Reckless: A Dark Romance (The Masters Book 1) Read online

  Reckless

  The Masters: Book 1

  Copyright 2021 Sansa Rayne. All rights reserved.

  Kindle Edition

  All characters depicted are over the age of 18.

  This book may not be reproduced in any form by any means, without the author’s permission, except for reviewers, who may quote short excerpts.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and action come from the author’s imagination and presented as fiction. Any resemblance to real individuals, alive or deceased, as well as events or places, is completely coincidental.

  This book features explicit depictions of sex and other material that may offend some audiences. Therefore, it is intended for adults only.

  Cover design by Cover Me Darling, http://covermedarling.com

  Sansa Rayne has a mailing list! Everyone who signs up gets free stories, bonus epilogues and more! To sign up, CLICK HERE or copy this link into your browser: http://eepurl.com/ckbVoX

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Find out what happens next…

  More by Sansa Rayne…

  About the Author/Acknowledgments

  The unread e-mails in my inbox creep into the four-digit territory literally before my eyes. I could get to half of them today and they’ll be back within a week — even with two assistants filtering out the junk. For every good tip about insider trading scandals among senators or consumer rights violations in the telecom industry, there are a few hundred cranks: moon landing conspiracies, chemtrail enthusiasts and even a few Area 51 alien abduction theorists. Sometimes a good one gets posted to the LPN Slack channel, but most are just a waste of my time.

  Sighing, I delve into the messages labeled a priority.

  Moeller Co. forces 24-hour shifts on workers to meet demand

  Chemical called ‘harmless,’ tests say otherwise

  Victor Sovereign sighting: just a hoax?

  I stop at the last one. My pulse spikes, just for a moment. I’m not going to open the e-mail.

  “Tyler! What is this?”

  Devon and Tyler, my assistants, exchange a look before Tyler strolls over. He smirks when he sees where I’m pointing.

  “First rule of TV cliffhangers: if we don’t see the body, are they really dead?” he says. “Victor Sovereign could be out there.”

  “He’s dead. His helicopter went down. If he didn’t die in the crash, he drowned in the Hudson.”

  “But they never found-”

  “He’s fucking dead, Tyler,” I snap.

  I try to be patient with the interns, I really do. Fresh out of grad school, he’s only a few years younger than me. He’d be kinda cute if he wasn’t so sure he already knew everything. I could give him a talk about verifying sources and not treating his job like it’s a TV show, but I don’t have the time.

  If the Victor Sovereign sighting was somehow legitimate, every news agency in the world would be all over it — and they’d be hounding me for a statement. Tyler should know this.

  “I don’t want to see this nonsense again. Is that clear?”

  “Okay, got it,” Tyler says, visibly deflating.

  I catch a cross look on Devon’s face before she turns back to her work. Sorting through this junk probably isn’t how the two of them thought they’d be contributing to the field of journalism, but someone has to do the less glamorous tasks.

  Then again, I never did — and they know it. They’re smart enough to assume that the daughter of Walter Atwood never worked in the mailroom. Dad wanted me to when I was their age, and I suppose I should have listened. Too late now.

  My desk phone rings; the display says JOHN HOWELL.

  “Hello?”

  “Kate, can you come in here a minute?”

  There’s a stack of action items in my planner that need my attention. They buzz around in the back of my head like something radioactive.

  “Can it wait?”

  “No,” John grunts. “Get in here.”

  Sighing, I get up and make my way through the newsroom, a cacophony of conversations, phone calls and live TV feeds. A few of the men sneak glances as I go by, since I couldn’t help wearing a sleeveless, white ruffled top with a tight, black skirt and matching heels. A few of them are hot enough to make the inevitable HR meetings worth it. If only they had the stones to hit on the office celeb.

  John’s office smells like e-cig vapes; he thinks we can’t tell. A completely clean ashtray and an unused lighter sit on a shelf behind his desk, relics of a past age. Pulitzers with my father’s name on them hang on the walls, catching my eye every time I’m in here. There’s a framed photo of John, Dad and I from that first time, when I was only four, nearly twenty-five years ago.

  Balding, gray and creased, John looked old back then and has hardly changed since. Broad shoulders and muscular arms remain from his college football days, but he’s put on a beer gut since his youth. A desktop computer years overdue for replacement hums loudly, and white window shades obstruct a twentieth-floor vista of midtown Manhattan.

  “What’s going on, John?” I ask, taking a seat.

  “You’re going to be pissed,” he says, popping a mint antacid. He grinds it between his back teeth.

  “What?”

  John takes a thick, padded envelope out of his desk drawer and passes it to me. It’s not sealed, so I pull out the object within, a framed news article.

  Disgraced industrialist Victor Sovereign presumed dead

  My eyes hover on my byline. Pride thumps in my chest.

  “Is this for me?” I ask, remembering I’m supposed to be pissed.

