BILLIONAIRE HERO
Billionaire Bikers MC, 3
Sam Crescent
Copyright © 2017
Chapter One
Lewis Cox looked out at the city from his penthouse apartment. Night had already fallen, and he held a glass of whiskey in his hand. He was tired. No, he was exhausted. The town looked beautiful with the glow from the street lights. Winter was nearly upon them. In a couple of weeks, it would be Halloween, then on to Thanksgiving, to end the year with Christmas.
He took a sip of his drink, and saw past the glitz and glamor of the city. At the heart of it, there was a cancer. The city held a multitude of sins no matter where anyone went. People wanting stuff they really shouldn’t have.
Just three nights ago, he and the men in the MC club he was part of, the Billionaire Bikers MC, had done another interception of stolen girls.
That was what the club did. They stopped the trafficking of women. At least, they tried to stop it. It had been during a rescue that Russ, one of the men who’d helped him form the club, found his woman, Anna.
The more women they failed to rescue, the more information he discovered, he realized there was no way to stop women from being taken.
Men wanted them.
People wanted to exploit them.
In the back of his mind he still saw Mandy, ten years old, screaming his name as she was dragged into the back of a waiting car.
Sweet, trusting Mandy.
She’d been his best friend’s sister, his neighbor, and he’d been asked to keep an eye on her.
It was his biggest failure.
Downing his whiskey, he held the empty glass and glared out across the city.
No one had been able to find her. The men who took her had kept her hidden, and then of course, time passed.
People moved on.
She was probably dead.
It was usual to keep on hoping for a sign that wouldn’t turn up.
Lewis hadn’t stopped hoping.
He didn’t give up.
He kept on fighting.
No one else had any hope, but he did.
There was no way he was going to give up hope without a dead body to prove to him that he had to stop.
So he went to college.
Every second of every single day, he’d worked his ass off to be the best that he could be. Before Mandy had been taken, he’d been a jock who partied and didn’t give a shit about his grades. Within weeks of her leaving, that all changed.
He was an intelligent guy.
School hadn’t interested him, but playing around and football had.
With Mandy being gone, he had a mission.
After a year of her being gone, he’d realized that no one else gave a shit. The case had turned cold, and unless there was a call in or something, no one was going to keep spending time or the taxpayers’ money to go looking for a missing kid.
It had been a wake-up call.
After that, he realized the only way he was going to find Mandy was to do it himself. His family had been … well off. Not rich. His dad had been and still was a lawyer.
He’d not seen them in over ten years.
Not since his parents told him he needed to let it go.
That he should focus on his own needs.
If he’d accept that Mandy was dead, he could finally live his own life.
When they’d tried to have him medically examined, that was the last straw. He never went back.
He’d built his empire, Cox Industries, from the ground up. From that point, he found Russell Wyatt, a man who had no family, and along with him and eight other men, he’d founded the Billionaire Bikers MC.
To some they were a joke, something to be laughed at and mocked.
Not to Lewis.
It had been his base to do what he wanted to do all along.
To find Mandy.
No one else was willing to spend money on the case. So he got rich and gave himself the money to use to find her himself.
The idea had been crazy, until he’d earned his first million. That one million became ten within a year. From ten, fifty, and it just kept going up and up, until he was finally wealthy enough to do whatever the hell he wanted.
The thing about traffickers was they lived on the wrong side of the law, but several of them had contacts in law enforcement. They paid men to look the other way.
So Lewis started to throw more money than they did.
His whiskey glass was empty. He turned around to fill it up, and froze.
There was Mandy, the woman that had started it all.
She was dressed in a pair of cute peach-colored pajamas. Her now-black hair stood out against her pale skin.
“How long have you been standing there?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
The men who had taken Mandy had beaten her to a bloody pulp because they discovered she’d anonymously been helping the Billionaire Bikers MC to rescue the women the trafficking ring wanted to sell. Mandy had been with them for years, had learned their tricks, and then turned it against them.
Lewis wasn’t an idiot.
He knew the darkness within her eyes was because for a little while she’d helped them find the girls. Mandy over the years had lost hope, so she’d made sure her kidnappers, the monsters who held her, trusted her.
She became part of what he despised, and then purely because she’d seen a picture, it had all turned around. Mandy had turned that knowledge against her captors. She knew the best locations to keep girls, where they’d try to find women that didn’t get noticed, how to go under the radar, even warning them about some of the cops that could afford to look the other way while men smuggled shipments out. When her memory finally returned, her knowledge had helped them to save so many women.
Lewis didn’t doubt for a second that she was a valuable asset, and it had taken the club a lot of money to try to keep her identity a secret. He didn’t want anyone to find out who she was. As far as the men who’d taken her were concerned, Mandy had died after they’d beaten her to a bloody pulp. He intended to keep it that way.
