A/N: Thank you all for the wonderful reviews yesterday and the encouragement. I appreciate it. A few things to look forward to in the next few days outside of Falling Undercover. I was a featured author in the Days of Fifty One Shot Challenge. I will be posting my one-shot once they last author is posted there. Grey Vitals is getting an update this week! Also, I'm possibly taking a NaNo break this weekend to work on a one-shot inspired by ihootie. She gave me a small idea and I want to run with it.
It was brought to my attention yesterday in the form of persistent negative reviews, that readers are under the impression that I never finish anything. I'm disappointed that readers feel this way. I've tried to keep updates coming on my stories, but NaNo is my focus this moment. Some of you aren't reading the A/Ns though I'm told, which are also too long apparently. There is important information here. Frankly, I'm tired of guests being upset because I don't update as often as they should. I have a life outside of FF and my health to worry about. Yes, I pulled Submissive Beginning when it was at a critical moment, but as the writer it is my prerogative to do as I wish with it. I have been stuck on where to take the story to achieve the ending I want. After the verbal abuse I endured from guest reviewers over the lack of update I pulled it. This summer I plan to rework and change a few things so that I can get the story to the ending it deserves.
Those sticking with me, LadyChamp, you are all the best.
Laters
Five years. Anastasia Rose Steele had been working non-stop for five years. Last week Forbes named her the second richest American under forty. She was the top female on the list. The second female was listed at number seventeen. Steele Holding Enterprises has been a success from the get go. She knew it would be, as did her father. When she started, her number two, Hannah Vaughn, was her only other employee. She purchased a failing personal securities company, upgraded their technologies and then sold it for more than double what she paid. Their second acquisition was a shipping company. She paid pennies on the dollar and tripled her investment when she sold it off in parts. From there the company grew and grew. The main focus at SHE is communication and technologies. Next week, they'll be branching off into the world of publishing. Seattle Independent Press will become Steele Publishers. Yes, Anastasia Rose Steele was worth billions. Not Bill Gates Billions, but close to Mark Zuckerberg billions. She had all kinds of cash and no one to share it with.
Ana didn't usually regret the lonely life she lived. She was an all work and no play kind of gal. She knew she was pretty, gorgeous even. She made bi-monthly visits to the salon and spa to get her hair trimmed and treated. Her skin was porcelain smooth. She was a perfect size four, a tiny hourglass figure with curves in all the right places. She had many admirers, but she was never interested. Ana spent her college years fighting off advances so that she could double major and graduate on time. She felt she didn't need many of the classes she took, but they were required for her degree and a degree was a must. On the night of her high school graduation, Ana discovered that her estranged mother's great aunt had left a sizable inheritance for her. She could use it to pay her way through college and when she had her degree in hand she could have the rest. If she quit school before graduating, she forfeited the millions to charity. That inheritance had bought her first brand new car and given her and Hannah the startup money they needed for SHE.
Grousing about her lack of a love life did Ana no good. She'd been on many a first dates, compliments of her matching making best friend Kate Kavanagh. Most ended before dessert was served. Multiple men felt she should pay for dinner since she was clearly the breadwinner at the table. One man even offered to skip dinner all together and take her to his playroom. That's when she learned what BDSM. He spent weeks trying to coax her into being his newest submissive, but she wasn't having it. Ana had one sexual experience and though she had no memory of the events of that night, the Portland Police Department had the evidence in case she ever wanted to press charges.
Five years. In a few weeks it will have been five years since that shitty graduation party. Ana shook her head trying to clear the melancholy cobwebs from her head. She needed to focus. In two hours she was meeting with Kate, who coincidently was her PR director. Ana had poached Kate from the Seattle Times after her first run in with the paparazzi. They'd printed a picture of her with her step-brother and tried to sell a story of her and a married man having an illicit affair. Kate stepped in and issued a press release, along with a photo of the two dressed as wonder woman and batman for Halloween when they were in fifth grade. If Zack Webber wasn't off playing Marine pilot in Beaufort, South Carolina, he would hold the title of best friend, not Kate.
Three days after they graduated high school, Zack enlisted with the Marines, and had confirmed a scholarship to the U.S. Naval Academy. By the end of his senior year, he'd declared he was going to attend flight school. He graduated a week before Ana and they were able to spend nearly twenty-four hours with him before he boarded a plane for Pensacola. Zack and Ana were near twins, even though they had completely different parents. They had identical chestnut hair. While her blue eyes were more of an azure color, his were a darker cobalt. They both turned red after twenty minutes in the sun. While Ana was on the petite side, Zack had six inches and about hundred pounds of muscle on her. He was a broad-shouldered babe magnet, not that it mattered to Zack, he married his high school sweetheart in the summer before his senior year. Six months later, Maggie was born.
Ana risked a look at the photo frame to the right of her computer. The triple photo frame included her whole family. The middle picture was a photo of Ana, Zack, and her father Raymond Steele and his wife, Zack's mother, Vicki. The photo on the left side of the frame was the latest family photo that Zack's wife, Pam, had sent. Maggie was getting bigger and her red curls matched her mother's perfectly. The photo on the right was a picture of her and Kate. It was from their junior year, when Kate had finally convinced Ana to spend a little of her inheritance on something other than school and books. For the first time and after about ten invitations, Ana joined the Kavanagh family at the home in Barbados. It was a week filled with sun and rum and little string bikinis.
