Page 6 of The Saint (Gentlemen Rogues 3)
When I was growing up, my mother was always going on and on about how we had to stay hidden. At the time it had made sense. There were bad people chasing her.Chasing us.
But as I got older, I realized that was just the chaos of the things that she brought about. I'd never witnessed anyone chasing us. All I'd witnessed was having to move every year. A new name, a new identity. More than once I'd moaned about how I was sick of it and just wanted a normal life.
But now that I had my normal life, I could feel the edges fraying.
I could patch it. Stop the madness. I didn'tneedto pull on that string. I could just snip it and put a bit of glue down.I didn't need to unravel it.
You don't, but you will.
I would. Because chaos was my constant companion.
It didn't matter how much I thought I could outrun it. It didn't matter that I thought I had found peace. None of it mattered. The eye of the storm was an illusion.
Connor Lohman, aka Connor Phelps, or whatever his name was, he was the one responsible for what happened to my mother. And I owed it to her to question him.
But as I stared at the news article, I could see the truth. Connor Phelps was no two-bit thug. He was a financier. At least according to this article.
I needed a way to get close to him, and I intended to get my answers by any means necessary.
CHAPTER 2
KAYA
For years,I’d wondered about my mother's sanity. The shadows she always saw, the fear she always lived in. I hadn't thought it was a real thing because I hadn't seen it.
But as it turned out, the boogeyman was real.
So what are you going to do about it?
At the very least, I had to talk to Connor. Find out what he knew. I had to try. But how the hell was I going to get to someone like him? I knew that he was surrounded at all times by security and yes-men. People who, for the right price, would say what he wanted to hear. I needed a way around them. A way to make this work.
What the hell are you going to do? You know who he is, and ostensibly where he might be. And how will you get to him? Men like that have dragon-guarded moats.
I stared at the article again. The kind of man he was, the circles he ran in, his access to money, it was all evident.
I did not have the kind of money or power it was going to take to get access to a man like that, so I needed to be smart. I scanned the article again, praying for something to jump out of it. A miracle.
Or you can leave it. Do nothing. Stay in your normal life.
I frowned at that. Therewasno normal life. There was nounseeingwhat I had already seen.
For years, I hadn't believed my mother, but she'd been telling the truth about dangers in the world and the people who didn't care who they hurt to get where they needed to be.
Connor Lohman was one of them. The last I had seen of him, he'd been a low-life thug. And in the five years since, he'd turned himself into a scrubbed-up money man. How did that happen?
Then I saw my opening. Like most other philanthropists, he liked to splash his money around because it made him look good. The AlmedFund for Children was having a gala, and sure enough, Connor Lohman was a benefactor.
Of course, he was.
The question was, how the hell did I get access to something like that? The article held some information about how to donate to the all-important cause, and I recognized a name. Jennifer Cormack.
I knew her. She often helped with events for the center. So was this one of those few times in my life that I had a string to pull?
Sometimes we have to do what we have to do.
Jennifer answered on the first ring. “Kaya, hi. How are you? Is there a meeting at the center I’m late for?"
"No. Actually, I'm calling about something else if you have a moment."
