The Billionaire's Alibi: The Proposition by Maddy Raven Read Free Book Online Page B

the best option, even if it meant moving to one of the outer neighborhoods of Chicago.
    Her plan sucked, but it was better than her original idea. The night before, she’d mapped out her strategy: buy a Chicago transit pass, store her most valuable belongings in a safe place, and sleep in segments on the train in the evenings. Most of the trains took about two hours to go all the way across the city and back, and she could probably survive on three trips worth of sleep per night for at least a few weeks.
    During the day, she could hang out in the library or a coffee shot and use their free wifi to find a better job, a better anything .
    At least now she had a livable solution, even if it was a terrible one.
    She stuck her hands in the hoodie’s pockets and headed toward her apartment. She couldn’t take all of her belongings with her now, but at least she could get enough clothes to last a few days, along with other necessities: a toothbrush, makeup, a sensible pair of shoes. What she wanted more than anything was to get in and get out of her apartment without having to face Chase or his new girlfriend.
    Alexa slowed as she neared her street, her eyes focused on the group of people milling outside her apartment. Reporters? She wondered if this had anything to do with William Henry Harper. She had just met him yesterday, but it seemed like the cameras followed him everywhere. Was he that famous that reporters would stalk the people in his inner circle? Not that she was part of it, not really. She had only been photographed with him twice in the last 24 hours, but she knew all about assumptions. They would guess that she was a lot closer to him than she really was. Especially in her state, especially when she was doing the walk of shame.
    Her phone rang in her hand from another number she didn’t recognize. She’d been getting calls from blocked numbers all morning, but something about the crowd gathered in front of her building compelled her to answer this one.
    "This is Alexa."
    "Hi, Alexa," a woman's voice said briskly. "This is Morgan Cummings from Zoey Fromme. I'm calling to get a quote on the Vivian Palmer murder."
    "Sorry, the what?" Alexa stopped walking; her heart began to beat faster.
    "The Vivian Palmer murder," Morgan repeated. "I have it from an anonymous source that you were roommates with Vivian in college. I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Romo. You’re one of the last contacts in her phone, and we know you texted her at 9:23 PM last night."
    “Vivian is…" Alexa’s voice cracked as she trailed off, unable to say the word. It couldn’t be, she didn’t believe it—it had only been a few hours since she’d last seen her, spoken to her, hugged her.
    She sunk to the sidewalk noiselessly, her hands shaking. This had to be wrong. It had to be.
    "You didn't know about this?" Morgan asked. “It was all over the news this morning. I'm standing outside your apartment, waiting for you to come outside. The police will be here soon—"
    Alexa looked up, the proof right there in front of her eyes. If what Morgan was saying was true, Vivian had died in the early hours of the morning, after they had all drunkenly stumbled to their separate rooms. Vivian…murdered?
    She tried to remember the events of the night before—they had left the club around 3am, Will checking them into three rooms at the Regency. She hadn’t thought to look in on Vivian in the morning, but she had found Will passed out in the hallway near her door sometime in the middle of the night, as naked as naked could be. When she couldn’t wake him, she had struggled to drag him into her room and hoisted him onto the other bed, leaving him there to sleep it off.
    He had been there that morning when she left to run her errands.
    Did he know about Vivian yet?
    And if the cops were coming to her apartment, did that make her a suspect? She didn’t have an alibi—after the club, she had been in the hotel the entire night, with only one other person to