The knock at Ana's door brought her out of her head. She didn't get the chance to answer before her head of security for SHE walked in. Luke Sawyer was the only hold over from the first securities company she bought. When she was preparing to sell it, he asked to take a month off and then come work for her. She jumped at the chance. He didn't even ask for a raise in his current salary. She loved Luke like another big brother, but lately he was pissing her off. Ana was an independent woman and use to doing things her way and without chaperones. However, for the last six months he had been pushing for her to hire a close protection officer. She had tried to appease him last year by hiring a dedicated driver. She actually liked being able to sit in the back seat wherever she went. It allowed her to work on her phone while she moved from point A and point B.
"Ana, we need to talk. Andrea says you're free." Ana took a moment to pull up her calendar window to verify what she already knew. Andrea knew her schedule better than she did.
"What's up Luke?" He looked pensive and she could see he held an large manila envelope in his hand. Her curiosity was peeked even more when he sat in the chair across from her desk. Luke didn't take his normal relaxed pose, he was brooding and staring at her like he could strangle her. Ana wasn't sure what it was, but she was close to admitting she was the one taking his kcups from the executive break room.
"You need to let me hire a CPO. I'm tired of this tough girl shit. If you don't agree to let me start looking, I'm calling your father and your brother." Ana was the one brooding now. Something bad had to be in that envelope, but she was going to call his bluff.
"Zack is on mission. You're more likely to get Maggie when you call his phone. Dad can talk till he's blue in the face, but he knows that he can't make me do anything." Luke watched her, his expression never changing. He was a freakishly tall human being. Ana called him the vampire because he reminded her of the viking vampire from one of her favorite book series. Luke was 36 and had a swimmer's body. He kept his blond hair cropped on the sides and longer on top. His mood usually determined which way it was combed. Today it was combed to the right. That meant he was pissed.
"Either you let me make the call today or I'm calling Mama." If there was one person in the world that could get Ana to do anything it was her stepmother. Vicki Webber Steele had been a godsend in Ana's life. When her mother packed up in the middle of the night while she and her father slept, she spent a year thinking she had done something wrong. Vicki had met Ray at the one and only PTA meeting he ever attended. It was love at first sight, and Ana knew how lucky she was. Her stepmother was a better mother than her egg donor had ever been. Vicki is the one that kissed her scraped knees. She talked her down when she first started experiencing PMS. Vicki is the one that told her it was okay if she wanted to attend Harvard or Yale and be so far away from the family, but it was okay if she wanted to be close to home as well. It also helped that Vicki's son was one of her few friends in class. Vicki knew what buttons to push and how to guilt trip her into anything.
"What happened? You only play the Mama card if it's serious." Luke sat back in the chair watching her intently. He crossed his right leg over the left, resting his ankle on his knee. His left hand held the envelope holding the package he had received from the mail room only moments before. Luke had handled some of Ana's mail before. From marriage proposals to death threats. None of them had been like this though.
Tossing the envelope on the table, Luke looks at Ana. He's been with her at SHE for a little more than four years. They had become fast friends. He saw her has a little sister, and if he could find another him to run the day to day stuff, he'd become her new shadow. He never wanted to see anything happen to her, but it was hard to convince her that she wasn't made of Kevlar.
Ana snatched the offending material off her desk. Luke had her thinking the worst. Maybe they were being sued over the deal she backed out of last month. That had to be it. When she opened the flap the expected a neat stack of papers. Instead she found a misshapen pile of photographs. Dumping the envelope on its end and spilling the contents across the desk, Ana tries to hold back the bile threatening to escape her mouth when she saw the used condom in a plastic baggie.
Ana ignored the offending piece of latex and instead tried to focus on the photographs. The scattered mess caused her a moment of alarm as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. They were photos of her from over the last five years. She knew they were at least that old because there was a one photo that was long range from Zack's graduation at the academy. Another was from a charity gala she attended two years ago. Some were of her running everyday errands. Ana could date most of the photos because of her style of clothes.
"I admit, this is weird, but nothing to require a CPO over." Ana had seen similar photos in the gossip rags when she bought her Ben and Jerry's on Wednesday nights.
"Maybe this will light the fire under your ass finally. It was inside as well." Luke tossed a smaller envelope, about a 5"x7" size. Luke had his Hulk face on and Ana really didn't want to look inside. She made no attempts to pick the envelope up and look inside. "So help me Annie, if you don't open that envelope and agree to let me make a call, I will walk out of here and I'll send a car to bring Vicki up here. Look in the damn envelope Anastasia." Shit, he had used Annie and Anastasia. He learned that trick from her father.
With shaky hands, Ana opened the smaller envelope. She was perplexed at first. There were ten photos inside. One after another she saw the scared faces of small brunettes that bore a striking resemblance to her. The last photo was what had her shaking. It was a photo of her from this morning, running. She remembered thinking someone was following her and kept looking back over her shoulder. If it as just her photo she would think that it was like the others. But her face had a bullseye drawn around it. TURN OVER had been written in bold marker. When she flipped it over, she read the message. You're next. You'll end up just like them. DEAD. I've waited five years for you bitch.
Ana gulped and looked at Luke. She could see the fear in his eyes. Fear for her. She'd never seen that look before. She was scared. If this guy had been following her for five years, and harmed these other women as he claimed, she could be in some real trouble. "Make the call Luke."
