Page 62 of Boss's Fake Wife

But no. She legitimately thought I was a murderer the first time we met, and she wouldn’t have been so freaked out if she was the one setting me up. She was a good actress, but not that good.

The phone rang again, and I picked up without checking the caller ID. I already knew it would be Chase.

“What?” I snapped.

“You should watch that secretary of yours,” my brother said. “I had one of my guys look into her. She’s been in trouble with the law before.”

I knew it was too much to hope that my brother wouldn’t run a background check on Emily should they meet. Luckily, I had Ansel bury everything important about her history.

“So?” I scoffed. “So have I. And so have you.”

“Yes, but she’s not part of us. She’s not part of The Brotherhood. They can use her against you.”

“And she hates cops even more than we do,” I answered wryly. “Trust me, if someone is framing me, it’s not her.”

It was a testament to how deep my feelings for her ran and had gotten because just a few weeks ago, there wouldn’t have been a doubt in my mind that this was all Emily’s doing. I would have eliminated her first and asked questions later. But now…

I couldn’t even bring myself to believe it was her. My feelings for her overpowered even common sense.

“The lawyer.” It immediately popped into my mind. That was the last time I wore those cufflinks. The day I went to see him. Could all this be his doing? To what end?

“What lawyer?” Chase asked.

“Never mind,” I said. “Listen, I’ll talk to you later.”

I decided not to go home yet. Instead, I went to visit Mansen first. When I got there, he didn’t even look up from his desk when he said, “I don’t have time for any appointments today.”

“This will only take a minute,” I said, and his head instantly popped up. I took a seat opposite him and watched him closely. He looked vaguely uncomfortable that I was there. Like he wasn’t sure of my mood. His eyes quickly shot to the door before coming back to me.

“No one else is coming,” I assured him. “I told your secretary to take a long break, so it’s just the two of us.”

“What do you want?” he asked.

I leaned forward. “A cufflink of mine somehow managed to appear in police custody. On a dead body in Belmont.” I cocked my head at him. “Do you know how it ended up there?”

Mansen frowned. “No, I don’t have a clue. I don’t follow your latest fashion.”

His eyes showed genuine confusion, suggesting he was telling the truth. But then again, lawyers were notoriously good liars. “The last time I wore those cufflinks was to your office.”

He was still looking at me blankly.

“Do you have any enemies?” I asked him.

He thought about it for a second, then shook his head.

“Well, I do,” I told him. “A bunch of them. And one by one, they’re all turning up dead.”

His eyes widened. And fear flashed through their depths.

I got up and straightened my suit.

“Just thought you should know that right now, it’s a very bad time to be my enemy.”

And with those parting words, I left him alone.

* * *

My next stopwas The Brotherhood compound.

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