Dangerous Surrender

The Serafina: Sin City Series

Katie Reus

Dangerous Surrender

Copyright © 2014 by Katie Reus

ISBN: 9780996087483

Cover art and design by Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs

Copyediting by JRT Editing

Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.

* * *

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book. This purchase allows you one legal copy for your own personal reading enjoyment on your personal computer or device. You do not have the right to resell, distribute, print or transfer this book, in whole or in part, to anyone, in any format, via methods either currently known or yet to be invented, or upload this book to a file sharing program. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

Dedication

For Kari Walker. Thank you, again, for always being in my corner.

Chapter 1

Taylor Arenas smoothed a hand down her light-gray, pencil skirt as she exited the main elevator onto her boss’s floor. Normally she just wore jeans and a casual top to work, but today she’d pulled out all the stops and actually gone for the business-professional look.

She resisted the urge to wipe her damp palm on her skirt as her heels clicked against the tiled entryway on the tenth floor. The ten-story building in Oceanside, California was non-descript on the outside so that most people didn’t know what went on here.

Today she wondered if she even knew what Powers Group did. Or whether it was all one big lie.

The glass and metal desk the executive assistant sat behind wasn’t occupied. No surprise since it was only six in the morning. Taylor was early for a reason. She needed to talk to Hugh Powers and couldn’t wait a second longer. Since he was often in by five-thirty, she had no doubt he’d be here.

And with her all-access card to the building she was one of the few people who could get to this floor without bothering with security. Even if she didn’t have the access card she could have just hacked her way in. Which was one of the reasons Hugh had hired her five years ago, fresh out of college. There were only three offices on this floor; two for the owners and one belonged to the head of security, Benjamin Escobar.

With her slim briefcase in one hand, she bypassed the first two and went straight to the last one at the end. This morning the glass walls of Hugh’s office weren’t frosted over and his door was propped open. But she easily saw he wasn’t inside before she’d even neared the door.

As she stepped inside, the door to his private bathroom opened. Since it didn’t have a regular door, it was as if the wall opened up. When it was closed it was difficult to see the seam.

His dark eyebrows rose as he looked at her attire. In his early fifties, he was a handsome, fit man graying at the temples with a sprinkling just starting to show throughout the rest of his hair. Even when he was dressed in board shorts ready to surf—and that was as often as he could—he had a regal air about him. “Is there a meeting I forgot about?”

She shook her head.

“Good because I don’t think those zombie shoes would cut it.” His lips twitched at the corners.

Okay, maybe her heeled pumps weren’t business-professional, not with the green and pink zombie teeth design covering the front and the skulls dotting the sides. But they made her feel better, more normal. She swallowed hard. “We need to talk.” She hated that her voice came out shaky.

His dark blue eyes filled with concern, which made her angrier. If he was the liar he appeared to be, she didn’t want his fake-caring. He pointed at one of the seats in front of his beat up desk. “Sit,” he said quietly. The man could afford anything he wanted but he still had the piece of crap desk he’d gotten from a big, box store decades ago before he’d made his millions. She’d always thought that said so much about the type of man he was. He’d never forgotten how far he’d come.

She prayed she wasn’t wrong about him. If he was ripping off his own company…it would break her heart.

Swallowing hard, she didn’t bother taking off her coat as she sat ramrod straight and met his gaze. “For the last week I’ve been working on investigating those six companies you wanted me to.” She had a tendency to ramble when she was nervous so she cut right to the point. “Long explanation short, in the process of my investigation I ran across some files regarding Chemagan.” She paused, waiting for a reaction, but Hugh just nodded, listening intently as he always did when she outlined something for him. He didn’t seem disturbed at all by the mention of the company. “I visited the Chemagan building yesterday.” A new company Powers Group had been funneling money into the past six months. A company that didn’t actually exist.

He frowned. “You did?” He seemed genuinely confused.

For the first time in a week Taylor allowed a sliver of relief to slide through her veins. He didn’t seem defensive or worried. She nodded and set her briefcase on the desk. She’d taken pictures of the decrepit building yesterday with her phone but had them blown up to 8x10s and printed. She pulled out a stack and slid them across the desk to him.

He looked down, scanned them, then looked back at her in confusion. “What is this?”

“Chemagan. A company you’ve been putting a lot of research and development funds into the past six months.” Or someone was. She pulled out two pages of financials, a condensed version of the trail of money she’d discovered.

“What the hell?” he muttered, scanning the readout.

She could have emailed it to him, but she’d wanted to see him in person, to confront him and to see if he was a crook and a liar. Taylor didn’t trust many people but Hugh had given her a job when she was twenty-two and in the last five years he’d become the only father figure she’d ever had. This kind of fraud could bring down his company, everything he’d worked for. And in her experience people weren’t just a little dirty. That type of dirty business outlook expanded to all aspects of their lives, like a cancer. She just couldn’t believe that he’d been hiding what type of man he was, that he’d somehow fooled everyone, including her.

“This is way too much R&D…” Trailing off, he glanced at the pictures again. He picked up one, his jaw clenching tight. “You’re sure this is Chemagan?”

“You’ve never been there?”

He shook his head. “No, this is one of…Neal’s projects.”

Neal Lynch was Hugh’s partner and a man Taylor tolerated because she had to. Ten years younger than Hugh, the two had partnered up over a decade ago, before Taylor had even known who Hugh Powers was.

To her surprise Hugh let out a savage curse. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”