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

  After boarding schools, etiquette classes, and learning from her mother, she hadn’t had time to discover what else she might have liked outside of those things. The life Samantha was talking about, where she went out for drinks, to clubs, or parties in general, seemed like an entirely different world.

  “Sometimes, Karina, it feels like you’re twenty-one going on fifty. You have to get out more.”

  She thought of laughing the remark off or making up an excuse for why she couldn’t—her mother would have expected her to since her attention and focus should have been on one thing only—but when she opened her mouth, ready to do just that, the opposite came out.

  “All right, fine. Where do you want to go?”

  Samantha prattled on about a club’s grand opening that was coming up, one that would give Karina plenty of time to make sure she was able to attend without backing out, but while they were discussing what time they’d meet and where, the elevator chimed its arrival. When the doors slid open, four men in impeccable suits walked out, heading straight for Camilla’s office.

  She wished she could pretend she didn’t notice, but from the second they arrived, barely passing the lot of them a glance, they were the only thing she could focus on.

  “It’ll be great,” Samantha went on, oblivious to Karina’s lack of focus.

  “Yeah, I think—”

  “Karina!”

  They both turned at the sound of Camilla’s voice, but unlike the last time, there was no question that Camilla wasn’t pleased with her. And considering the men waiting in her office, it was worse than she was thought.

  Even as she tried to trace back something she might have done—because they couldn’t have possibly found a connection between her and her family—Karina walked over, trying not to show the nerves she felt.

  Being anxious wouldn’t help her.

  She needed to keep a level head.

  The door to Camilla’s office had barely closed behind them before she was speaking.

  “Karina, these gentlemen are—”

  “Lester Holt and Arnold Torrence from Holt, Gomer, and Torrence.”

  “The law firm?” she asked, keeping her expression neutral though she found it amusing that the men looked surprised she would know who they were.

  While she didn’t make it a point to know all the defense attorneys in the city, there was a file on this particular firm back at Ashworth Hall that she’d perused once or twice. She didn’t know what their angle was, exactly, or why Katherine had kept a file on them, but it came in handy now.

  Holt spoke again. “We represent William Paxton.”

  She knew what they were about to say before the words even left their mouth.

  And as they spoke, she hardly heard a word they said, even as she watched their lips move. Pressing her thumbnail into the palm of her hand, it was all she could do not to react to the condescending tones and patronizing stares.

  Oh, how badly she wanted to tell them all that she could ruin them, and maybe in the future she would. She wanted to be there the day those smirks were wiped off their faces. When everything they held near and dear was taken away without care or remorse.

  She wouldn’t forget.

  Not ever.

  “Should any other slanderous article bearing our client’s name be published, we will sue for defamation and damages. Is that understood?”

  The room finally fell silent as all eyes turned to Karina.

  It took every last bit of her to nod even once.

  Satisfied with her compliance, the men turned and left just as quickly as they had come in, though not a single one offered a farewell.

  It was only once she saw them board the elevator that she spoke. “They don’t—”

  “Karina.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me,” Camilla said in a tone that brokered no further argument. “Leave it alone. If you continue to pursue this, they will ruin you. I’ve seen others lose their livelihoods for less. Do yourself a favor, okay? Let this one go.”

  If this were anything else, she might have been able to walk away and leave it as it were. If she had never known about the woman or done any research into Paxton himself, she might have been able to cast it from her mind entirely.

  But as she stood there, even nodding her assent, Karina wasn’t done.

  Not by a long shot.

  Walk away.

  The words resonated in her head even after Karina arrived home. They echoed in the chambers of her mind until they looped.

  It wasn’t until she walked out of her office building entirely that she remembered she shouldn’t be upset about what had happened at all.

  Because William Paxton had shown his hand.

  To anyone else, her articles might have just been something to gloss over before moving on to something more interesting—especially since more than a week had passed—yet he had sent his lawyers all the same.

  Guilty men couldn’t ignore even an implication.

  She had known the risks when she wrote the article, but she also knew the rewards.

  The rage she had felt at the way the lawyers had spoken to her churned back to life as she entered her apartment and slammed the door. She barely glanced at where she tossed her purse before heading into the kitchen for one of her favorite long-stemmed wine glasses and the special bottle of rosé she kept in the refrigerator.

  For now, this anger was her friend.

  It was the only emotion she allowed herself to feel as she grabbed her laptop to start working again.

  Somewhere, among the many threads of Miranda’s death and Paxton’s life, she would find the knot that tied them together.

  Before the early morning rays streaked across the bright blue sky, Karina was already up and showered, padding through her apartment in a towel with her wet hair tied up out of her face.

  Thankfully, she had gotten too lost in the work she was doing last night to drink more than one glass of wine, which meant she hadn’t woken up with a headache.

