Unwanted Heat

Nicholas

“Carter, I want a full background check on Mackenzie Rose first thing tomorrow morning,” I request as soon as the car pulls away from the club.

“Sir, we already have a full background check on her. We can review it once we are back at the condo.”

“Why do you have a background check on Ms. Rose? I don’t recall requesting one.”

“You didn’t, sir,” he confirms. “After I learned her identify at the bakery, I had Asher run a full background check on her. At the time… sir… well, I wasn’t sure of your intentions, therefore I thought it would be beneficial to have it ready if you ever decided to make contact with her.”

“I see. Were you aware that I was meeting her tonight?”

“Not exactly sir. I attempted to obtain that information from Mrs. Wilder but she refused to provide me with any information. Without knowing who you were meeting tonight, maintaining security measures were going to be difficult. I had Asher monitoring the club’s security cameras beginning half an hour before your scheduled meeting. It was not until we left PFS did I receive a text alerting me who the woman you were meeting tonight was after Asher identified her from the background report I asked him to run on Ms. Rose a month or so ago.”

Mackenzie was the last woman I expected to be the woman Bridget arranged for me to meet tonight. When I thought about what type of woman might decide to become an escort, I never once pictured Kenzie as that woman. I’m still not entirely sure what I think about her and this situation; everything about her until now has told me she is not interested in money, yet her reason for becoming an escort was money. Of course she has dreams which require money and I was pleased to learn it was education related and not something crazy like plastic surgery or to buy a bigger house.

It’s still hard to wrap my head around the thought that she is the type of woman who would accept money in exchange for a date. I can’t help but wonder if her innocence is all some act, but at the same time that innocence was there the night we met her on the sidewalk after the rain storm. If I believe her, she had no idea who I was that night or even tonight, although I’m sure as soon as she gets home tonight she will be on google, finding out everything she can about me. She will not only learn that I’m one of New York’s youngest billionaires but she will also have the opportunity to read everything the media has written about me including when they rake my name through mud over my personal life. Ever since the plan my PR department came up with backfired, I have been attending events solo which of course the media still thinks means I’m hiding something but at least I don’t have to hear about why I bring a different woman to each event.

I’m hoping this arrangement with Bridget is the solution to my problems with the media. I hope that once they see I have the same woman attending events with me, they will forget the idea that I’m hiding something and will stop digging into my personal life. Asher has completed full background checks on Bridget’s company and as far as they can know, she only provides consultation services to different companies along the east coast. They weren’t able to find any trace of her running an escort service or any other type of business. If it was out there, they would have found it. Besides Carter, no one knows about my arrangement with Bridget. Asher believed he was doing a background check for a possible new customer I later changed my mind about. I try to keep my personal life separate from my work life and this is one of those things that no one at PFS needs to know about… hell no one needs to know about.

“Carter, my office,” I request as we enter the condo.

“Yes, sir.”

He disappears into his suite off my apartment before coming into my office with a manila folder which I can only assume contains the full background check of Mackenzie Rose. Carter is very good at his job and this is just another example of knowing what I needed before I knew it. I should have known he wouldn’t take me past the bakery every day on our run without having completed a full check on Mackenzie.

“Sir,” he hands the folder to me. I quickly take it but before I can open it I am reminded about what Bridget said about certain information needing to remain confidential and my promise not to access the information through the background check. I’m tempted to just say fuck it; that I need to know everything about Mackenzie if I’m going to move forward with this arrangement. Surprisingly though, I hand the file back to Carter electing not to learn the information that Bridget said her staff require remain private.

“I’m not supposed to know her address, phone number and emergency contact information,” I sigh. “It’s part of the arrangement so we both maintain our privacy.”

“I see,” his face tells me he is surprised that I’m not requesting the information anyway.

“Tell me what’s in the file. I can’t know exactly where she lives, but does she live in the city? Does she have any roommates that I need to be concerned will find out about this arrangement?”

“Sir, she lives alone according to the information we were able to obtain. She rents a very small, studio apartment in a less desirable neighborhood-”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

“Less desirable meaning what exactly?”

“Let’s just say sir, that I would not be comfortable going into that area without being armed-”

“It’s that bad?”

“Even with an increase in police presence around that area, the crime remains very high.”

“Why the fuck does she live there?”