The billionaire's murderous lover

Chapter two

Guilty of Murder

Vincent

“I do not have time this morning for frivolities. If you have something to say, just say it and stop…” I had answered the call without bothering to check the name of the caller because I assumed that it had come from my girlfriend. I had not spoken to her in days, which was largely because she had been spending the last few days at a fashion show in Milan. I guessed that she had run out of money buying clothes and shoes she would never wear and was now calling because the card I had given her had reached its limit.

I had learned a long time ago that I could not trust her with a limitless card. I was worth billions of dollars now but there was a time, a very long time ago when my parents could barely afford to feed me three times daily.

My girlfriend, Elaine Summers, an A-list model and actress called me stingy just like the several others before her. I wondered why she had stayed with me this long. We had been dating for three months now and that was a new record. My relationships usually lasted between three to six weeks when they realised I was not willing to indulge their every frivolous purchase.

“Your father is dead, Mr Hearst, I am sorry…” but I was no longer listening. That was not the voice or the news I had been expecting to hear this Monday morning.

I stood in the middle of the parking garage and turned slowly to look at the 70-storey structure that was Briggs Incorporated.

I dropped the phone to my side as my eyes tried to glimpse the top of the building that my father had dedicated his life to.

I remembered when it was only a storey building and the idea that we would need seventy floors to house all of our offices in New York seemed far-fetched. But life was a b***h, he had not even lived long enough to retire. He had not lived long enough to enjoy it.

I heard the faint voice coming from my phone, the person had not disconnected the call. I put the phone back to my ear.

“You should call his wife, she will know what to do with the body,” I told the person at the other end of the phone.

“He listed you as his next of kin,” the voice sounded like it belonged to a woman but one could not be certain these days.

I laughed because just last week he had threatened to take me out of his will and have me kicked off the board of the company and now I was his next of kin?

“Call his wife, I want nothing to do with him, alive or dead,” I hung up after I said those words.

I walked towards the high-rise building and stood for several minutes at the main entrance, watching the revolving doors go on and on as people made their way in and out of the building.

My phone rang again and without checking the ID caller, I answered it. The second I did though, I regretted it. It was my father's fourth wife, Tiffany. I knew she was calling about my father but I was in no mood to speak to her. I was guessing the old man had died on top of her young body. However it had happened, I had no interest in knowing.

“He is your father! You have to come to the hospital, your father died…”

“You got what you wanted, didn't you?” I said it just to annoy her but the silence on the other end was no mistake. For a second, I was convinced that she had hung up.

“And what would that be?” she sounded as though I had just accused her of something.

“As his next of kin perhaps I ought to ask them to do an autopsy,” I said, trying to infuriate her. I expected her to scream at me and tell me to do whatever the hell I wanted to but she was quiet for some time.

“He died of a heart attack, why would you want to do an autopsy?” she asked. I did not miss the mild fear in her voice. It made me wonder if she was guilty of something. I mean my father had been in good health, at least good enough to scream in my ear every single day in the last month.

If I really thought about it, it was strange that he had died so suddenly. There was no reason he should be dead. Besides, he took his health very seriously. He always did a full body check-up every now and then. He tried not to have so many enemies and the enemies he had, he ensured they were not able to harm him by keeping them quiet forever. So a heart attack? The person who had called earlier to inform me of his death had not mentioned anything about a heart attack.

“A heart attack, huh? I guess I will know when the autopsy result is out,” I said into the phone.

“I already told them to proceed with cremation,” came her response.

My eyes narrowed at those words.

Cremation?

Was Tiffany Taylor hiding something? I was not close to my father but I knew that he found the idea of his remains burning in some death oven as he usually called it, absurd.

“Briggs would not have wanted his remains cremated,” I said to her.

“I think that…”

I ended the call and checked my call log for the number that had given me the news of my father's death.

I was put through almost immediately.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked the person.

“St Patrick's hospital, he was rushed here from his hotel room this morning,” the person spoke like he had expected me to call back.