Free Criminal Love: A Billionaire Romance by Monique Hodge

Criminal Love
    Part 1
     
    Hadley West checked
her gun, making sure that the blanks were in place rather than the actual
bullets her older sister had given her before they boarded the cruise ship. The
weapon felt like a dead weight in her hand. She should have been taking finals
at college, but instead she was sitting in a small cabin in the Gulf of Mexico
as her criminal family prepared for the biggest heist of their lives.
    “Cheer up,” her
sister Piper said, cracking her knuckles. “Just imagine the cash we’ll be
swimming in after this. You’ll be able to afford med school no problem.”
    Unlike the
mild-mannered Hadley, Piper and the rest of Hadley’s family reveled in their
life of crime. Hadley looked around. Her mother and father were standing over a
schematic of the boat, no doubt stolen from one of the emergency evacuation
maps in the hallways of the ship. She hoped it would not be needed, but then
again, her family had a way of inviting disaster wherever they went. That was
why Hadley had decided to come along, and she had managed to keep them in check
for the first five days of the cruise.
    Tucker, her
younger teen brother, stood at the door waiting for his twin Tanner to come
back from scouting out their target. Tucker stood on his toes and peered out
the window. Everyone in Hadley’s family was eager for the night ahead. Eager to
take on Jackson Ward, the billionaire oil tycoon whom the West family were
going to extort a small fortune from.
    But all Hadley
wanted to do was curl up on the bed and pretend that she was back in New York.
The last thing she wanted to do was threaten to kill a man who was wealthier
than some third world countries. If she was being honest, and Hadley usually
was when she could, she was scared of what Jackson could do.
    She thought of
the last five days and the reconnaissance she had done for her family. She had
followed Jackson from a distance. It wasn’t difficult to spot him; he was
handsome. Almost six feet tall, blonde tidy hair, deep blue eyes, and a
perfectly tailored suit. He was every woman’s fantasy.
    But the moment Hadley
saw Jackson she knew they were making a gamble.
    Hadley still
remembered the way he moved from bar to bar on the ship, playing as hard as he
worked, but that wasn’t what set off her inner alarm. Nor was it the two
trained bodyguards that trailed him everywhere he went.
    Jackson knew he
was being followed.
    The
twenty-one-year-old college junior ran her finger across the barrel of her
pistol. It was cold and metallic. Cruel. And that is what she saw in Jackson’s
keen gaze as he scoped out each room he entered.
    As well as the
number of times his gaze fell on Hadley, questioning what a nerdy looking woman
in denim shorts and a tee shirt was doing in the shadows of everywhere he went.
She wasn’t sure if he had seen the other members of her family, but she knew he
had seen her. Really seen her.
    Hadley hadn’t
told her family, but it had been a challenge to not meet him. As much as
Hadley had followed him, he seemed to have followed her. When Hadley was free
from reconnaissance and spent time on the lower decks, normally populated only
by middle-class tourists, not the VIP passengers from the upper deck, she found
him peering down at her from the balcony.
    It wasn’t
subtle. It was predatory.
    And Hadley had
no idea what he wanted.
    Does he know
what we plan to do? Hadley wondered. Or does he know I want something
from him?
    No man went from
being the son of an impoverished ranch-hand to the CEO of an oil company
without knowing a thing or two about the world. Even if he had made his fortune
sincerely (and Hadley doubted it), he would know when he was in the midst of a
con.
    But if Hadley
was being even more honest, what she was most scared of was what she could do
to him. The weight of the gun was a weight on her heart, but it wasn’t the only
one. She was scared of what she wanted to do with him.
    She liked the
way he looked at her. It was