to dismiss the letter entirely, another email had come in on the heels of the first with a single sentence.

  Gaspard Berger suggested your name.

  Now that had been enough to pique his interest, and without another request from the sender, Uilleam had agreed to the meet
ing.

  He wasn’t sure why Gaspard had bothered to drop his name—even how or when the opportunity had presented itself considering Uilleam had been trying to meet with Gaspard for more than seven months now without even a return phone call.

  Had he not been the head of a vast criminal empire in France, Uilleam might have had the man killed for his insolence.

  But there would be plenty of time for that later. He always gave those that opposed him a chance to come to their senses.

  But whatever game the Frenchman was playing, Uilleam was more than ready, and willing, to play it along with him. And if that meant entertaining billionaires with seemingly too much time on their hands, then so be it.

  He’d taken his jet from Wales at the earliest opportunity, using the hours traveling to the States to brush up on his knowledge of the man he’d been coming to meet.

  No better time than the present to determine what sort of arrangement he wanted to make.

  The doors slid open, a mute but pleasant chime signaling the end of their journey. Skorpion—named for the Russian made assault rifle he used to favor—stepped out ahead of him, dark eyes scanning the corridor before he gave the all clear for him to follow.

  Unlike the lobby downstairs, they weren’t alone on this floor.

  William Paxton, the man who’d asked for this meeting, sat behind his desk, visible through the open door of his office, a cigarette pinched between his lips, the fingers of his other hand buried in the slightly graying hair at his temples.

  He didn’t look a day over forty, though he was closing in on his late fifties. With the sort of face that wasn’t quite Hollywood but could still draw in the unsuspecting buyer, he was the optimal choice to be the face of a multi-billion-dollar company, as well as its CEO.

  He was a man in a position of power and prestige, sought after by anyone who was worth knowing in the industry—both legal and otherwise.

  Yet now his eyes were bloodshot and tired, his pallor sallow.

  A haunted man, if Uilleam had ever seen one.