Billion Dollar Murder Read online

  Table of Contents

  EPILOGUE

  EPILOGUE

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  © Copyright 2018 by Sloane Peterson - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Billion Dollar Murder

  By: Sloane Peterson

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  EPILOGUE

  EPILOGUE

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  1

  Johnathan

  She was so light, so insubstantial in my arms as I held her that night. Looking up at me with those delicate blue eyes, her mother's eyes- not the muddy brown pools sported by her father. The thought brought tears welling up to the surface in spite of myself. As grateful as I was to have this reminder, this remnant of a past that was taken from me, it pained me to think that I would spend the rest of this little girl's days thinking of nothing but those eyes, and where they'd originally come from.

  My throat burned, and I could feel a stray tear making its descent along my cheek as I tried to be strong for her.

  Julie. My pride and joy. The crowning achievement of my life, far above my wealth, my privilege, and all that those things entailed. I felt like I might never let her go. Like I might hold her there forever, cradled to my chest, ensuring that nothing in the world ever got the chance to take her from me.

  It was the sweetest thing in the world, watching her struggle to remain awake. Those baby blue eyes creeping shut, then springing back open again. Like she, too, wanted to stay here with me for as long as possible, like she understood something that had taken my entire life, and this beautiful angel's own birth for me to understand.

  How easily it could all be taken away, and how crucial it was to make the most of every waking moment with the people that mattered to you...

  At last, though, the struggle to remain awake proved too much for her. She closed her eyes and let out the gentlest little sigh, all but confirming for me her status as a wingless, earthbound cherub. I very carefully leaned in, and placed her down among the softness of her bedding. A pink blanket decorated with cartoon images of monkeys and elephants. A gift from a mother she would never meet, but whose memory I had every intention of instilling in her with every passing day.

  I tucked her in, smiling at the warmth of her tiny body against my skin, thinking I'd never felt so close to another living being. I combed my fingers to the silky fuzz of her hair, thinking I might never grow tired of that angel soft texture. I leaned in, and planted the gentlest of kisses on her forehead.

  The magical scent of a baby's skin hovered in my nostrils, and it was all I could do to pull myself away again. I stood there watching her sleep for a while, hovering at the foot of her crib. I could have stayed there forever, dedicating every waking moment for her, but I knew there were other things I needed to do before I went to bed. Work-related things, some research for the following day. As much as I would have loved to spend every second by Julie's side, I knew it was just as important that I ensure she was provided for. That for the rest of her days she would never again have to worry about a thing, and that she would always have the resources to make whatever dream happened to drift into that pretty little head of hers come true.

  I switched on the baby monitor, then crept like a shadow from her room, and the warmth of its intimacy.

  The safe feeling I'd had over me the entire time I was with Julie quickly faded as I stepped out into the hall. I sighed, gazing down the hallway of my mansion. So vast. So cavernous. So excessive.

  For years, I'd imagined sharing this place with the love of my life. I'd imagined filling the halls with children and making good use of every square foot of this sprawling palace. After all, I'd gotten to a point in my life where money was proving to be of very little reward for its own sake. What was it all for if not to provide for the people in my life I adored?

  The whole place felt haunted to me at times. The memories materializing around every corner, every room I entered into. The meals we'd shared in the dining hall, the dinner parties we'd thrown. The bed we'd shared together, so vast, yet the two of us taking up little more than the coziest space in the center, our bodies tangled as closely together as they could be. The sofa, I thought with a devilish grin, where we'd first made love. We'd been drinking that night, getting to know one another. I think my intention had been to bring her up to the bedroom, but we'd both been so turned on, so desperate for it.

  I took her right there on the spot, in the middle of the living room. Her body so soft, so warm. Her legs opened up around me, my body pressed deep inside her as she shifted in my lap, drawing me to such great heights. Heights that no man deserves to reach, but to which she alone brought me through the purity of her love.

  I shuddered with the memory. I hated dwelling on the past in this way. I hated being a prisoner of such beautiful experiences, knowing well that I would never know them again. But it was like this entire house, and every one of the walls that surrounded me. I should have sold this place by now. Should have moved on with my life, and set all this pain behind me.

  But I was too addicted to the sweetness of it all. Too attached to the things that had hurt me so badly, and unwilling to even consider the possibility of leaving it all behind. Maybe I needed to do just that, but I don't think I could have, even if I'd tried.

  This had all become normal for me on these late nights around the house. Thinking I would come home from work and get more done, but unable to think of a damn thing in the world save for the demons of my past.

