Chapter 10
Coming back from a boat like the Marry Me, with a crew of twenty-five, was like
being Cinderella after the ball. For two weeks, every crew member had been at
Mickie and Alex’s beck and call, waiting on them constantly, seeing to their comfort,
making their every whim and wish come true. They knew just when to disappear, being
an impeccably trained British crew, and the boat had every imaginable comfort and
luxury. They were unfailingly discreet, and they would magically appear to provide yet
another treat or service and then disappear again until needed. Mickie had never
enjoyed anything as much in her life, and Alex had finally relaxed with Mickie’s
incomparable prowess in bed and ability to satisfy him beyond his wildest imaginings.
It was the perfect combination of sex and luxury, lust and fun, excitement and relaxation.
By the second week, they wanted to stay forever, and decided not to invite guests, and
enjoy it on their own.
Lying on the sundeck one day, with a mojito in her hand and Alex next to her, gently
stroking her leg, Mickie said with a sigh, “I want a boat like this.” When he glanced at
her, he could see that she meant it. She looked dreamy and determined.
“You need a Russian oligarch boyfriend for that, or maybe a Saudi prince, not a
plastic surgeon from L.A.,” he said, smiling.
“Can we charter it again?” she asked with a sigh.
“I think so . . . I hope so.” It had cost him two million, a million a week, because it
was the holiday season. Off season it might cost a little less, and he had the Korean
money ready to spend to set up the Dallas center. He had dared to spend that much of it
for their pleasure because he had other investors in his sights who were sure to come
through before he needed the money in Dallas. He had talked to some major investors in
L.A., and a young tech genius from Silicon Valley, and he had another Asian group who
wanted to meet with him when he got back. He had just gotten a text confirming a
meeting with them a few days after he got home. Money had been pouring in for the past
few months, and if he made a deal with the Chinese when he got back to L.A., he would
have more than enough money to spend a million for a week on a boat with Mickie. She
was getting used to the good life quickly, at an astronomical level, which he wanted to
attain too. They had similarly luxurious taste. Alex wanted to start a line of high-priced
beauty products, specific to antiaging. It was a lucrative market, particularly in Asia.
Products sold for anywhere from six hundred to a thousand dollars per unit, and
endorsed by a doctor and properly marketed, he and his investors could make a fortune.
“What does it cost to buy a boat like this?” Mickie asked, curious.
“I don’t know. I’m guessing maybe fifty million. You have to have a hell of a lot to
spend that kind of money, and maintain it. Boats are money pits,” he said. Several of his
patients had yachts, and had invited him on them for a day or a weekend. Most of them
kept their boats in the Caribbean in the winter and the Mediterranean in the summer. It
was a lifestyle he and Mickie both enjoyed and would have no trouble getting used to.
Meals that were perfection, swimming in the sea, having sex in a secluded corner of the
deck under the stars at night, a never-ending river of champagne, massages whenever
they wanted them, a crew dedicated to their every whim. It was easy to see why Mickie
loved it, and so did he. The art alone on the boat was worth more than the boat itself.
“It’s a long way from Iowa,” she said, smiling at him, and he laughed.
“I grew up in a wealthy family,” he said, “but it’s a long way from Palm Beach for me
too. It gives us something to aspire to,” he said. He told her about the meeting with the
Chinese then, and she looked puzzled.
“Why do you need more investors?” she asked him.
“So I can buy you a boat like this one day,” he quipped, and then looked serious.
“You can never have too many investors, or too much money. I want to start a line of
high-end medically approved antiaging beauty products. There is huge money in that
market. The group we’re meeting with from Hong Kong is worth billions. They’re
heavily invested in luxury brands and lifestyle. The Koreans were just the beginning.
Beauty is a big market there. The Hong Kong boys are broader scope and more global.
My little center in Bel Air is peanuts to them.” He had reached out to the Hong Kong
investors himself and they said they were interested. “You can’t tell anyone about any of
this, Mickie. No one. Not even your sister. Especially about our Asian friends. The
Korean group has very diverse investments and they don’t like anyone knowing their
business. We don’t want to upset them. They can be very tough to deal with. The Hong
Kong group is more refined, but you never know what rivalries exist between them.”
“I don’t tell Billie anything. She doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand anything at this
level. She couldn’t even imagine it. She’s happy with her little job and her little life and
her snotty boyfriend. He doesn’t ‘approve’ of me. You can smell it. He’s such an
asshole.”
“You don’t need them in your life, forget them,” Alex said dismissively. “They’re
inconsequential people. You have me now, and all this.” He waved grandly around him
and Mickie agreed. She didn’t miss her father, or her mother, and if it came to that, she
knew she wouldn’t miss Billie either. It had just been convenient to have her come out
so she could keep the apartment. But she didn’t need her anymore, with Alex in her life.