  “It’s for the office,” John says, taking the article back. “So it’ll be yours someday.”

  “I’m honored,” I reply. But that’s not why he called me in here.

  “Sovereign Aeronautics was one of our top advertisers.”

  Here we go. LPN’s corporate masters must have reamed John out. I don’t have to remind him that Sovereign drones were being used to spy on the American people using illegal facial recognition software. He let me run the story knowing full well his bosses would be livid.

  “I’m not the one who told Victor to run from the FBI,” I argue.

  If he hadn’t tried to escape prosecution, maybe his helicopter wouldn’t have gone down over the Hudson River. He might have gone to jail, but at least his company could have survived the short-term stock drop. If not for the media firestorm and national attention his death brought the company, Sovereign Aeronautics wouldn’t be on the verge of bankruptcy.

  “You could have shown some remorse for his death,” John says. “You could have pretended.”

  “He threatened to kill me. Fuck that, and fuck him.”

  That’s what I should have said on the air, FCC be damned.

  John says, “I don’t
disagree, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But this isn’t just about Sovereign. He’s not the first advertiser you’ve investigated. I think the only ones you haven’t gone after are the cereal and toilet paper companies.”

  “Oh, they’re next.”

  John frowns, his bushy eyebrows drawing inward.

  “Word’s come down from corporate. They’re not happy.”

  “So what?” I laugh. I’m Kate Fucking Atwood. My name is what sells those cereal ads. People tune in for me. “They can’t fire me.”

  “Yes, they can,” John snaps. “They’re not going that far, yet. They want you to take a break, though. A sabbatical, whatever you want to call it. They want you on ice for a while.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Kate-”

  “I’ve got a million stories to work. They’re my leads from my sources — I’m happy to share them but I will not be sidelined. You hear me?”

  John waits for me to finish, nodding, then says, “If you refuse, they will fire you.”

  He was right: I’m fucking pissed.

  “They can’t do this. How will they explain it to the public?”

  “Your stunt with Sovereign could have gotten you killed. The whole world heard the recording, they heard how far you went to get the truth. The cost of insuring your ass went way up. Corporate needs to know you’re not going to get into any more life-threatening situations.”

  The insurance? That’s their defense? Yeah, maybe I went a little too far in confronting Victor Sovereign myself, but it was worth it. The publicity my encounter generated should more than offset any increase in my insurance premiums.

  “That’s some fucking bullshit,” I growl, balling my fists.

  John opens his desk and slides out a bottle of Jura and a pair of tumblers. He pours us each a drink and passes mine over.

  “Sorry,” he says. “This comes from the top. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Yeah,” I grumble, throwing back the whiskey. “How long will it be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  John sips his drink, letting the flavor and his words linger.

  A fiery rant about corporate bubbles in my gut, but I’d be preaching to the choir. Instead, I get up.

  “Thanks for nothing, John,” I mutter. He doesn’t deserve that, but I’m too incensed to care. I’ll apologize later.

  Tyler and Devin are debating whether Shake Shack or Five Guys have better burgers when I get back to my desk. On any other day I’d tell them to save it for their lunch break, but I just grab my purse and tell them it’s Shake Shack, obviously. I’m halfway to the elevator when Tyler calls out to ask where I’m going.

  I don’t answer.

  I don’t know.

  —

  I spend the day seething in my condo, watching YouTube clips of Dad’s most famous reports and interviews. While he prods world leaders for the truth, I polish off half a bottle of Chardonnay and get Pad Thai delivered.

  Would Dad have put up with being treated like this? Forced to the sidelines because of corporate greed? Maybe, but he was a company man. This wouldn’t have ever happened to him in the first place. Walter Atwood was a champion for human rights in Africa and the Middle East, but he never went after the tobacco or fossil fuel industries. He left those jobs to someone else and focused on his priorities. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, but why choose when you can do it all?

  Because you tick off the wrong people and get put on “sabbatical,” that’s why.

  Damnit.

  I start to text a few friends to see if they want to go out, but feel too guilty; I haven’t seen most of them in months. Between jobs and kids, we hardly ever have our schedules align, but in truth I’m usually too busy anyway. I can’t call them now, expecting them to drop what they’re doing and come out — on a Tuesday no less. Maybe if I needed a friend because I’d been fired that would be one thing, but that’s not what’s happened. If anything, I’m getting a paid vacation, so I might not get a ton of sympathy.

  Instead, I call Brendan.

  “Kate? What’s up?”

  “I need someone to talk me off the ledge.”

  “Metaphorically?”

  “Yes, metaphorically,” I say.

  I finish off the rest of the wine while telling him what happened with John. Brendan listens patiently.

  “So what’s going to happen to your stories?” he asks when I finish.

  That’s a good question.

  “I assume John’ll reassign them.”

  “You could always send a few leads my way,” Brendan chuckles.

  “I don’t think John would appreciate that,” I say, laughing.

