Years have passed since Nico Belinsky last saw Kaylin La Rocca, but he can’t forget the girl he once thought of as a sister. Or the fact that she’s wanted for murder. When Emmy Black, a woman who lives up to her name by walking on the dark side, offers a favour, Nico tasks her with searching for his old friend.
He’s playing with fire in more ways than one—not only does he risk stirring up a hornets’ nest, but the last time he saw Kaylin, his feelings toward her were anything but brotherly.
Kaylin La Rocca fell for a man out of a romance novel, but it turned out to be more of a horror story. Now she’s his prisoner, a pretty little princess trapped in a glittering tower. A possession. She dreams of rescue, but any potential prince will have to face not only the cops but the villain who has claimed her. Can Nico and Emmy rescue her from the devil’s clutches and prove that happily ever afters do exist?
Secrets from the Past is a standalone romantic suspense novel, a crossover between the Blackwood Security and Baldwin's Shore series.
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Chapter 1 - Hallie
“Can you tell me a little more about Kaylin La Rocca?” I asked.
A year ago, the thought of speaking with a billionaire would have freaked me the hell out, but so much had changed in the past twelve months. I’d been rescued from the pits of hell, otherwise known as a sex trafficker’s mansion in Florida, I’d met the man of my dreams, and I’d also found that I had a knack for asking questions.
All of which had led me here on this grey day in late February—here being the Peninsula Resort and Spa in Baldwin’s Shore, Oregon—for a chat with Nico Belinsky. The purpose of our conversation was twofold: firstly, I needed to glean as many details as I could about Kaylin La Rocca, the woman I’d been hired to find. Well, not hired, exactly. Emmy, one of the big bosses at Blackwood Security, had traded my services in return for Nico’s help to cover up a small national-security-related incident that had happened here a month ago.
In truth, that case had shaken me. Most people managed to get through a lifetime without being abducted, but I’d had the dubious honour three times now, and the last incident had been the most terrifying, the rescue swift and dramatic. I still suffered nightmares about drowning alone in the middle of the ocean. But I’d taken a short vacation, spent some time with my not-quite-fiancé, and now I was ready to work again. A job researching a cold missing persons case was just what I needed, nothing too strenuous. Yes, Kaylin had an outstanding arrest warrant, and yes, it was for murder, but Nico assured me it was all a big mistake.
And at least there were no crazy Russian assassins involved in Kaylin’s case. I’d had enough of Russian freaking assassins.
The second reason for tonight’s visit? I’d been tasked with keeping Nico occupied while Emmy did a little breaking and entering, which sounds so much worse than it really was. She didn’t plan to steal anything. All she needed to do was leave a note on behalf of an acquaintance, and so far, I’d managed to fulfil my role. Nico and I were hanging out together in his luxuriously appointed office, ready for a cosy chat out of the public eye. Rather than sitting behind the massive desk at the far end, he’d led me over to a quartet of leather chairs grouped around a glass coffee table in the corner and settled onto the one nearest the wall, legs crossed at the ankles. I’d taken a seat opposite as I tried to work him out. Emmy said he was an incorrigible flirt, but so far, he’d been nothing but professional with me.
Nico took a sip of his drink. Vodka, neat. He’d filled a shot glass for each of us without asking, but I hadn’t touched mine.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Let’s start with some background. The basics. Details of her family, her friends, any known addresses. Do you have a picture?”
Nico’s phone had been sitting face-down on the table, but now he unlocked it and scrolled until he found what he was looking for. Not just one photo but a whole album of them. The first half dozen were poorer in quality, as if Nico had zoomed in and cropped them from larger images, and they’d been taken when Kaylin was still a child. She’d worn her blonde hair in pigtails and favoured pink dresses. In one picture, a teenage Nico was standing next to her, an arm around her shoulders as he looked sullenly at the camera.
“How old were the two of you here?”
“I was sixteen; Kaylin was eight.”
“It wasn’t a happy occasion?”