The mess they’d left her in had required a small amount of plastic surgery, so it was easier to hide her identity.
“I’m just having a drink, and staring over at our glorious city. The many secrets it hides.”
“My parents called again today,” Mandy said, turning toward the phone, which beeped with one message.
Since she’d come back, Mandy had declined to see her parents. At first it was because her memory was completely gone. She didn’t want to remember anything.
Of course, as the doctor predicted, it came back, and with it the memories of who she once was. She still didn’t want to see her parents even now, two years after her rescue.
He put the glass down by the whiskey bottle and went over to the machine, clicking the button to listen.
“Lewis, are you there? Mandy, honey, we just want to see you. To know that you’re all right. Lewis, this has gone far enough, and if you don’t allow us to see your daughter soon, I’m going to be seeing what I can do. I’ll talk to your father.”
The call came to an end, and he sighed.
“I don’t want to see them, but I think I want to tell them that to their face if you’d come with me.”
Lewis looked at her. “You want to do that?”
“They gave up, Lewis.” Her hands were clasped together and he took hold of them, pressing kisses to their knuckles.
“I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want.”
“They had another daughter,” she said, tears shining in her eyes. “They replaced me.”
“They kept looking for you.”
“No, they didn’t. You kept looking. They didn’t even hire a private investigator. They didn’t care.”
Lewis frowned, reaching out to wipe the tears away. “They cared.”
“After a year of being taken, I really thought I was going to be rescued. I caused a lot of trouble. Nearly died from the beatings I got. I didn’t want that life. I wanted to skip and dance, and go to high school. I wanted to fall in love. There was so much pain there and death. One of the men came back, and he had footage and information. The cops had stopped looking. My parents had moved on. Over the years he’d come back with new footage. Show them laughing in a park or something.” She stepped out of his hold. “You know, looking back, they never showed me anything to do with you.”
“I never stopped. When I realized that unless there was some sighting they weren’t going to waste time looking for you, I built this.” He pointed at his penthouse. “To find you, I needed money. The only way to get money was to earn it. That’s what I did. While earning money, I kept spending it to find you. It took a long time.”
She shrugged. “You found me, and I found you. Seeing that picture, your name, it was like I stopped being the machine they’d created. I came back to myself. The Mandy I am, she had to disappear. To survive, I had to become someone else.” The tears fell down her cheeks. “I had to save them.”
He pulled her into his arms and held her close.
“How can you not hate me when I helped them?” she asked.
They had gone through this a couple of times now.
Kissing the top of her head, Lewis felt sick to his stomach. Not at her.
“I’ve seen the scars on your body, Mandy. I know they didn’t come at your own hand but because you fought. You didn’t find these women and lure them into that life willingly. They beat you to make you submit to them. They made your life hell. There’s no way in hell I’d ever hate you.” He kissed the top of her head. “You survived. That’s all that matters.”
****
Mandy smiled at the man who’d rescued her. Lewis was just an older version of the guy she once knew. The guy she’d had a crush on.
They were so different now.
At ten years old, she’d have blushed bright red at his kiss or his attention.
So much had happened. Their lives had changed completely. They’d once been two ordinary people, their families living next door to each other. Lewis no longer had a family, and hers was desperate to see her.
Tucking her hair behind her ear, she licked her parched lips. “I’m going to make myself some tea.”
Pulling out of his arms, she made her way toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to leave the safety she found in his embrace, but she needed to learn to stand on her two feet.
Since recovering from the final beating they’d given her, Mandy had slowly gotten every single memory back. Of course, she pushed them out of her mind. She didn’t need the tools that they’d taught her to get by in life.
She took her cup from off the top shelf as the kettle began to boil.
Lewis took a seat at the counter. “How are your studies coming along?”
Mandy paused. “Do you want a coffee?” He only bought the tea because she liked it. He was a coffee drinker.
“Yes.”
“They’re going well. They seem a bit trivial at times. Some stuff I really don’t need to learn,” she said, smiling. Even though she went to the local college, she wasn’t at college level. One of the professors there helped with adults who’d had their education cut short for whatever reason. She didn’t attend any real classes there, but stayed within an office where she tried to catch up on everything. Lewis hadn’t wanted her to go back to a formal school setting, and she didn’t want to either, considering she didn’t have any education past the age of ten. Learning wasn’t high on traffickers’ priority.
“Like what?”
“History. It seems kind of pointless.”
“I think it’s good to understand where we come from, and to help us avoid the mistakes of the past.”
“It’s still boring. I do like English, though. I think anything to do with reading is always fun.” She finished making them their drinks, and placed one in front of him while she took a seat at the counter. “You didn’t tell me how your last rescue mission went.”
Lewis had told her everything about the club and how it worked. They were heroes. She really hoped each man knew that.
“It went well. We found ten girls, and they’re being placed back with their families. We got to them before they were hurt too bad.”
