Filthy Rich Alpha - Virna DePaul Page 0,13

starting with those that discussed his professional journey.

He was a self-made man, like so many Wall Street moguls. He got respect, according to what little she could dig up on him. Insider comments on business blogs tagged him as a street fighter and someone who’d been ruthless throughout his meteoric career. From the boiler room, he’d gone on to routine deals for a tiny trading firm to founding his own investment company only a few years later. He had done it all, starting with municipal-bond funds that penny-pinching grandmas trusted and moving on to billion-dollar deals with shady Russian oligarchs.

She tried searching for information about his early years, before he’d earned himself the nickname the Duke, but she was coming up empty until she found it—a picture of him at around seventeen or eighteen. Still mesmerizingly handsome, just much younger.

She rested her hands on the laptop briefly before visiting the page, staying in the images black box to study Branden’s senior yearbook picture. The big caption over the photo said it all: his classmates had voted him Most Likely to Exceed the Speed Limits of Life.

She squinted at the fine print under the picture, puzzled for a second.

“Holy shit.” Cara sat bolt upright, dragging the laptop onto a pillow to bring it closer. She enlarged the image just to make sure she’d read it right. She had.

It said Davies, not Duke.

The name Davies sent a shiver up her spine, and a memory of her father, shoulders hunched and defeat drawn all over his face, slid unwanted into her mind. Carl Davies was the name of the man who’d taken the money Cara’s father had been accused of stealing and built his own fortune before serving a meager handful of years in a clubhouse prison.

Granted, Davies was a common enough name, but was it possible Carl Davies and Branden were related?

More likely Branden had simply wanted to change his name to something more stately, right? Or maybe he was hiding from some kind of scandal? If so, he wouldn’t be the only one.

Cara herself had changed her name from Finch to Michal, her mother’s maiden name, before leaving for college. As much as she’d loved her father and hated what had so unfairly happened to him, she’d also needed to separate herself from the scandal that had followed his death as much as possible, if only for professional reasons.

Cara started Googling again, trying to come up with a connection between Branden and Carl Davies, but again and again she came up empty. She was just about to enter another search when her phone rang. Her mother’s number flashed on the caller ID and Cara answered. She greeted her mother, then could tell by the sound of her mother’s shaky response there was a problem. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh nothing. Well, my property taxes. I just found the form under a lot of junk. It’s more than I can pay right now,” her mother said shakily. “You know how it is, end of the month.”

Which was when her mother was most likely to call. Janine Michal Finch had never gotten her life together after her husband’s death. It was as if her broken heart had broken her spirit, too. She tried to make ends meet, but her health was bad and inevitably she’d miss too many days at work and get fired. Money management was a foreign concept for her—Cara’s dad had been the breadwinner and the one in charge of the budget and finances before he’d died. Her mother had accepted her financial dependency then, and now, too.

How different her mom was from the vibrant, cheerful woman Cara remembered from her youth. A woman who’d put on disco music and dance in the kitchen with her kids. A woman who once convinced her husband to drive them in an old Chevy across the country just to see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. A woman who could make cannolis like nobody’s business.

Cara couldn’t remember the last time her mother had made cannolis. But it had to be before her father died.

Cara bit her lip and blinked back the sudden rush of moisture in her eyes. Life was what it was now. Her mom was who she was. They were alive. They had each other. That had to be enough. “I’ll take care of it, Mom.”

“I’m sorry I let it slide. I can pay you back.”

“No. Just get caught up. I can cover it.”

There was no use in offering financial advice or suggesting