“Happiness was rare in those days.” He took the phone from me and studied the screen. “I think that was taken at my father’s birthday celebration.”
His father. Lev Belinsky had been a Moscow-based oligarch and all-around asshole who’d made a fortune in the commodities industry before his untimely death when Nico was twenty years old. Untimely because he’d been assassinated by a fake hooker who’d slipped a knife between his ribs. How did I know about the fake hooker when that detail had never been made public? Because she was one of my new colleagues, also known as Nine, former member of a Russian hit squad, AKA the Bad Samaritan, Baldwin’s Shore’s very own deliverer of vigilante justice.
And, quite frankly, she scared the crap out of me.
Nico handed the phone back, and I scrolled through the rest of the pictures, several dozen of them in total. Kaylin had followed her mom into modelling, and these were all from professional shoots. Portfolio shots, perhaps. Kaylin’s hair was a few shades lighter compared to the earlier photos, and it bounced around her shoulders, glossy and perfect. She had a figure to die for, and her make-up was flawless. But she’d lost her smile. Young Kaylin’s eyes had sparkled, while grown-up Kaylin looked polished but jaded.
Her mom had passed away by then, which must have had an impact. Was Renée La Rocca’s death an accident? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly no one had ever been arrested after she fell out of a window. Last month, Nico had admitted to Emmy that he didn’t know whether his father had been involved, but it was possible.
Following her mom’s death, Kaylin had spent her high-school years with her grandmother in Virginia. Speaking with Chelle La Rocca was at the top of my list of things to do when I returned home. I’d already tracked down her address, and it was only an hour from Blackwood’s Headquarters.
“Did Kaylin spend long in Russia?” I asked Nico.
“Roughly a year and a half—her mother came to Moscow for a modelling job, then stuck around after she started screwing my father.”
I made a note of that. While Nico spoke fondly of Kaylin, his voice held no such affection when it came to her mom.
“What kind of relationship did Renée and Kaylin have?”
“Not a great one. Motherhood didn’t suit Renée, and I’m not certain Kaylin even knew who her father was. He isn’t named on her birth certificate. Whenever the two of them visited our place, Renée would bring a bag full of colouring books and pens and toys, and Kaylin was expected to amuse herself while her mother entertained my father.” Nico smiled at a memory. “Penguins. She loved to draw penguins.”
“Did you spend much time with Kaylin?”
“Not if I could help it.” Nico sighed. “How many teenage boys want to hang out with a child half their age? But she’d follow me around to show me her drawings and the things she used to make out of beads.” He hesitated for a moment, then rose to fetch something from his desk drawer. A keyring. A yellow-and-pink beaded keyring. He placed it on the coffee table and took his seat again. “This was one of her efforts. She gifted it to me on my sixteenth birthday.”
And he’d kept it for all these years.
“She made an impression on you.”
“I didn’t have much to be cheerful about in those days. She made me smile, no matter how hard I tried to pretend that she didn’t. She won everyone’s hearts. The members of my father’s security team weren’t hired for their winning personalities, and even their masks cracked when she was around.”
“What were the circumstances of her leaving?”
“I wasn’t privy to that information. One day, Renée and Kaylin were there, and the next, they were gone. A few months later, I overheard the staff talking about an accident and searched the internet. That’s how I knew that Renée’s life had come to a premature end.”
“You don’t think it was an accident?”
“She was naive, but she wasn’t careless. Suicidal? Possibly. She always seemed highly strung, but I’m not in a position to assess her mental state.”
“Was Kaylin there at the time her mother fell?”
“Renée fell from the building she worked in, so I doubt it. But I don’t know for sure. That isn’t the type of thing two people discuss when they haven’t seen each other for a decade.”
Which brought us to the one and only time Nico had seen Kaylin after she left Russia. Emmy had given me a run-down of the details—they’d run into each other by chance five or six years ago and eaten lunch together.
“Tell me what happened in New York.”
“There’s not much to tell. I was leaving my lawyer’s office, and there she was on the sidewalk.”
