Part 1 (1/2)

Justice.

A Billionaire Romance Thriller.

Lauren Landish.

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Justice is the followup series of Ambition, however you do not have to read it beforehand. Justice focuses on The New Generation-the children-and takes place just over two decades later.

”Five unarmed guys? Come on, that's barely a warm-up.”

Andrea.

Bad. a.s.s. B*tch.

The daughter of a hitman, I take sh*t from no one, even if it's a guy that's six-foot-five and looks like the hulk.

Only the biggest and strongest man can handle me, but little did I know he was right under my nose my entire life.

Carter.

Prideful. Patriotic. Protector.

I take no prisoners. You mess with me, my family or my city, you're going down. I'm as hard as stone, as sharp as steel.

But when it comes to my childhood friend Andrea, I might've just met my match. s.e.xy and stubborn to boot, there's only one type of man that can handle a woman like her and do her body JUSTICE.

Chapter One.

Andrea.

I love riding my motorcycle. Mom and Dad used to talk about how, back when they were my age, cars were different. You had to actually control them yourself, and the most a.s.sistance the car would give you might be cruise control and GPS navigation. But, starting three years before I could legally get a license, all cars nationwide had to be self-driving. Now, even if I was behind the wheel of a car, the only way I could take control would be if the computer had a malfunction, and even then the secondary systems would only allow me to drive it no more than a mile before the whole d.a.m.n thing shut down.

But despite the hard work of computer automotive geeks worldwide, they'd never been able to create a good system for motorcycles. The insurance was a rip-off for motorcyclists, that had been true for decades apparently. Then again, considering what I was doing, lack of insurance was the least of the concerns that could possibly cross my mind.

On my motorcycle, I was free. I felt like I was flying, or as near as I could be without leaving the ground. The wind bit at my cheeks as I twisted the throttle, my heart beating just a bit faster, a grin creeping across my face. There was nothing better than the feeling of being on my cycle.

”Andrea.”

Okay, there was one thing better, although it certainly took me d.a.m.n near long enough to recognize it. ”Yes, Carter?”

”Just checking in on you. You increased speed, and the scope back here wasn't telling me why.”

Carter McCaffery, my partner and fiancee, was back at the Bell Tower, what we called our headquarters for our vigilante enterprise. He'd twisted his ankle the day before in the gym sparring with Riley, my brother, and we'd decided that since I was only going on an intelligence run, I could handle it by myself.

Not that I was alone, hardly the case. Using the skills and system taught to us by our fathers, the original Snowman and Red Storm, we made sure that regardless of if we were working solo or out on the streets in a team, there was always someone back at the Bell Tower to back us up, providing intelligence and communications. While so far Carter and I had never needed it, listening to some of Dad's stories, I could see why. The streets were once far worse than they were today.

”I'm fine. Just enjoying the wind. I'll be ditching the bike soon to go up top, so I figured I'd enjoy it while I could.”

”All right. Just don't let your ego go writing checks your a.s.s can't cash.”

I rolled my eyes. ”Come on Carter, that wasn't even the correct quote, and do you really have to do that all the time?”

”You know it's just part of me. I can't help it that I was a latchkey child.”

I guffawed as I took a gentle right curve, knowing my fiancee was both right and wrong. ”Carter, you grew up with your parents right there with you every day. Never mind that Aunt Tabby was there too more often than not. I don't know many CEOs of major corporations who are able to take her son to Little League practice. You and I have never been latchkey kids.”

”Let me have my excuses at least. It's better than having to go to counseling stating that I just have applied far too much of my brain power to remembering fifty years of television and movies.”

I pulled into my target location, one of a half dozen so-called strike bases that we owned around the city, parking my cycle inside. ”Okay, I'll let you get away with it this time. But please, just try to limit the quips to stuff we've watched together.”

It was Carter's turn to laugh, as we both knew he'd subjected me to thousands of hours of television and movies in the twenty four years that we'd lived in the same house. I didn't pay attention to most of it though, since while Carter was absorbing everything from MythBusters to Rocky to Star Wars, I'd been the studious one. Not that Carter was dumb by any stretch of the imagination. He had the brains and red hair of his mother, and had actually graduated college at the same time I did, even though I was a year older than him. He just had that sort of sponge-like memory that allowed him to remember just about everything he encountered after only a single short exposure.

”Deal. Just remember I'm going to hold you to that.”

Inside, I found the last of the gear that I wanted to take with me that night. Because the Bell Tower was also the residence of two very public figures within the city - new Mayor Patrick McCaffery and his wife, Tabby McCaffery, who was the CEO of MJT Holdings - along with a ton of other secrets that made the Pentagon look like a Boy Scout troop, we tried to minimize the amount of illegal things kept there. When we went on patrol, we minimized what we wore that would identify us to the outside world.

I opened the vault that I wanted, which contained light weaponry along with surveillance gear. ”So what sidearm would you say I should take with me?”

”You know I love the phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range,” Carter joked with a laugh.

”Just what you see, pal,” I decided to return, catching the reference. ”But seriously, what would you say?”

”I'd go with the selective flechette pistol,” Carter said. ”You're not looking at taking anyone down, but it gives you the option if you need to.”

Carter had a good point. I looked over the nearly two dozen weapons on the wall, and picked out the flechette gun. It looked a lot like the Glock that Dad had carried when he was the Snowman, but with a thicker upper receiver. This was needed to carry the two different types of ammunition, which were slightly different in caliber. From the lower barrel I could fire lightweight stun rounds that would incapacitate anyone who wasn't wearing body armor or wasn't on some sort of drug. From the upper barrel I could fire heavier rounds that could penetrate up to an inch of concrete. You can guess what they'd do to a human being.

”All right, let's go with that,” I replied, slipping it into the holster on my left ribs. I preferred the cross body draw, always had. ”Then let's see, double check me here. Multi-spectrum camera, digital recorder, parabolic mike, short range sensors and standard personal load.”

”Go over the personal load, just in case,” Carter said, all business. It was one of the ways that I first came to know that he loved me. He never, ever allowed me to be flippant or careless about my personal protective gear. ”Check me off.”