Caught in the Billionaire’s Embrace(39)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

For a moment, Marcus thought Della was going to fight the other man’s edict. Her back went ramrod-straight, her eyes flashed with anger and her hands doubled into fists. Then, as quickly, her entire posture changed. Her shoulders rolled forward, her gaze dropped to the floor, her fingers uncurled.

“All right,” she conceded softly. “I guess it’s inevitable.”

“And, Della,” Geoffrey said, bringing her attention to him. “I want the cell phone that we gave you. You’re not to have any contact with the outside world until after the grand jury hearing. And you’re going to be assigned a twenty-four-hour escort in New York—no, two twenty-four-hour escorts in New York,” he hastily corrected himself, “until the powers that be say it’s okay to cut you loose into the program.”

“The program?” Marcus asked.

Now Geoffrey turned to look at him. “WITSEC,” he said. “The Witness Security Program. You might know it better as witness protection, thanks to our good buddies in Hollywood,” he added with more sarcasm.

Marcus looked at Della. “Is that true?” he said.

She continued to study the floor as she replied. “Yes.”

“You’re going into the witness protection program?”

“I told you I had to start over somewhere new, Marcus, where no one would know me. Where I had a whole new identity.”

“I know, but I thought…”

Now she did look at him. “You thought what?”

He struggled over his words. “I thought…I mean, I just figured… After everything that happened between you and me…” He halted, took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Witness protection means you’ll never be able to contact anyone from your old life,” he finally said. “It means I won’t have any way to find you. Not even my guy with the contacts could find you there.”

“What guy with the contacts?” Geoffrey asked, turning suspicious again.

Marcus ignored him. Della still looked at the floor.

“Della,” he pleaded. “Don’t do it.”

“What guy with the contacts?” Geoffrey repeated. “If he knows how to get past government smokescreens, we need to know about him.”

“Then you can question me at home later.” Marcus ground out the words without sparing the marshal a glance.

“Oh, we will, Mr. Fallon. We will.”

Della remained silent.

Marcus knew there was no way he would be able to find her once she disappeared. It was obvious that Geoffrey’s concern for her went beyond what a federal marshal would undertake. From the moment he’d crashed into the kitchen, there had been an unmistakable air of paternity about the guy. He was protecting Della the way he would protect a daughter. Marcus might as well be doing battle with a mama polar bear.

“Della,” he said again, “please. You and I need to talk.”

“Not tonight, you won’t,” Geoffrey assured him. Then, to Della, in a much gentler voice, he said, “Go pack your stuff. I’ll call around and find another place for you. A place that’s safe,” he said, looking back at Marcus, still obviously not trusting him.

Della lifted her head and looked at Marcus, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I—I just…I can’t—” She shook her head. “Goodbye, Marcus.”

And then she was off the sofa and disappearing into the hallway. Unthinkingly, Marcus stood to follow her, but a heavy hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Front door’s that way,” Geoffrey told him. “Use it.”

Marcus didn’t have much choice but to obey. He took two broad steps in that direction, but stopped to look down the hall. There was a light on in one of the bedrooms at the end, and he could see Della’s shadow moving around in front of the lamplight. That was all she was to him now—a shadow. Just as he’d been before she came into his life, Marcus was back to being alone.

No, wait, he realized as the thought formed in his head. It wasn’t like before at all. Because before, Marcus hadn’t realized what he was missing. Before, he hadn’t recognized the emptiness, because he’d been able to fill it with mind-numbing carousing and willing, if faceless, women. Before, Marcus had been able to delude himself that he had everything he could possibly ever want and that his life lacked absolutely nothing. Before, he had been able to pretend that he was happy and contented. But now…

Now he really did know what happiness and contentment were. Because those were the things he’d felt when he was with Della. Now he knew how full, how fun, how fantastic his life could be. Now he understood how much more enjoyable it was to share life with someone else. He realized that loving someone wasn’t just something a person did, but how being in love was something a person was. Marcus was in love with Della, and that completed him as a human being. It was something that brought him greater joy, greater peace, than he ever could have imagined. With Della gone…

Well. He would still be in love with her. He would always be in love with her. But with her gone, so went a part of himself. A part she would always keep with her, but a part he would never have back. Not unless he had Della.

And Della would be someplace where the feds would make sure she was never found again.

Although the grand jury hearings lasted less than a week, they seemed even more interminable and emotionally draining than the eleven months Della had spent cooped up in Chicago. Because she was the only witness the federal prosecutors had, her testimony took up the majority of the time, and she spoke for hours every day, until she thought she would run out of voice and words and nerve. By the end of the proceedings, all she wanted was to escape into her new life where she would be left alone.

Until she remembered that being alone would mean, well, being alone. If only she could take Marcus with her…

But she couldn’t do that. What made things more difficult was that, even after the grand jury hearing concluded, she still wouldn’t be left alone—not yet. At some point, she would have to return to New York to repeat everything she’d said. Because the grand jury had been given an overwhelming amount of evidence against Whitworth and Stone and a number of its highest-placed executives. They would, without question, rule that the case go to trial. A trial that would involve the same star witness—her. Only then would she be able to slip back into her new anonymity. Only that time, it would be forever.