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  ALEX DRAKOS 4:

  HIS DANGEROUS AFFAIR

  BY

  MALLORY MONROE

  Copyright©2018 Mallory Monroe

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  AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING

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  THE AUTHOR AND AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places, venues, or laws of various states are not meant to be exact replicas of those places or laws, but they are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.

  ALEX DRAKOS SERIES

  IN ORDER:

  ALEX DRAKOS 1:

  HIS FORBIDDEN LOVE

  ALEX DRAKOS 2:

  HIS SCANDALOUS FAMILY

  ALEX DRAKOS 3:

  WHAT THEY DID FOR LOVE

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

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  CHAPTER ONE

  “Where is he anyway?” Lucinda drank more beer. And belched.

  Faye laughed. “You’re drunk as a skunk,” she said.

  “Skunks don’t get drunk,” Lucinda replied, and took another swig. “But I’m serious, Kari. Where’s Alex? I haven’t seen him in a month of . . . whatevers.”

  “Sundays, girl,” Faye reminded her. “The phrase is: a month of Sundays.”

  “That too,” Lucinda said, and Kari laughed.

  But Faye was getting tired of Lucinda’s silliness. “You are so turnt up,” she said, shaking her head and folding her arms. “Turnt up!”

  “And what, pray tell,” Lucinda asked, “would make you say that? Just because I asked her a simple question?”

  “Because you know you saw Alex just the other day, Lou,” Faye responded to her longtime friend. “You and I both saw him together when he was last in town. So just quit lying about him never being here. He was here just last week! Besides, this is Ladies Night Out. We drink beer. We party. We tell tall tales just like the guys do when they get together. What would Alex look like at this club with Kari on Ladies Night Out? He’s no lady!”

  “But is he a man?” Lucinda asked with a finger in the air. “Or is he still the billionaire playboy, or whatever they call him in the press? That, my friends, is the real question. He should be here with Kari twenty-four-seven. Especially after what happened. He nearly broke Kari’s--” She belched again. “Heart,” she continued. “And he has the nerve to still be out of town on business every time you turn around?”

  The three friends were at a night spot in Apple Valley, Florida, where the food was good, the atmosphere was upbeat, and the crowd was festive. Lucinda was festive, too, and she wasn’t drunk. But she was getting there.

  And Faye, as usual, Kari thought, was rubbing it in. “One of the most respected businesswomen in all of Apple Valley,” she said about Lucinda, “and look at her now. Turnt up big time, I don’t care how much she tries to deny it. And she’s supposed to be our designated driver? Her?”

  Kari laughed, too, knowing full well Lucinda, given her love of the juice, would be the last person they designated to drive them anywhere. Not that she wasn’t a reliable person. She was. They all were: Lucinda owned a successful diner in town. Faye owned a successful real estate practice. And Kari owned a cleaning service that wasn’t as slam-dunk successful as the other two ladies’ businesses, but she was working on it.

  She was working her butt off to get it there, and she was determined to do so before Alex’s hotel and casino opened next year in town and she became, at his behest, his director of housekeeping. She was thrilled that he wanted her to work in his establishment, but she was receiving unrelenting blowback too. From the townspeople to the press, everybody had an opinion. The press was especially harsh, with more than a few calling it nepotism of the highest order because she was Alex’s fiancée.

  “The very definition,” one journalist actually said, “of sleeping your way to the top!”

  “The very definition,” Kari wanted to yell back at him, “of fake news!” Especially since she asked Alex to take her name out of contention for any job in his new hotel and casino after the very first time they slept together. But Alex nixed that idea himself.

  But the hate didn’t end there. Others, who weren’t playing the slut card, were playing the incompetent card, insisting that she was so “uniquely unqualified” to hold any position of authority in an organization that was poised to become one of the largest in the entire state, that it boggled their imaginations. “It would be like letting a child run your Fortune 500 company because she once ran a lemonade stand,” one news anchor had the nerve to say in a tone so condescending it angered Kari. But it made her all the more determined to prove those naysayers wrong.

  But Faye could see something else going on with Kari that night. And it had nothing to do with work, or those naysayers either. It was all about Alex. From what Faye could see, Kari was still reeling from what happened between Alex and that woman, and she didn’t seem to want to deal with the reality of that shit at all.

  But Faye wanted to deal with it. “Despite her inebriated state,” she said to Kari, “Lucinda makes a very valid point. Alex should be in town now more than ever. And not just because he has that casino construction to oversee. But he needs to show these noisy-behind residents that what happened with that woman wasn’t true, and you guys are moving on.”