  I tried to muster up my resolve, knowing that it wasn't good for me to keep doing this to myself day in and day out. I continued down the hall toward my office, already trying to focus my attention on the matter at hand. Running figures through my head, trying to do some makeshift calculations.

  When suddenly I was stopped in my tracks. Frozen to the spot by the sound of a scream, ringing out, piercing the otherwise total silence.

  I held my breath, and listened, my mind spinning.

  It sounded an awful lot like my housekeeper, Celia, but I'd sent her home about a half hour ago. Then again, sometimes it could take her husband Stan an hour or longer to get here and pick her up. Sometimes I offered to give her a ride if she needed one, but I'd been so exhausted from my day when I got home that I forgot to even ask whether this was the case.

  I listened for a while longer, but then decided it was foolish to just stand around and wait for something more to happen. I made my way for the stairs at a brisk pace, and was halfway down along them when a sound even more harrowing rang out in my ears.

  The sound of a gun being fired...

  I stood there, my mouth agape, somehow certain before I'd even made it outside exactly what this meant. Acting on autopilot now, and foolishly abandoning any concerns for my own safety, I bolted to the front door, and rushed outside.

  There they were.

  A woman, clearly Celia, stood pressed up against a man in a mask, a gun pressed firmly up ag
ainst her stomach. I almost couldn't believe it. It felt as though I'd stepped into some nightmare. That the world I now saw around me was totally divorced from the one I'd come to know, and that the two planes of reality bore no genuine resemblance to one another.

  I gaped in amazement, struggling to believe what was taking place right before my very eyes. I felt a sudden rush of fear, thinking that at any moment the man standing there might turn on me. That he would fire before I had the chance to even think about responding, and Julie would be left forever without both a mother and a father.

  I was surprised, though, when instead the man seemed to freak out at my arrival. He jerked his head around to face me, his face covered by a ski mask, but I saw his eyes flash wide at me in the darkness. It was like killing my maid was no big deal to him, but now that he had a witness he was far too deep in over his head.

  A sudden flash of movement and I braced myself, thinking this was it. But no, he wasn't firing at me. He was running away, casting Celia down and racing off like a bat out of hell. My middle-aged housekeeper tottered on her feet, then began to slump over, her legs buckling out from under her. I rushed over to grab her, catching her in my arms before she hit the ground. I felt the warmth of her blood against my skin, and realized as her limp form bore down on me that there was nothing left to protect.

  All the same, I ushered her down to the ground, her eyes vacant, her lip still trembling, but all hope seeming lost. I looked up again, horrified, and saw that the son of a bitch who'd shot her was making a break for it, several feet away from me now as he ventured off into the night.

  It surprised me further still when I saw the gun go flying from his hand, and the thing clattering to the ground. Like he was sick of it now that it had been used, and he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the weapon as possible.

  “Hey!” I barked at him. I leapt forward without thinking, not willing for one instant to let this bastard get away with what he'd done. Looking back on it now it was totally foolish. Totally the wrong decision, when I had that beautiful little angel waiting for me in the house, depending on me for survival.

  I simply couldn't help myself. I'd just watched him murder my housekeeper in cold blood. Celia, a kind and faithful woman who'd been in my employ for almost seven years now. She'd gotten to the point where she was almost like family to me, and I couldn't let her death go by unavenged.

  I was determined to stop this worthless criminal no matter what the cost...

  “Get back here you son of a bitch! Come back and face me like a man!”

  I was so eager to stay caught up with him, I didn't even think of stooping down to retrieve his gun from the spot where it had fallen upon the ground. I honestly don't know what I was thinking I might do in the event that I caught up with him. What if he had more weapons on him? What if I made it up to him only to wind up with a knife in my gut?

  But I was too pissed, too raging mad to think of anything but seizing the twerp in my arms and breaking his neck the moment I got my hands on him.

  He raced along down the driveway leading toward my house, and I trailed after several feet behind him, squinting into the darkness as I tried to remain fixed on his movements. His body would disappear for moments on end into the indiscriminate darkness, then reappear several feet away from the place I'd been expecting it, putting me constantly on edge.

  My driveway led out toward the road through a small but dense crop of forest, and the moment I set foot beneath its thick canopy the moonlight dimmed overhead, making it nearly impossible to keep track of him. I heard the continued skidding of feet against earth, but I was too overwhelmed by the sound of my own breath to keep track of the location of his footsteps.