  It also meant that the breakfast meeting she had set up in the wee hours of the morning didn’t seem quite so awful.

  Besides, the quiet of the early hours was helping her think.

  Yesterday, she had been too surprised by the sight of the attorneys to speak properly. If she had, she would have asked them why they were there, considering she hadn’t written on their client in days.

  She would have also asked why they didn’t actually represent the Paxton company as a whole, rather just the man himself. And curiously enough, his head of security. The firm had only just been hired within twenty-four hours of her meeting them.

  That tidbit of information had come as another result from her late-night phone call to a man she had promised to only call for emergencies. It wasn’t safe, she imagined, to willingly give information about the people he worked with to journalists, but as long as she was careful about what she did with what he told her, he didn’t mind divulging.

  And last night when she had called, he had promised to tell her everything she wanted to know over breakfast.

  The diner where she arrived at as the clock struck nine was small, located in the heart of Brooklyn between a dry cleaners and a check cashing place. It had that old-school appeal despite its surroundings—chrome detailing, neon lights that came to life at night, and the aroma of pancakes wafting out every time the front door opened and shut.

  Karina slid the light scarf from around her neck as she stepped inside. The tiny bell above the door jingled softly, as the woman behind the counter greeted her warmly.

  The scent of breakfast made her mouth water, but even as she thought about what she intended to order—deciding to forget all about the diet she hadn’t been sticking to anyway—her gaze traveled over the warmly lit interior of the diner and found the man she was looking for.

  He was hard to miss with all that dark hair and the deep auburn of his beard.

  He was known by many different aliases, most of which she st
ill wasn’t sure of. But from the very beginning, she had only ever known him by one name.

  Orion.

  With a lean build and standing an entire foot taller than her, he was unmistakable even seated, but he also had the sort of pleasant symmetrical features that made it surprisingly easy to blend into crowds when he didn’t want to be seen.

  Before she’d entered, Karina had thought he was the one she saw stretched out across one of the benches that lined the front of the diner, but the steam billowing up from the sewer drain outside had prevented her from seeing him clearly.

  A smile curled the edges of his mouth as she walked over and joined him, his gray eyes flickering down the length of her body as she sat.

  “Been a while since you had to call on me, hasn’t it?” he asked in that lazy way of his, his tone mild but curious. “I was starting to think you didn’t care about me.”

  One other thing about Orion—something most people would learn within minutes of meeting him—he was a notorious flirt and didn’t care very much who he offered his affections to. It was just the way he was.

  She didn’t mind it so much, though she had never taken him up on the offer that had never been explicitly spoken. “Work’s kept me busy,” she said, resting her hands on the laminate-topped table between them. “You know how that goes.”

  “No sleep for you ever, is there?”

  A question he had been asking since the day they met behind a bowling alley in Hell’s Kitchen. She’d been in the middle of researching a case, and he’d been taking bets for a man whose name she still didn’t know. The meeting happened completely by chance, but the ones that followed weren’t coincidental by any means.

  “Not when there are bad people out there.”

  “Fair enough. I took the liberty of ordering for you,” he said as a waitress walked over with four steaming plates.

  One, in particular, was stacked high with pancakes, a pat of butter melting down the sides.

  Orion knew her well.

  “Enjoy,” the woman called over her shoulder before leaving them alone again.

  “So who’s the unlucky bastard that wound up on the wrong end of your pen?”

  “You’ve heard about the woman who was found outside William Paxton’s office building, right?”

  “Of course,” he said cutting into a sausage link. “Who hasn’t?”

  “That’s what I’ve been looking into.”

  She shared her suspicions about Paxton possibly being involved in Miranda’s death as well as the visit from the lawyers. When she got to them, he paused in his chewing, his expression growing terribly serious before smoothing away once she told him they had left right after.

  “Sounds like he’s worth looking into at the least,” Orion said with a shrug. “What do you need me for?”

  “I had a thought, and I know it’s going to sound crazy but hear me out.”

  “Hit me.”

  “Have you ever heard of someone who … fixes a situation. Like they make one thing look like something else.”

  Orion froze for about a millisecond before he resumed eating as if she hadn’t noticed him hesitate.

  But when she did, she leaned in closer to him. “Probably charges a lot of money if I’m right about what they do. Discreet, I would think.” Considering the length of time that had passed between the first story she had she stumbled on and this one.

  But perhaps these were the only two where she had actually noticed something. There could be more. Many more.

  Orion made a low sound in the back of his throat, though he had yet to speak a word.

  He didn’t seem to realize that was as telling as an actual answer. “Maybe you’ve heard of him? Her?”

  “Why’re you asking about him?”

  So it was a him. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Negative. Answer my question first.”

  “I think, whoever he is, might be involved in this.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  If she had an answer to that question, she wouldn’t have felt the need to sit in front of him now. She didn’t know why she thought it. It wasn’t nearly as simple as it she made it sound, but she just did.