“Only ten?”
“Before we could get to them, the men were shooting them in the head.”
Mandy took a deep breath as pain shot through her.
“They’re not alive anymore, Mandy.”
“I figured. You wouldn’t let something like that happen on your watch.”
Lewis sighed and rubbed his eyes.
Jamie Breeland, one of the other club men, had told her that Lewis was working himself into the ground. The club was worried that with Lewis working as hard as he was, he’d make a mistake. That mistake could cost him his life. The thought of Lewis being hurt or worse, dying because he’d overworked himself, and then put his life in danger, scared her.
He was the only person in this world that she had.
“You need to learn to relax a little,” she said.
Taking a sip of her tea, she looked up at him over the edge of her cup.
“The guys been talking to you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Just Jamie. He thinks you’re working too hard.”
He sighed. “It’s none of their business.”
“You’re the one who helps to find out all this information. You set up an MC to help you do it. They’re worried about you, and they have a right to be. You put their lives in danger, and if you’re not there to have their backs, it puts them in danger.”
She reached out, taking Lewis’s hand. He was the only person she’d willingly touched since her freedom. He was the only person who’d ever given her hope throughout all the darkness.
“I would never hurt them,” he said.
“I know you wouldn’t do it intentionally. I’m not trying to say you would.” She cupped his wrist, feeling his pulse beat. For some strange reason, this soothed her in ways nothing else ever had. “But one mistake could get you killed in this world. Believe me, I know.” She recalled that final beating she’d gotten.
Hope had consumed her to the point she’d let her guard down, and in doing so, her enemies had come for her.
The punishment had been severe. Worse than anything she’d ever suffered, and she’d been through a great deal.
Pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind, she focused on Lewis. This wasn’t about her, not anymore.
“You don’t have to keep proving yourself,” she said.
“I’ll always have to prove myself. It’s just the way I am. I want to help those women. It doesn’t matter how many we save, more get taken, and as more get taken, more are sold.”
“It’s a never-ending market, Lewis.” She leaned over the counter and cupped his cheek. “It’s not your fault.”
“I have to save them.”
Her heart was breaking for him. One thing she learned about being part of it, there were a lot of men, women, and children you couldn’t save.
“You can’t, Lewis. There’s not going to be an end to this. It runs too deep, and it will never disappear. For a couple of years, it may seem like it’s all gone. The truth is it never is. There is always someone willing to take their place, and that’s not your fault. It won’t ever be your fault.” She really wanted him to believe that. He took so much pressure on his shoulders, and he was just one man. He didn’t have an army. A club with nine men that had done so much already. Just hearing what they’d done to help Anna, Russ’s woman, was more than enough for Mandy to know they were good men, great men.
“It’s never enough,” he said.
The pain in his eyes was more than she could bear. She didn’t look away, though. She stared at him, letting him see how grateful she was that he’d never given up, and she hoped the love she felt for him was there as well.
“Everything you do is more than enough.” She smiled. “Think about the women you’ve already saved. The ones that were only taken for a couple of hours. They’ve gone back to their lives, and yes, there will be nightmares, but you saved them. Granted them their freedom, Lewis. That’s more than anyone else will ever do for them.”
He stared at her intently.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Me, you’re my hero, Lewis. Always. When everyone else had given up, you didn’t. You found me.”
“Why didn’t you reach out to me when you did?” he asked. “You helped those other women, but you rarely helped yourself?”
She sighed. “When I saw that picture of myself, and I saw your name, I’d never forgotten you. They tried to make me forget that I was a daughter, and a friend, and an irritating little sister. I could forget most, but not you. I’d dream of you. I remember as they grabbed me, I screamed, and they were so fast. You were trying so hard to get to me, but I was gone. You chased after the car, crossing the road as he spun. You nearly got hit, and as they kept on holding me down, you were still following, until you nearly got hit by a car, and they were able to gain some distance. Then they drugged me, knocking me out. You fought then, Lewis. I knew that you’d help the women that hadn’t yet been sent for distribution. If I could help them, then I knew one day, you’d come for me. I’d been there a long time already. What was a couple more years to help you beat them?”
She saw tears in his eyes and she hated seeing him this way. Lewis was the hero.
“I think about that day all the time. That moment I heard you scream. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“It was a life-changing moment for both of us.” She smiled. “I wonder if I hadn’t been taken, whether you’d have still been that jock and married the popular girl. Had a couple of kids, and never done this.”
“What do you think you’d have done?” Lewis asked. “What did you want to do?”
“I loved writing. I loved making stories. It’s something that has never changed, not once.” She pulled away, tucking some hair behind her ears. “You need to learn to take a break, have some fun.”
“Fun, what is that?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d tell me.” She smiled at him, giving him a wink.
She finally heard him laugh, and it was the sweetest sound in the world to her.