  “There’s always a position open for you at Ellman Media. We could be the next Woodward and Bernstein.”

  “We would absolutely crush it, but…”

  “But you can’t leave your father’s company,” Brendan finishes. “I know, I get it.”

  “Now if you wanted to come to LPN, I could put in a good word for you,” I offer, semi-seriously. John and I would love to have him on board, but the job would be a demotion from Brendan’s role as executive editor. “You’re lucky Ellman’s board has your back.”

  “Benefit of being publicly funded,” he says.

  That’s the other problem with taking a job at Ellman: the pay would be a fraction of my current salary. Dad may have been famous and well-off, between his lengthy career and bestselling memoirs, but his wealth would never be described as obscene. If I want to enjoy my current lifestyle, I still have to earn.

  “How long has it been since you took a proper vacation anyway?” asks Brendan.

  “Well…”

  There was my trip to Paris last month, but that was to meet a contact who had dirt on Victor Sovereign. I was only there two days. That doesn’t count.

  Six months ago I went to Las Vegas, but that was for a conference. I didn’t touch a single playing card or pull a single slot machine lever. I didn’t even get to see Cirque du Soleil or the Hoover Dam. Not a vacation.

  Around this time last year, I took a Caribbean cruise with Finn; we broke up on the second day, somewhere between Martinique and Barbados. I spent the week downing unlimited daiquiris while working from a poolside chaise lounge. Yeah, that’s the closest I’ve come to a vacation.

  “More than a year.”

  “Would it be the worst thing in the world to take one?”

  “No,” I admit. “But I don’t want one. I want to work. There’s so much to be done. I don’t care what LPN says, I’m not stopping.”

  “At least take a day off,” says Brendan. “We could get dinner tomorrow.”

  I suppose one day to clear my head isn’t a bad idea.

  “Sounds good,” I say, smiling.

  “Good. See you then.”

  That’ll be fun.

  Now I just need to find a way to get through the workday without losing my mind.

  My Gulfstream touches down so softly the half-finished Eagle Rare bourbon in my glass doesn’t even slosh. Frowning, I knock back the rest, recalling a broken bottle of Knob Creek and other past sins. I’ve gone through all of them over and over, looking for an answer. I still don’t understand what happened in Mexico City, and I’m tired of thinking about it.

  Barely audible in the first place, the engines’ whine subsides as the plane comes to a halt. Out the window, I watch a black limousine park near the entry hatch. From inside, Eyal scans the area, the data transmitting to my phone automatically. So far, so good.

  I put on my black business suit’s jacket and straighten my silver, silk tie. Hidden padding full of bulletproof impact gel adds a little weight to the clothing, but right now I’m not taking any chances. The plane’s hatch doesn’t open until Eyal finishes his sweep. When he finally gets out of the car, I march down the exit ramp.

  “Any update on our guest?” I ask, letting myself into the limo. Eyal’s not a butler, after all.

 
; “No progress,” he says in his deep voice and thick Israeli accent.

  Damn.

  Eyal drives us from the private airstrip and picks up the New Jersey Turnpike toward the Lincoln Tunnel. With the rush hour traffic died down in the noon hour, we don’t have to wait long around the helix. Despite the limo’s armor plating and extra-thick bulletproof glass, I feel vulnerable until we get into the tunnel. I’d rather get ambushed inside and fight it out than give a sniper a clean shot. I’ve got handguns, assault rifles and grenades stashed in compartments throughout the vehicle, ready for a time when they’re needed.

  “When was the last time we were in New York?” I ask Eyal.

  “October, last year. The Pasternak mole.”

  That’s right. A corporate saboteur destroyed three years of Pasternak’s progress in developing stock exchange prediction models. He cost the company billions, and would have gotten away with it if he hadn’t put a signature in the logic bomb virus that brought down the organization’s network: a little PNG of a scorpion that matched a tattoo on his ankle. He either shouldn’t have included the graphic or kept his socks on when he slept with the CEO’s assistant.

  I actually kinda liked him. To his credit, he didn’t break easily. It wouldn’t be any fun if he pissed himself and spilled everything, and he ended up being lots of fun. An amateur boxer and MMA trainer, he took my best punches with a smile on his face; he spat blood laughing. We couldn’t prove he was the one who planted the malicious code; a tattoo is hardly decisive evidence. He thought we’d have to let him go.

  His bravado only faltered when I told him we weren’t the police. He paled when I explained that the Pasternak board didn’t want a trial, they just wanted the matter settled. He really lost his will to resist when he realized I wouldn’t stop cutting off fingers until he told us where he backed up the data. I didn’t even know for sure he made a backup, but why sabotage a company and not extort them later?

  “What was his name again?” I ask.

  “Lindholme.”

  All because of a little tattoo. His pride cost him everything; a good lesson to remember for a man in my industry.

  “Have the plane refueled immediately,” I say. “I don’t want to stay in the city a minute longer than necessary.”