Page 63 of Take Me Under

Myla,

I won’t be in the office today. I need you to push my meeting with Kent Leahy to tomorrow. If that doesn’t work for him, it will have to wait until next month since I’m leaving for Italy next week. I’ll also need you to look at my schedule for the next 30 days. I’ll be out of the country for much, if not all, of that time. My scheduled meetings will have to shift to video conference. Please arrange accordingly. If something urgent comes up, handle it as you see fit.

Anton

Her reply had been immediate, a curt acknowledgment that she’d take care of things. I trusted her implicitly, but the heaviness in my chest had nothing to do with work.

It was Serena.

I could have gone to the airport with her and Zeke, but I told her I had work to do. It wasn’t a lie, per se. I truly did have to go to Club O to check on a few things before beginning work at my day job, but it felt dishonest all the same.

I wished I could tell Serena about the club, but I couldn’t take the risk—and it wasn’t just because I was afraid of being outed publicly. Even if I could trust her with the secret, the more she talked about her Catholic mother, the more I was convinced that she wouldn’t understand. It didn’t matter if, last night, she’d said some of the dirtiest things I’d ever heard—words that made my dick hard just thinking about them. When she told me that some lessons were ingrained in people, I knew keeping the club’s existence from her was the right thing to do. At least for now.

My instincts about people were rarely wrong, and somethingabout her had rung true from the moment we met. She wasn’t hiding who she was or pretending to be someone else. If she was, she deserved an Oscar. No, Serena was genuine—raw, complicated, and utterly unguarded in ways that disarmed me.

Still, the mysteries surrounding her consumed me. The motel break in might have been random, but there was something about it that didn’t sit right with me. Especially now that I knew a staff member had been murdered. I wanted to shake it off as happenstance, but I couldn’t.

I opened my laptop and began sifting through news articles until I found the one that mentioned the death at the Midtown Hotel. Clicking on it, I began to read.

“A man was found dead behind The Midtown Motel late this afternoon. He was the victim of a stabbing. The man, whose identity has not yet been released, was reported missing after the day shift employee discovered he was absent from his usual post at the front desk. Police later located his body near a dumpster behind the building. Authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death and are asking anyone with information to come forward.”

I skimmed the rest of the article, and it appeared as though the police didn’t have any leads. When I thought about the motel break-in, the murder only raised more questions than it answered.

I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my hand over my chin. Things had to be related, but I struggled to connect the dots. I considered what Serena had said about her father’s death and wondered how that might fit in. It might not be related to the situation at the Midtown at all, but there seemed to be too manymysteries surrounding Serena to ignore it. The symptoms she’d described had been too specific.

I changed my internet search to try to identify a possible cause for his passing. This proved to be more difficult. Italian death certificates weren’t easy to access, especially for someone with no familial ties. Still, money and connections could open most doors, even in Europe. A few emails and some discreet inquiries later, and I was confident I’d have a copy of Carlo Martinelli’s records within a day or two.

While waiting for responses, I shifted my focus to something more immediate. Serena had been vague about the doctors’ inability to diagnose her father’s illness, so I typed the symptoms into the search bar, refining the terms until a pattern emerged.

“Poison?” I murmured.

Every search result described chronic arsenic poisoning as fatigue, nausea, weight loss, red and swollen skin, organ failure, and several other horrific symptoms.

The dark and unsettling possibility that he might have been murdered flashed in my mind.

If it had been arsenic poisoning, I wasn’t sure how any competent doctor could have missed something so obvious. My pulse quickened as I scanned the many articles on the topic, searching for more details. It was unnerving how closely the description mirrored what Serena had told me. I wondered if the doctors had ordered a heavy metal test.

If her father had been poisoned, it could have been accidental. But I wasn’t ready to dismiss the symptoms as random. And when I considered the break-in at her motel—the calculated way someone had appeared to be searching for something—the pieces just didn’t fit. Once I had a copy of the death certificate, I would assign Zeke the task of tracking down medical records.

I was halfway through a detailed article about heavy metals in the bloodstream when my phone rang, breaking myconcentration. I glanced at the screen. Alexander Stone was calling.

“Alexander,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

“Anton,” he replied, his tone as smooth and self-assured as always. “How are things?”

“Busy,” I said, though it wasn’t entirely true. My schedule was only as busy as I allowed. It was one of the perks of being a self-made billionaire that I thoroughly enjoyed. “And you?”

“Never a dull moment,” he said with a chuckle. “I wanted to discuss the waterfront property we talked about last month. We’ve got an opening to move on it, but the timing is tight.”

We talked briefly about the logistics, including acquiring the land and navigating the red tape, but my mind wasn’t fully in the conversation. As Alexander outlined potential profit margins, I quickly realized it was a no-lose opportunity.

“All of it sounds great. And you’re right. We’d be foolish not to move now,” I said.

“Great. I’ll get Stephen to draft a good faith contract. He should have it ready for us to sign within a day or two.”

Alexander and I shared the same law firm, and Stephen Kinsley was one of the best. He was also a member of Club O. I trusted that he would ensure the best deal possible.

“Sounds good, Alex. I’ll be on the lookout for it.”

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