Baby Trouble: The Spy's Secret Family. Cindy Dees

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       Chapter 4

      “May I help you, sir?” The receptionist at the swanky Boston law firm was predictably beautiful and efficient.

      Nick replied, “I’m here to see William Ward.”

      “Do you have an appointment?”

      “No, and please don’t tell him I’m here. It’s a surprise.” He flashed his most charming smile at her. He wasn’t vain about his looks, but very few women could resist him when he turned the charm all the way up.

      She simpered something about being delighted to help. He waved off her offer to show him the way and strode down the familiar hallways. A feeling akin to déjà vu passed over him. This place was from another existence, another life, familiar and yet entirely strange to him.

      He stepped into Ward’s office and the man glanced up. “Sweet Jesus!” he gasped, falling back in his chair heavily. “Is that really you?”

      Nick closed the door and stepped up to the desk. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, William.”

      “My God. Where have you been? The things they said about you—”

      Nick propped his hip on a corner of William’s expansive desk. “What did my kidnappers say to explain my absence, anyway?”

      “Kidnappers?” The lawyer stared, aghast. “The reports said you had a mental breakdown. Had to be institutionalized. There were doctor’s statements. Psychological evaluations. Pictures. You looked like hell.”

      “Lies. All of it,” Nick said shortly.

      William’s shocked pallor was giving way to a sickly shade of green. “Was our power of attorney over your estate illegal, then? What about your signatures on all those sales documents?”

      “What documents?”

      “The ones signing over your company to the new management group? Were those real?”

      “I never signed anything, to my knowledge.” He hoped. Surely he never would have signed away Spiros Shipping under any circumstances.

      It took William a few seconds to quit spluttering and form words. “Please forgive me for asking, I mean no disrespect. But have you been in a sufficiently … alert … mental condition for all of the past six years to know for certain that you never signed any legal documents?”

      Nick swore under his breath. God only knew what he’d done during the blackout years. “I’m actually not here to talk about my company. And to answer your question, I was kidnapped and imprisoned for five years. It has taken me most of the past year to recover physically from the ordeal.”

      The lawyer devolved into a shockingly uncharacteristic bout of mumbling to himself. Poor guy must really be shaken up. Eventually, William collected himself enough to go into attorney mode. “I’m going to need an affidavit from you describing exactly what happened to you in detail. I don’t have any idea how we’re going to contest the sale of your company. It’s going to cause a massive uproar to try to get it back—”

      Nick interrupted the man sharply. “I don’t want it back. That’s not why I’m here.”

      William stared blankly. “Why are you here, then?”

      “I need you to tell me about the last two years before I … disappeared.”

      “I beg your pardon?”

      Nick sighed. “It’s a long story, but I’ve experienced a memory loss as a result of a blow to the head. I need your help to fill in the gap.”

      “Are you serious?”

      “As a heart attack.”

      William nodded dubiously. “I’ll do what I can.”

      The lawyer started talking and Nick listened grimly. He’d thought if he heard about the lost time it would jog his memory, but none of the names or places or dates rang any bells. His memory wasn’t just buried. It was truly gone. The danger of the black hole loomed even larger as the true depth of it became clear to him.

      “I can get all these facts off the internet, William. Tell me what I was like. How I was acting.”

      The lawyer spoke of Nikolas growing bored with running a company that functioned like a well-oiled machine pretty much on its own. Of his forays into ever more dangerous hobbies—skydiving, extreme skiing, boat racing, Formula One car racing. He’d apparently blown through a string of beautiful and ever wilder women as well. He’d become a regular on the pages of the European tabloids. And there’d been the partying. Ward didn’t say if he’d dabbled in drinking or drugs, just that the lawyer had been very worried about his longtime client.

      Finally, he fell silent.

      Nick didn’t even know where to begin processing the information dump he’d just received. It was odd to hear about his own life and feel so completely disconnected from it. Nothing the man had described would account for the pervasive terror that was the only thing he’d carried forward from that time. Nick asked grimly, “Was I—Did I … get married?”

      William looked surprised. “There were rumors of a quickie wedding just before you disappeared. But I hadn’t seen you for a few weeks prior to that. I couldn’t say.”

      Rumors of a wedding? Nick swore under his breath. “Do you know how I came by the Nick Cass identity?”

      The attorney cleared his throat. “During that time, you occasionally preferred to travel under an alias to avoid the publicity and scandal you were generating.”

      He had no memory of being assaulted by paparazzi. “Where did the fake ID come from?”

      William visibly squirmed at that one. “For the record, I arranged no such thing. I put СКАЧАТЬ