Alex had intended to ask Mickie to marry him while they were on the boat. He would
have done it if he thought he was at serious risk of a court case, but by the second week
on the boat, he had regained his perspective and the two women in L.A. threatening to
bring charges against him seemed very far away now, and very small in the scheme of
things, at the level on which he was operating. If they got too strident, he would settle
with them. That would keep them quiet forever, and he could afford to buy them off with
the investment money he was pulling in. No one was going to listen to their pathetic
claims, and they couldn’t prove anything. It wasn’t his fault if they’d had a bad reaction.
Things happened in the practice of medicine that you couldn’t always predict. And
marrying Mickie seemed like too big a response to a situation that might never be a
problem. Lying in the sun, being waited on, floating on a superyacht in turquoise water
with a drink in his hand and a gorgeous twenty-year-old girl perched on top of him
made the two complaining women shrink to nothing in his mind. It didn’t warrant a hasty
marriage, which would cause other legal problems. Marriage had never been a goal for
him, and he knew it wasn’t for Mickie either. He was willing to be generous with her,
but not give her half of everything he had, and people challenged prenups and
sometimes won, or got big settlements. Alex didn’t want to take the risk, and decided
against a proposal, which seemed unnecessary to him. He was no longer panicking, and
he stopped thinking about the two women halfway through the trip. Money was power
and he had a lot of it now, and he was well on his way to more, and nothing was going
to stop him and slow him down.
When they finally left the boat, reluctantly and with regret, having their own plane to
take them home made the reentry process a little less painful. They weren’t sitting on
their suitcases on the dock, they were flying home in the utmost comfort, to see the Hong
Kong group a few days later. Mickie was all prepped to look spectacular and not say
anything during the meeting or to anyone after. Alex was using her as window dressing,
and proof of his talent, and nothing more. She was like a billboard by the side of the
road.
One of their security guards picked them up at the airport with the Bentley. When they
got home, Mickie unpacked as Alex went down to the office to check his mail. He was
feeling relaxed and healthy, after swimming in the sea every day, and exploring beaches
with sugar-fine sand.
When he got to his desk, he saw another registered letter. The head security guard had
signed for it and placed it on his desk. The first two letters had panicked him, the third
one didn’t. He glanced through it, and it was more of the same. The woman claimed to
have been permanently disfigured by liquid silicone injections. It had gone to her lungs
and she’d nearly died. Alex was blasé as he read it. Who would believe her? She was
some little housewife in Pasadena whom no one knew. He never had patients sign
releases because he didn’t want them knowing what was in the injections. It was his
own personal magic, and the less they knew the better. He put the letter in the locked
drawer with the others, and he went back upstairs to Mickie, lying on the bed in a pale
pink transparent negligee watching TV. She asked him what he wanted her to order for
dinner.
“You,” he said simply, took his clothes off, dropped them on the floor, and joined her
on the bed, much to his delight minutes later.
Later that night, on the day Jason told Billie about the accusations against Alex Addison,
he brought her up-to-date over dinner in the kitchen, since the investigation hadn’t
started in earnest yet. He considered it part of the initial warning.
He made pasta and a salad, and looked somber as he told her what he had
discovered.
“I found out that he doesn’t have a California license to practice medicine, which is
stupid of him. It’s probably just laziness, and he thought he’d get away with it, since he
has such important clients. Or it could be negligence, but that seems unlikely. I’m sure
he knows he needs a California license to practice medicine legally in the state.
“The second thing I found out today proves him to be a liar, which is more disturbing.
He never went to Harvard, undergrad or medical school. I called a reliable source and
he checked the alum records. Addison probably went to some unknown medical school
somewhere, which wouldn’t impress anyone, so he got two fake Harvard diplomas and
stuck them on the wall. He could probably be charged with fraud for that. Together, no
license to practice in California and the fake diplomas doesn’t make him look good,
especially in light of the gravity of the accusations. Three women’s lives are ruined
because of him. And the authorities can’t even pull his license since he doesn’t have
one. I’m sure he’ll have some lame excuse, but the few facts we have don’t play in his
favor.”
“What are you going to do now?” Billie asked him, and he looked pensive.
“I’m not sure. If we hit too many roadblocks, we’ll have to turn it over to the police
sooner than I thought. They have much better access than I do, and the guy at the records
bureau had a point. If Addison has a felony on his record somewhere, unrelated to his
practice, or medicine at all, he would lose his license, so that could be why he has no
license. The Harvard thing is really disturbing, because he flat-out lied. I have to figure
out what to do next. I need to talk to my boss, and let him figure out when we reach out
to the police and ask for their help. I wrote to the Bureau of Records in Florida, to see if
he had a license there, but it could take weeks, or months, to get an official answer if
they’re slammed, and I tried to find it online, and couldn’t find a record of his license
from when he practiced there. The cops can get it a lot faster.” It was an upsetting
situation, and Billie worried about her sister all night.
