Her Forbidden Millionaire

Chapter 5

Phoebe and Lincoln struggled to make eye contact for a few minutes after she stopped them in her kitchen. She bit her bottom lip trying to figure out what was going on. “We can’t do this, Lincoln.”

Lincoln knew she was right. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. It’s just that… and I can’t…” They both sighed at the words he couldn’t say. “I’m sorry, Phoebe. This was wrong. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“The kiss, that moment, it was great. But for one, you’re a client. Two, you’re keeping something from me. If I can’t trust you enough to even work with you, I certainly can’t trust you enough to be intimate. I’m not willing to risk my career for someone who won’t even risk a moment of truth with me,” Phoebe told him. Her words cut through him like a knife. “Just tell me what the Jimmy B. Vault thing is and I’ll either take care of it or leave it alone. That will be up to you, but first you have to be honest with me.”

Lincoln waned back and forth wanting to tell Phoebe everything but he decided against it. “Listen, I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you involved with this thing at all! Just let me handle this one personally and you can take care of everything else.”

“I’ve already been hurt, Lincoln,” she mumbled, trying to fight back her tears. She told him about the mugging that happened earlier that day when she went out check out the address. A sense of queasiness began to drown Lincoln as he thought of all the horrible things that could have happened to her and Pam.

“I promise I’ll fix this, Phoebe. Please just give me the time to do it. I don’t want anything else happening to you. I’m so sorry,” he apologized profusely to her. “I feel like sh*t. I’m going to tell you everything. I just have to fix it first. Just let me fix it.”

Phoebe didn’t know what else to do or say to Lincoln. She couldn’t help him do anything until he told her everything that was going on. But he couldn’t even do that. He promised he would tell her but not at that moment. He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and left her apartment. She spent the next hour or so on the phone with Pam really trying to figure out what Lincoln wasn’t telling her.

“I’m telling you, girl. It’s probably some drugged up family member that he’s taking care of and wants to keep it out of the spotlight,” Pam assured her.

“I’m not too sure about that,” Phoebe disagreed. “I wish you could have seen the look in his eyes. He was scared or something. There’s got to be more to this than a moocher. That’s not a secret worth keeping.”

“You’re probably right, but what?” Pam asked. Phoebe sighed not having an answer to the million dollar question… well the $150,000 question.

“I’m going to figure this one out. I have to!” Phoebe slammed her hand on the table. “There’s no way I’m about to let him send whoever he’s sending that money to another payment. Not on my watch! I promise you this, girl, if it’s something real juicy and I can get Lincoln to sign off on it, I’ll make sure you get the exclusive.”

“Thanks, girl, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.” She chuckled. “Why don’t you let this Jimmy B. thing go for a while? He has an entire file of fu*ked up sh*t that needs to be fixed, right?”

“Yeah,” Phoebe admitted hesitantly.

“So do that! Fix the other stuff first and then come back to it. At least this way you’ll give him the time he needs to fix whatever it is and then tell you about it. Give the man a chance to fix it. Maybe it really is something you, nor the firm, need to be involved with. I mean all of the signs we got today says this ain’t some simple thing you can just check off your list of things to do.” Pam was making too much sense for Phoebe.

Phoebe had no intentions on letting it go, despite what both Pam and Lincoln told her. She was going to figure it out before he sent out the next payment. If her math was right, Lincoln had been making these payments in operating costs to Jimmy B.’s Vault for the last eight years. She wasn’t sure if it was something illegal or not. She was leaning more towards the not since it had been going on for so long, but she couldn’t completely rule it out. Something was going on and she was determined to get to the bottom of it, no matter how much danger she put herself in.

“Okay, girl, I’ll think about it,” Phoebe told Pam before hanging up the phone. They both knew Phoebe wasn’t going to just sit by while Lincoln’s finances collapsed. Who knew what else he was hiding?

Just as Phoebe began to get herself ready for bed, her phone rang again. She answered it without checking the number thinking it was Pam. “Listen, girl, I promise I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“You better not, you bi*ch!” The raspy voice sounded familiar. It was the same voice from the number she dialed earlier. The same number that led her to the house in Grover Pines.

“Who is this?” she asked as she pulled the phone away from her ear to glance at the screen. It was a blocked number. Phoebe’s heart began to race as her eyes darted around the room to every dark space and shadow, thinking someone was watching her.

“This is your worst nightmare, bi*ch. You’d better step off this Gold sh*t. You ain’t got nothing to do with it and if you want to keep it that way, I suggest you relax and stay out of other people’s affairs. Wouldn’t want you getting hurt or nothing like that. I mean, unless you like getting hurt, you want to tell me how you like to get hurt? Tell me what you want me to do-”

Phoebe hung up the phone before the caller could finish taunting her. She was scared. The curtains blew in front of an open window and she nearly jumped out of her skin. This was the first time someone had threatened her. This was the first time she’d ever felt unsafe and violated in her own home. The night ahead would be the longest night to get through. It took her hours to shut off her mind and finally get some sleep.