  But Kari frowned. “He doesn’t have to show these heifers around here anything,” she said. “What happened was between Alex and me, not them. Was it painful? Hell yeah it was painful! But that’s between us. He doesn’t need to show anything to any of these biddies in this town because guess what? They aren’t going to believe him any
way.”

  “You then,” Faye said. “He needs to show you.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” Lucinda said. “That’s what I’m trying to say!” She jerked her long, weave-enhanced hair back and smiled. She was the only white woman in their threesome, but she was always the most opinionated. She believed what she believed and nobody was going to change her mind. “He should be here. No ands, ifs, or buts about it. He should cancel all trips overseas or wherever the hell he is, and be here with you, Kari.”

  Faye’s cellphone began ringing.

  “Of course, I don’t mean here in the literal sense,” Lucinda continued. “Faye is right. This is Ladies Night Out and no men allowed. And especially not a domineering man like Alex Drakos, thank you very much.” She drank more beer. “But I mean here, in town. He should be in town with you.”

  “What does this heifer want?” Faye was looking at her Caller ID.

  “Who?” Lucinda asked.

  “Ramona.”

  “Know-it-all Ramona? Put her ass on Speaker,” Lucinda said.

  Faye pressed the Speaker button on her cell phone as she answered the call. “This is Faye.”

  “Hey, girl.”

  “What’s up, Mone?”

  “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sometimes it cannot be helped.”

  Faye rolled her eyes. “What is it, child?”

  “It’s Benny. It’s your husband!”

  Kari and Lucinda both looked at Faye. Although Kari was viewed by most men in town as only okay-looking, as they liked to put it, Faye and Lucinda were viewed as drop-dead-gorgeous beauty queens. And Faye, with her striking dark complexion, her big green eyes, and her luscious hair, was viewed by many as the best-looking lady in the entire town! But for some crazy reason that continued to perplex her friends, Faye always behaved as if she was very insecure about her looks. “What about my husband?” she asked Ramona.

  “Child, let me tell you! He’s with this skank, okay? And when I say skank, I’m talking major slim. Major slut. I saw them at the mall talking car-to-car in that back-parking lot behind Dillard’s. Benny was looking around all nervous and acting like they were meeting up for some stupid shit, you know what I’m saying?”

  Faye said nothing. Kari and Lucinda were riveted too.

  “Well anyway,” Ramona said when Faye didn’t ask her to go on, “I just parked my own car, considerably away from theirs, of course, and looked. But all the while I’m thinking what-the-what? Why would Benny do this to a sweet girl like Faye?”

  Faye exhaled. “Just get on with it, Ramona,” she said. “What happened?”

  “This aforementioned slut gets out of her car and gets in his. What-the-what, I say again. And before you know it, she leaves her car in that back-parking lot and they take off. Together girl!”

  Kari frowned. Benny? Cheating on Faye? No way!

  Faye, however, had a different reaction. Her heart began to pound. “Who is she?” she asked. “You know who that bitch is?”

  “Alisha McKnight,” Ramona said. “You know I know her! And we all know that female has never been about anything good.”

  Kari agreed with that. Alisha was a mess! “Where did they go?” Kari asked.

  “Who’s this?” asked Ramona.

  “It’s Kari. Did you follow them, Mone?”

  “Oh, hey Kari! How are you girl? And you know I followed his ass. Faye is my friend too! And guess where they went?”

  “Where?” Faye asked.

  “Right straight to that house you have for sale on Hippa Street. Now I’m wondering: why in the world would they go there? Then I figured it out. It’s the only house on that dirt road. It’s isolated. It’s been staged for buyers, so it’s full of furniture, right? Namely a bed? And it’s isolated like I said. Why else would they go there?”

  Ramona was filled with questions none of them were answering. They were all too anxious to hear the rest.

  “And here’s the clincher,” Ramona said, giving them the rest. “When they get inside, they turn on a light up front and then turn it right back off. Then a light in one of those bedrooms come on. Then, within like a couple minutes, that light goes out too. The house is dark as night, girl. Dark as night! But they’re still in there. I know Benny’s an attorney and has shady clients and all. But what kind of meeting could possibly be taking place inside a house, at night, if they ain’t got no lights on? I’m no genius, which, I know, everybody would agree, but I have enough sense to know that something undercover is happening up in there!”

  Kari and Lucinda looked at Faye. Faye was just staring at her phone.

  “How long ago did this happen, Mone? And hey, girl, this is Lucinda.”

  “Oh, hey Lou! And it just happened. I literally just drove away from there. I didn’t want to have nothing to do with that messiness. That ain’t me. But they just got started.”

