Page 51 of Billionaire's Dangerous Desire

“Sorry about that, really.”

“It’s like all the odds are stacked against me and my campaign and my success. And, there are just some insensitive people out there. Those ones are the worst of them all.”

“I can only imagine.” I couldn’t believe I was the one giving the curt responses, while he just blathered. But, here we were.

“You know, there’s someone who wished me on Twitter to return to Sicily where I belonged. Like that was supposed to hurt. Like Sicily isn’t a magnificent state, an even more magnificent state than all of the states wherever that nincompoop has set his feet on.”Wow, did he just say nincompoop?

I couldn’t help my laughter. “Well… what…”

“Why are you laughing?” He looked hurt. “Really, what’s funny?”

“You just said nincompoop.”

“Yeah, so?” Suddenly, he was laughing, too. “These trolls really just get to you, huh?”

“Yeah, they do.”

“So, another discovery?”Could this man read minds?

“Ah, yes, how did you know?”

“Just figured, you know? Plus, I had sleepless nights trying to figure out how to make myself less of a mess.”

“Sorry about that, really.”

“It’s like all the odds are stacked against me and my campaign and my success. And, there are just some insensitive people out there. Those ones are the worst of them all.”

“I can only imagine.” I couldn’t believe I was the one giving the curt responses, while he just blathered. But, here we were.

“You know, there’s someone who wished me on Twitter to return to Sicily where I belonged. Like that was supposed to hurt. Like Sicily isn’t a magnificent state, an even more magnificent state than all of the states wherever that nincompoop has set his feet on.”Wow, did he just say nincompoop?

I couldn’t help my laughter. “Well… what…”

“Why are you laughing?” He looked hurt. “Really, what’s funny?”

“You just said nincompoop.”

“Yeah, so?” Suddenly, he was laughing, too. “These trolls really just get to you, huh?”

“Yeah, they do.”

He breathed in, and got back his composure. “So, what were you saying? Your discovery?”

Alright, here we go. “Yesterday night, I found some documents down here. Dated back to the Halloween of 2001.” I dropped the documents and images on his desk and spread them so he could look at each and every single one of them at once. There was a picture of a fire, and another of children screaming by a lake. The pictures seemed to be taken at different places but the chaos in them had something similar, not distinctive. Children were panicking.

“Woah, these were taken by the lake.”

“Exactly. That lake Holden’s dad died, and around the same time, too. Did they say he drowned himself? Do we really know what happened?”

“What are you saying?” He sounded genuinely frightened. Here we were trying to figure out how to save his face and I was uncovering something else that was probably buried for a reason.

“I’m saying nothing is as it seems. Stella mentioned this fundraiser being a tradition since 2002, but why? Why would an entire town with no churches scrap out Halloween, of all holidays? And, what, replace it with a holiday to honor kids with cancer. Not like that didn’t matter but something must all be connected.”

“Maybe it’s all connected. To the poisonings, the vandalisms, the sabotage, but how does that lead us to whom is trying to do all of these?”

“Of course, it isn’t that direct. But these leaves us with trying to find the common denominator in all of these scenes. Who could have motive. Implementation…”

“And Opportunity.” Great, so he was a murder mystery fan too.

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