A fourth letter arrived on Joe McCarthy’s desk that week, similar to the first three,
which told both Joe and Jason that they were right to be investigating Addison, and
another letter came by the end of the week. It was no longer a case of looking for the
source of the smoke, it was turning into a good-sized fire, and heading toward an
alarming blaze. Jason told Joe about Addison’s lack of a California license, and what
he’d heard from Harvard. Added all together, there was no way to turn back now. They
had to press forward and get to the bottom of this.
Jason told Billie about the additional letters. There were five irreparably damaged
women now, all injured around the same time, which supported the theory that Addison
had unwittingly bought a batch of counterfeit Botox, and in addition was using illegal
liquid silicone. It was odd that none of his important clients were complaining, and
Jason wondered if Alex was aware that he’d gotten a bad lot of the counterfeit
substance and used it on less important clients, and only used the good stuff on the
highly visible patients with celebrity status, but that idea was so cynical that even he
didn’t believe it. It seemed more likely that the use of the counterfeit drugs had been
accidental and had caused a sudden explosion of tragic injuries, for which Alex was
responsible and would have to face the consequences.
And knowing what she knew now, Billie was sick with worry for her sister, and had
nightmares every night.
Alex had gotten the fourth and fifth letters too, and added them to the three in the locked
drawer in his office. He still didn’t know what to do about them, but the police hadn’t
shown up, and the media hadn’t contacted him. He was still hoping that the damaged
women would disappear into thin air. Approaching them with a settlement offer was
much too dangerous and would be an admission of guilt. They could ask for a fortune,
which would wipe out every penny he had from investors, including the Koreans. He
couldn’t risk it. He just had to lie low and hope to hell they disappeared, and didn’t go
to the press or the police. It added a constant layer of tension to his life. He tried to
pretend it wasn’t happening while treating his patients, and Mickie and her own special
brand of magic was the only thing keeping him sane.
As he had with the Koreans, Alex orchestrated the dinner with the investors from Hong
Kong to perfection. Perfect menu, perfect wine, perfect setting at the Chateau Marmont.
They were more international and polished than the Koreans had been. The Koreans had
been a little less sophisticated than he’d expected, although very smart in business. The
Hong Kong investors had been introduced to him by a big money man in L.A. whom
Alex respected. They were elite and high-end, brilliant with their investments, and very
interested in the beauty industry. If they came through for him, he would be rolling in
money shortly. Making sure the evening went well distracted him totally from the letters
in the locked drawer in his office, although he was concerned that he must have bought a
bad batch of Botox, some counterfeit, without knowing it, and was grateful that none of
his important clients had suffered the same effects.
He had told Mickie what to wear. He wanted her in dressy black Chanel. More class,
less sex, and lots of elegance and charm. She was a chameleon and could adapt to every
situation, and had so far.
“If we play our cards right, I can take you on another boat trip,” he teased her while
they were getting dressed, and she emerged from her dressing room in a dress he hadn’t
seen before, a subtly sexy ladylike black Chanel dress that was strikingly chic. She had
done her hair in a loose bun. She looked young but very grown-up, and she looked
fabulous in the dress. She was sensational in everything she wore. And she had the
perfect instinct not to say too much.
They arrived early at the private room at the Chateau Marmont to check everything
out. Alex had ordered flowers, which decorated the elegant private dining room, and
there was a terrace for their use. There were four men this time, all dressed elegantly in
Hermès ties and impeccably tailored suits from the best tailor in Hong Kong, and they
were beautifully groomed, spoke perfect English, and included Mickie in the
conversation, which the Koreans hadn’t. As the evening progressed, it became clear that
they wanted to invest in Alex’s future antiaging product business, which would require
technical research, but they also wanted his consultation to set up an enormous beauty
center in Hong Kong, where his formulas would be used. There would even be a fivestar hotel where people could stay while they were getting treatments. The investors
wanted it to be a complete beauty experience combining Western and Asian techniques,
with Alex designing it all.
The head man glanced at Mickie several times and addressed his comments to her as
well. They had a very clear vision of what they wanted, which would be a lot for Alex
to deliver. It was a huge operation compared to the personal, individualized, smallscale style of Bellissima, and the men were willing to invest twenty-five to thirty
million dollars in the project, possibly more. Alex was nearly dizzy with the scope of
their plans and the money he could make. The Hong Kong investors wanted to fund a
large-scale operation, and expected it to make a fortune. Alex would have to regularize
his treatments so that they were less individually designed, and others would have to be
trained to administer them. It required some thought as to how he could pull it off. They
wanted to know if Mickie would be interested in spending time in Hong Kong as well.