  And that did it for Faye. A chance to catch her man in the act was like manna from heaven for a woman like her who already had her suspicions about a great-looking guy like Benny. Besides, she never felt she deserved a man like him anyway. Maybe he felt she didn’t deserve him too! She ended that call quickly, and she jumped to her feet.

  “Faye, wait!” Kari and Lucinda jumped up too. “Faye? Faye?” But Faye had already grabbed her shit and was heading for the exit.

  “We’ve got to stop her, Kari,” Lucinda said as she was throwing her pack of cigarettes and a lighter into her clutch. “You know how she gets when Benny’s involved!”

  Kari didn’t want any part of some married couple’s drama. But Lucinda was right. Faye could go psycho on a bitch if she felt that woman was so much as looking at her man the wrong way. And Ramona just called and gave her real-time ammunition? Faye was respectable as respectable could get. She and Benny both were upstanding members of their community. But she could get down and dirty with the best of them if she had to. Kari and Lucinda knew it, and that was why they ran with sprinters’ speed after their friend.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They ended up in Faye’s BMW, with Faye behind the wheel, speeding toward Hippa Street. Lucinda was on the front passenger seat, trying to talk Faye down from the ledge she found herself perched, while Kari sat quietly in the middle of the backseat. She would have her say when Lou finished. But Faye and Lucinda had been friends longer. She knew her even better than Kari did. She let Lou take the lead.

  “We don’t know if Ramona’s even telling the truth,” Lucinda said. “You know how Mone is! Maybe you should call Benny first? Because think about it, Faye. How would he know how to even get in that house?”

  “He knows how to access the codes I have for every house I list,” Faye responded, and looked at Lucinda. “Sometimes he goes and check them out for me. That’s how.”

  “Maybe that’s what he’s doing now,” Lucinda said. “Checking them out?”

  “You heard Ramona. They turned on lights and then turned them off. Benny has great vision, but nobody’s vision is that great!”

  Kari’s cell phone rang. When she pulled it out of her jacket pocket and saw that it was Alex, she hesitated. They had had a rough time not that long ago, and that upheaval was still affecting a part of her. But the bigger part of her was always delighted to hear from him, and to know that he was okay.

  “Who is it?” Lucinda asked.

  “Alex,” said Kari.

  Faye glanced at her through the rearview, and Lucinda, who was sobering up fast, turned around and looked at her. “Put his ass on Speaker,” she said.

  But Kari wasn’t thinking about Lucinda. Unlike her and Faye, who were very talkative and open about the problems in their relationships, Kari was different. Broadcasting her personal business wasn’t something she readily did. She leaned back and answered, and she did not put her man on blast. Lucinda gave Kari the evil eye, but then turned back around talking with Faye.

  “Hey,” Kari said into her phone.

  “Hello.” It was that serene voice of Alex’s. “
What are you up to?”

  “Just hanging out with the girls. What about you?”

  “Perhaps I should rephrase that,” Alex said over the phone. “Where are you going?” he asked her.

  And it was only then did Kari realize that the security detail he hired to protect her, who made it their business to always stay out of sight, undoubtedly saw her leave with Faye. They followed her and gave Alex a heads-up. She’s leaving with Mrs. Faye Church and Miss Lucinda Mayes, they probably told him, and they’re leaving in a big hurry, as if something’s up. “I’m riding with Faye and Lou,” Kari told him.

  “You left your car at the club,” Alex said matter-of-factly.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to make sure Faye was going to be alright.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “Ramona, she’s one of our local gossip girls, called and said she saw Benny with some woman, and he and this woman went to a house Faye has on the market.”

  “So?”

  “It’s late at night, they apparently turned on the bedroom lights and then the whole house went dark, and Faye’s naturally concerned.”

  “Listen to me,” Alex said. “I want you to tell Faye to stop that car right now and you get out.”

  Kari knew Alex could be bossy as hell. And he seemed to have taken it up a notch now that they were engaged. But Kari also knew what she had to do. “I’ve got to make sure Faye is okay,” she said.

  “Lucinda can do that,” Alex said.

  “Normally she could. But she’s had one too many and she might not be thinking straight. I know Faye. She can go ballistic if she gets angry enough. I need to be here, Alex.”

  Kari could hear him exhale over the phone. He didn’t like it one bit. But she wasn’t exactly thrilled about going either. But if the shoes were reversed, the way they were just a couple weeks ago, she knew Faye would look out for her the same way too. “I like Benny just as much as l like Faye,” she said. “I’m not going to get caught up in their drama, or take sides, or anything like that if that’s what you’re worried about. I just want to make sure Faye doesn’t make more drama, or trouble, for herself.”