“You recognised her right away?”
“Yes and no. At first, I was struck by the resemblance to her mother, and then she recognised me. If she hadn’t smiled, I’d probably have carried on walking. I mean, she was beautiful—head-burningly beautiful—but I don’t make a habit of approaching people on the street.”
“Are you certain it was a chance meeting? She couldn’t have known you were there?”
“Kaylin was lost, and I was behind schedule that day. If somebody hadn’t jumped in front of a subway train at West 86th and Broadway, my meeting would have run to time, and I’d have missed her by ten minutes. Instead of having lunch with me, she’d have gone home after she gave up trying to find the address for her casting call.”
“What did you discuss during lunch? Did she mention her personal life?”
“We studiously avoided that subject. She showed me her modelling portfolio and told me about the campaigns she’d worked on—nothing major, but she was certain she’d get her big break soon. In hindsight, I wish I’d done more. Hired her to front an ad campaign for one of my resorts or spoken to my contacts and found her more work, but seeing her was…difficult. Kaylin was the closest thing I had to a sister at one point, but she also reminded me of a past I’d rather forget.”
I could understand that sentiment. There were so many events I wished I could erase from my memory—being framed for murder, being trafficked, being trapped in a basement with a serial killer, for example—but my past had made me who I was today. Instead of being almost engaged to a wonderful man and working a job I loved, I could have been waiting tables sixty hours a week at a diner in Kentucky. Over the past few years, I’d learned to take the rough with the smooth.
“Emmy said she called you again several years later?”
“A little over three years ago, yes. We exchanged numbers in New York and promised we’d keep in touch. Of course, we never did. It’s just what people say, isn’t it?”
But Kaylin had tried to speak with him, and Nico had missed the call. He hadn’t picked up the voicemail she left until half a day later.
“And she asked you to meet her at a hotel on the outskirts of Manassas?”
“She sounded terrified. It took me another twelve hours to get there, but all I found was a crime scene.”
“I’ve read the police file on the case.”
“They gave you that?”
“Not exactly.” And Ford, my boyfriend, who also happened to be a detective in the Richmond PD, didn’t know I had it either. “Somehow, it just appeared on my desk.”
Nico laughed. Emmy said he didn’t strike her as the type of man who worried about a little law-bending, and I didn’t know whether to be thankful for that or very, very nervous. According to the notes in the file, Kaylin had left her room—the Bluebird Inn was actually a motel rather than a hotel—late one evening and run down an off-duty cop who’d been walking home from a family dinner. Officer Mike Downie might have survived if he’d gotten to a hospital fast, but he’d been left to die in the gutter. Then Kaylin had disappeared, never to be seen again. Her car was found two days later on a side street in Reston, wiped clean of prints and empty of personal effects. She’d left most of her belongings in the motel, as if she’d expected to return soon. Or as if she’d never expected to leave. A small smear of blood had been found in the back seat of the vehicle, but DNA testing showed it belonged to a male other than the victim, and the database failed to throw up any hits. It could have come from the previous owner of the car—nobody had ever managed to find him—or someone else entirely.
A security camera had recorded Kaylin’s Toyota leaving the motel parking lot just before the incident occurred, but the camera was old, and the footage was too grainy to see who was behind the wheel. But the right front tyre matched the track across the dead guy’s chest, and although it was a common pattern, a minor defect in the tread removed any possibility that another vehicle had been involved.
“What are your thoughts on the incident?” Nico asked.
“The way I see it, there are two possibilities. Either Kaylin drove out of the motel parking lot with her mind on other things, hit a man, and ran, or somebody else was in the car that night.”
“Yes. That was my thought process too.” A long pause. “It was the second option.”
“What makes you say that?”
By Nico’s own account, he barely knew Kaylin. People could change a lot as they grew older. He paused for a long moment before he spoke, considering his answer, one finger tapping on the arm of the chair. When he noticed me glance at his hand, he stilled.