  “It’s hard to explain,” she settled on saying, knowing that answer wouldn’t be good enough, but before he could say as much, she continued. “But I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t think it was important, I promise.”

  He scoffed, calling her bluff. “You’d ask just for your own curiosity, and we both know that.”

  Yes, they certainly did. “Spill.”

  Orion might have lived his life as an outlaw and had a number of questionable traits, but he also had a tendency to treat her with kid gloves. He called it looking out for her best interests even when she wasn’t, but she called it a bit overprotective, considering what they both did for a living.

  “Is there a reason you don’t want to talk about him?”

  “Because you need to stay the fuck away from that one.”

  “Because he’s a killer?” she asked, remembering the last time she had come to him for a similar reason, and that had been his answer.

  “Killers are a dime a dozen,” he said with an absent wave of his hand—a gesture that made sense, considering he was one too, though he had never admitted as much to her. “He’s something … else.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Death is quick. Finite. There’s only momentary glory when you take the life of a man who’s crossed you. Uilleam … he doesn’t kill, he ruins. He’ll take everything you hold close and turn it to ash. He’ll make you wish you had never uttered his name.”

  Despite herself, Karina felt a chill slide down her spine.

  Seeing Orion’s reaction and how uncomfortable he seemed even mentioning this Uilleam gave her pause. There was a new set of nerves springing to life, but she wouldn’t say she was nervous.

  Cautious, more like.

  “Then it’s true?” she asked, her voice softer now. “He can make problems disappear.”

  “Listen, babe,” he said, placing his knife and fork on his nearly finished plate. “If you’ve got a situation, let me take care of that. Stay away from him.”

  “It’s not for me.” None of this was about her.

  He looked resigned. “You really think the two are involved?”

  “It’s certainly possible.”

  “Jesus, you’re turning into a pain in my ass.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’m not after Uilleam—is that what you said his name was.” Yet. “I’m merely trying to figure out how deep this goes.”

  “Why do you think there’s a connection anyway? I thought the girl jumped.”

  She told him about her meeting with the medical examiner and how fidgety the man was acting, then she finished with the meeting with the attorneys and how she had practically been banned from ever mentioning the Paxton name.

  Orion still didn’t look convinced, but he nodded all the same. “I’ll see what I can find, but you’ve gotta do something for me.”

  “Name it.”

  “Stay away from Uilleam, yeah? I don’t want you to have that sort of problem.”

  She smiled. “You won’t have to worry about that.”

  Not because she didn’t intend to continue forward to get close to him.

  She just had no intentions of lying about it.

  7

  The Stupidity of Man

  Uilleam tried to remind himself that not all men were as inherently idiotic as Paxton was proving to be. Because the fact he had made it to the top position of CEO at all was a hard concept to believe considering what he had done.

  “Let me see if I understand,” Uilleam said, rubbing at the migraine starting to throb behind his eyes, already thinking of how best he could spin this if there was a need. And if the woman who had managed to rattle the man was anything like he thought, she wouldn’t be particularly quiet about this. “Your reason for sending lawyers to that paper was
…?”

  The worst part about it all was the look of smug defiance on the man’s face. As if he saw no flaw in his logic, and while it might have infuriated Uilleam a few years ago—when he’d been more prone to losing his temper—now he just wondered how it was possible to be that incredibly dense.

  “You apparently won’t take my suggestion to just get rid of her,” Paxton stated as if all the blame should be on him, “so I made sure she can’t print anything else about me.”

  “And what—” Uilleam caught himself before that flare of anger could turn into something else—like his burning this building to the ground and not giving a fuck who it harmed in the process. “And what, exactly, was wrong with what was written? She made no accusations.”

  “Then apparently we weren’t reading the same articles because she all but accused me of murder.”

  “All but,” Uilleam said with a glare at the man.

  Maybe it was Uilleam’s tone of his voice—he couldn’t keep all the ire out despite how much he tried—but Paxton finally caught on that they weren’t on the same side on this. That Uilleam hadn’t come to congratulate him on anything.

  “What?”

  “You said she ‘all but’ accused you of murder. That’s an important distinction. If someone were to call me a murderer,” Uilleam said slowly, even as the man’s face turned an interesting shade of crimson, “though factual, they would have no evidence to support the claim. So why would I care? That journalist dangled a bit of bait, and like a guilty man, you took it without considering the consequences of your actions.”

  “And what consequences would those be?” Paxton asked, sounding nearly as irate as Uilleam felt. “I was within my rights.”

  “If she didn’t think you were guilty before, she definitely does now.”

  There was no doubt in his mind that the journalist was already working on something else—something he wouldn’t be able to refute as quickly.

  Yet the thought wasn’t necessarily an unwelcome one.