“I know what I owe you, and if you’d let me, I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Everything I said to you before about the family legacy is all true, but it’s no excuse for the way I handled things back then. I’ve known that for a long time, had even thought of coming to you time and again, but by then you’d started hiding from me.”
He had the nerve to give me an accusing look. I rolled my eyes at him and went back to sipping my lukewarm coffee. Ayo, bastard spawn, you just gave me the keys to the kingdom and want to snatch them back this quickly?
As if! I’m going to use this shit for the rest of your miserable life to keep you in check. Our children will know about this too when they’re old enough, especially our daughters. Maybe not somuch our sons if they’re going to turn out like you. My shoulders shook with my silent snickers.
“What’re you plotting now?” I almost jumped out of my skin. I think I forgot he was here.
“Uh, potting? Who? Me? Nothing.” How dare he? He’s the one in the hot seat; now he’s accusing me?
“Is my answer satisfactory enough for you?”
“For now, yes, but I’m still mad at you, and I’m still hurt. You still need to give me some space.”
“I’ll give you a week.”
“A week…?” His look said there was no room for debate. Does he think I’m some kind of punk? Who the hell does he think he is? I started to argue with him, but then I remembered that he didn’t know where I was staying.
He probably thought I went back home, where it would be easy for him to find me. At the reminder, I pinned my lips shut to hold back the laughter and just nodded along like the obedient simp he thought I was. “A week it is then.” I smiled ever so sweetly at him as I planned how to make his life a living hell for the next month or so.
A whole week has passed,and I’m still no closer to heading back. This place was just what I needed after the hell of the last few weeks. I’ve even been sleeping better, though I pass out as if I’m in a coma even without pills; I wake up feeling rested and alive. I guess I’ve been sleeping rough, though, because there is always an indentation on the pillow next to me.
I think it might be time to go back now, though, because last night I was so out of it I imagined that Julius was holding me while I slept. It was so intense I could even smell him. Ithink I memorized the pattern of his heartbeat because that, too, followed me into my dreams.
Those people over there at Dale’s job work fast as hell. It has only been a week, and they’d already dug up all the information needed to send people to jail for two lifetimes. Of course, I’ve been feeding them everything nibble by nibble and leading them in the right direction each step of the way.
Dale was already sweating bullets, and I think he may have seen my hand in it because he’s tried calling me every day since this whole thing began. I’ve been avoiding him, of course; it wasn’t time yet to reveal my part in it, but soon.
I hadn’t been back to the coffee shop since that day Julius hunted me down, but today I absolutely must. It should be Dale’s time at the gallows after all the information I’d sent last night. My plan had worked out better even than I expected.
The executives at that company didn’t play, it seemed, which worked wonders in my favor. They’d started the ball rolling from day one and hadn’t stopped, which led me to believe that maybe they’d had suspicions all along and just didn’t know where to look.
Whatever! After today, Dale will be out of his cushy job. Even though he wasn’t part of Charlotte’s criminal circle, it was obvious that she’d used her closeness to him to get the information she’d used. Add that to the fact that there’s a very strict no-fraternization law on the books, and he’s as good as cooked.
There’s no way for him to swindle his way out of it this time. He might avoid jail time, but it would be very hard for him to find a job in his field going forward once word got out. “Hehe!” I closed my computer and got ready to go for the last time.
JULIUS
Damn,how did I cross this vindictive nut and come away relatively unscathed? I reread the report on my desk and shook my head while my nuts tried crawling into my guts in fear. This girl… It had taken me this long to find out what she was up to. It still hadn’t sat well with me that she was staking out the building where her ex worked, and though I didn’t see her as the cheating kind, it still bothered me.
It took my men this long to get the goods because she’s a hacker freak who knows well how to cover her tracks, but once they turned their focus on Dale, everything started to unravel. They hadn’t found the link between the two, but I did. Even without seeing the evidence, I knew her well enough to put two and two together.
As menacing as she was behind a computer, she’s as green as a lamb in real life. I’ve slept beside her every night this week, and she still doesn’t know. I’ve tested her over the phone in our now-regular morning chats and found that she refuses to lie to me, which is a very good thing.
Each time I ask a question that makes it seem like she’s at her parents’ house, she changes the subject and refuses to answer. So, she won’t lie about being there, but she won’t tell me where she is either.
I used to smirk each time she did that, but now, looking at this report in my hand, I’m not so sure that I should be playing around with her. On top of that, my idiot brother just lovesreminding me how easy his woman was to handle compared to mine.
I’m too busy to remind him of how he’d lost his mind back then, so he just laughs and rubs it in that my woman had run away, and I didn’t know where to find her. Mom, who had settled down once, gave her an acceptable explanation and just smiled secretly because she knew my fish hadn’t jumped off the hook.
Dad, well, he’s just a lost cause. He buys into Roman’s bullshit because they’re both cut from the same cloth and has taken to calling me a disgrace to the family name. According to him, I shot myself in the foot and will spend the rest of my life alone because I let my one and only get away.
That apparently isn’t his biggest worry. The fact that I had crossed the Thorntons and those three old men seemed to worry him more than anything else. “We’re gonna have to move.” He’d yelled that at the dinner table last night after tearing into me again.
That was his new kick, playing the doddering old fool. I’d have believed that if Uncle Marcus hadn’t been in existence. As crazy as her family is, mine has them beat. But she’s on a whole other level. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
JESSICA
It was time to head back. The natives were getting restless. Mom, because she wasn’t able to fill her motherly quota these last two weeks and Julius was starting to grumble each time we talked. I think the only reason I hadn’t rushed back thus far is because I’ve been sleeping so well at night.