“When Kaylin was seven, a guard on father’s security team kicked one of the cats that ran about the place and broke its leg. I came home to find Kaylin sobbing in the living room with the thing bundled on her lap, and she’d made it a splint out of three colouring pencils and some hair ties. That’s the kind of person she was. Sweet and sensitive. Unless Kaylin was physically unable to call for help, she’d never have left an injured man lying at the side of the road.”
“People change.”
“Not Kaylin. At least, not when I saw her in New York. She didn’t get ten steps from the restaurant before she emptied all the cash that was left in her wallet into a homeless man’s cup.”
Interesting. And I tended to agree—if she’d had a shred of decency left, she would have stopped at a gas station and made an anonymous call before she vanished. Which made my heart sink. If Kaylin hadn’t been able to call for help, we might be looking for a body instead of the kind, vibrant woman Nico had described.
“What happened to the cat?” I asked, rather than putting my fears into words.
“I took it to the veterinarian, and he put a plate in its leg.”
“And what happened to the guard?”
He shrugged and gave a tiny, sly smile.
Okay, maybe Emmy had been right about Nicolai Belinsky. He definitely paid lip service to the law.
But was he right about Kaylin?
I glanced at the ornate gold clock on the wall—it was nearly eight o’clock. How much longer did Emmy need to do her thing? B&E was child’s play for her, especially when the Bad Samaritan had provided a key, the alarm code, and access to the security system.
“I understand another private investigator already looked into the case?”
Nico nodded. “When it became apparent that the cops weren’t going to find Kaylin, I hired a guy from Manassas. Figured local knowledge would be an advantage, but he hit dead end after dead end.”
“Can I get access to his reports?”
“I have the entire file for you. Would you prefer a printed copy or digital?”
“Email works best.”
“You’ll have it by the morning.”
“Do you think he’d speak with me?”
“Sadly not. He had a stroke two months ago, and his wife said he won’t be working anytime soon. Did Emerson explain our arrangement to you?”
“That Blackwood would perform a desktop review of the case at no charge and follow up on any missed leads we find?”
“Yes, that’s what we agreed. But if you find any new avenues of investigation, I just want to make it clear that the budget isn’t an issue. If you find a thread, tug on it, and I’ll pay whatever’s necessary.”
“I understand.”
“Good. And now…” He checked his watch. “Would you like to join me for dinner?”
“Uh…”
I still hadn’t heard from Emmy. She’d message me as soon as she was done, and Blackwood’s comms app would tap my wrist via my smartwatch with any updates. But Nico misunderstood my hesitation.
“If you’re concerned about my reputation, Emerson assured me that she’d personally remove my testicles with a rusty melon baller if I was anything but gentlemanly toward you.”
“A…rusty melon baller?”
“She was very specific on that, and I suspect she’s the type of woman who’d follow through.”
“Yes. Yes, she is.”
“Do you want to eat in the dining room, or should I ask the staff to serve the food in here? There’s a wedding reception in the ballroom, so it might be busier than usual in the bar tonight.”
At one time, I’d have broken out in hives at the thought of a private dinner with a man like Nico Belinsky, and the fact that I didn’t start sweating at the suggestion made me oddly proud. Plus I knew Emmy would never knowingly put me in a position where I could be in danger. A melon baller… She probably kept it in her desk drawer alongside her Walther PPQ and her dick guillotine.
Nico tilted his head to one side, studying me. “We’ll eat in the dining room. Yes, I think you’d be more comfortable with that.”
“I—” Oh, thank goodness. I focused on the tapping against my wrist. Taptap tap tap, taptap taptap taptap, taptap tap, tap. Morse code for DONE. “Yes, the dining room works for me.”
Nico rose gracefully to his feet and motioned toward the door with a hand. “After you, milaya.”
Milaya? Was that Russian? I gave him a suspicious glare as I tucked my notepad, pen, and digital recorder back into my purse. “Are you still being a gentleman?”
He winked, and his polite smile turned the tiniest bit dirty. “Absolutely.”
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