Alex gave her a quelling look, willing her not to give them a definite answer, until he
had time to figure out how to do it. Perfectly on cue, she charmed them without
committing to anything definite.
Alex promised to give their proposal a great deal of thought, to see how he could take
on such a large project without losing the individualized treatments he was famous for.
He explained to them that no two treatment plans were the same, just as no two women
were the same. They suggested computerized programming, and communication where
he could be present at every consultation by Zoom, at least at the outset until he felt
confident that the staff could handle it without him when he wasn’t there. It was an
interesting concept and a leap into big business. Alex wanted to make big money, even
billions eventually, and these investors were the right people to make it happen. He had
read about them online, and their reputation was pure gold.
The evening ended on a strong positive note, and Mickie looked at Alex in awe on
the way home. He had driven them there himself in the Aston Martin. As they left, one of
the Hong Kong men had smiled when he saw the car and said he had the same model,
and they had talked cars for a few minutes.
“Wow,” Mickie said as they drove away. The Hong Kong investors had come to the
meeting in a chauffeured Rolls. They weren’t afraid to show their wealth. “That sounds
like some project. Do you think you could do it?” It was so much bigger than what they
were doing in Bel Air, which had a warm personal touch on a tiny scale compared to
what the Hong Kong investors envisioned.
“I’d sure as hell like to try,” he said, as awestruck as she was. “It’s a big leap from
where we are right now. Two or three years from now I know I could, at the rate we’re
growing, but they’re anxious to get started. How do you feel about spending time in
Hong Kong with me?” he asked her. She was an essential part of his life now, in every
way. He had never intended to become dependent on her, personally or professionally,
but she was so adaptable, and good at what she did, that he realized he was relying on
her, far more than he ever wanted to be or thought could happen. She was a clever girl,
more than he had ever suspected in the beginning when he thought she was just a pretty
face and a great body. She had a brain that moved as fast as his own, and at times was
even more devious. The Chinese investors were aware of the importance of her
presence too, and at the end of the evening, had given her their business cards, just as
they did to Alex. They would have been stunned if they knew she was twenty years old.
“I’d love to go to Hong Kong,” she answered him. She was afraid of nothing. There
was no risk she wouldn’t take, but she was also smart and looked out for herself. She
had never been out of the country, except on the boat to St. Bart’s, and she loved the
idea of spending time in Asia.
“We’d almost have to commute for a while,” he said pensively. He was trying to
make the mental leap from Bellissima to what the Hong Kong investors had proposed.
“Can you do that and keep your patients happy here? And what about the center in
Dallas? That’s quite a stretch,” Mickie commented.
“I have to figure it out.” The Hong Kong investors wanted to speak to him again in a
week or so when he had given their proposal some thought.
He was in high spirits when he got back to the house, and Mickie was excited too.
She had been fascinated by their vision and everything they said. Alex had a lot of
figuring to do.
Mickie was taking off her dress in her dressing room, when she got a text from Billie.
“I need to talk to you. When can I see you?” It sounded urgent, and Mickie was
annoyed. She didn’t have time to spend with her sister. She had more important things to
do. She texted back “Why?” and Billie responded, “It’s important.” And then followed
up with, “Alone and not at your house.” Mickie had no intention of inviting Billie to the
house. She looked like a student on a road trip. She didn’t fit with Mickie’s new image.
Mickie was living at a higher level now, and Billie didn’t fit into that picture.
“The bar at the Bel Air Hotel, six P.M. tomorrow. Okay for you?” Mickie answered
her. It was near the house and she didn’t have to go far.
“See you then. Thanks. Love you, B.” Mickie hoped she didn’t have a problem and
wasn’t asking for money. That wasn’t usually her sister’s style, but it sounded urgent.
She had no intention of sharing the windfall that might be coming her way as part of
Alex’s project in Hong Kong, or even the check that he had given her not to return to
Stanford, a treat Billie knew nothing about. Mickie was having a bikini wax at seven
and she didn’t intend to stay with Billie for long.
Billie wanted to talk to Mickie just once, to try to warn her that there was a storm
ahead, without violating Jason’s confidence. She wasn’t sure what she’d say, but she
wanted to warn her sister to get out while she could. Mickie had no idea what was
coming. From her perspective, things were just getting good, and she had no intention of
going anywhere. She wanted to cash in when Alex did. The good times were coming.
She had waited all her life for this. And so had Alex.