  I came grinding to a halt after nearly a minute of running through the trees, needing to figure out where the hell he'd gone. I was panting like a bitch in heat, and the crickets were chirping steadily in my ears, but otherwise the night was silent around me. There was no sign of the killer anywhere, and each moment that passed in hopeless pursuit of him made my blood grow colder and colder.

  All I could do was put one foot in front of the other, holding my breath, keeping my cool as best I could. I felt like a hunter, or some predatory beast stalking his prey. That's practically what I was, as far as that was concerned. I didn't feel that inclined to show this guy mercy in the event that I got my hands on him, and he might have preferred being pounced on by a wild animal over what I felt I might do to him.

  That would all be a moot point, though, if I didn't figure out where this guy had gone, and fast.

  I crept clear to the end of the driveway, nearly out from beneath the trees toward the spot where my property met the road beyond. There didn't seem to be any sign of this man anywhere, he'd just disappeared like an apparition...

  But then suddenly, out of nowhere- WHAM!

  I cried out at the feeling of a heavy weight being dropped on me, knocking the wind out of my lungs as I toppled beneath his weight. He'd been waiting in the trees for me, probably lurking right before my eyes without my even realizing it. I slammed into the ground and my chin bounced on the pavement, but I knew I didn't have the option of surrendering to the pain.

  I jerked back around almost instantly, pushing my legs up and scrambling to throw him off of me. He growled as I knocked him to one side and sent him falling down onto his hands, his thighs still twisted into mine. I tried to use this to my advantage, locking him in place as I lunged across the ground at him. I wanted to try and whip that ski mask off of him, so that in the increasingly likely event he got away I might at least get a good look at him to identify to the police.

  Too late, though.

  KRACK!

  “Ah, motherfucker!” I shouted, blood streaming from my nose. The motherfucker in question had just elbowed me right in the face, blinding me with pain.

  He pried himself free of my grip in the haze of my distraction, leaping unsteadily up onto his feet. I tried to push through the agony, leaping up after him and grabbing a hold of his shirt. He threw me back with a sharp hook to my still aching jaw, and at that point it was nothing but a lost cause.

  I twisted through space and cracked my head dangerously hard against the trunk of a tree, and that was about the end of the story for me. I tried to keep my eyes open, but slumped to the ground as lifeless as Celia had been.

  Pain raced through my body. Hope drained away as I faded toward unconsciousness, and I was certain that at any moment my attacker would finish me off, putting a bullet through my brain and putting me out of my misery. All I could think about was Julie. How I'd failed her. How I would never get to see that beautiful girl grow up to become a woman. What her life might be like without me.

  The end, however, didn't come that day.

  The last thing I was conscious of was the sound of a car engine starting, and it was enough to make me jerk my head up. I saw the blurred form of a black rectangle with lights on either end receding into the distance. I squinted to try and make out the license plate number, but even if I'd been fully with it, it was far too dark to make anything out.

  The next thing I knew the blackness had overtaken me. Everything disappeared, and I became lost in a deep, dreamless sleep.

  I awoke to the chill of the cold night setting in around me. I had no idea just how long I'd been out, but the temperature had dipped considerably since the last I knew. It took me a moment to piece together all that had taken place to lead me to this point, but I started panicking the moment I had the picture reassembled.

  “Julie!” I shouted, and ignored my body's painful warnings as I sprang up onto my feet, and rushed back toward the house. I swerved around Celia's body, which was now as lifeless as I'd feared it would be. It felt wrong leaving her there, but my daughter was my top priority, and I didn't think law enforcement would want me meddling with the crime scene any more than I technically had in trying to disable the perpetrator.

  I bolted into the house, afraid to a degree that was almos
t irrational. I was strangely relieved when I heard the sound of crying, coming through the baby monitor in the kitchen. It was heartbreaking, of course, but tears meant that things were normal. Their absence would have been the real cause for concern.

  I took a deep breath, and turned the volume down on the monitor as I picked up the kitchen phone to dial 9-1-1. I had a feeling I was going to have a long night ahead of me, but the sooner I got this out of the way, the sooner I could be with Julie, and rock her back to sleep in my arms.

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?” the shrill female voice rang in my ear.

  I stammered, struggling to find the words I needed to even describe it.

  2

  Veronica

  God, I was nervous.

  I would have been nervous for any job interview, but this was no run of the mill position I was applying for. This was me, interviewing to become the new housekeeper for widowed billionaire Johnathan Heyman, after his old housekeeper had been gunned down in cold blood right outside of his luxurious mansion.