by MJ Riley
“You can explain?” The woman's whispered tone was somehow more dangerous than when she raised her voice. “You've been going through company files without discretion ever since you were hired. You can explain that?”
“Yes,” he said, as a plan formed in his head. It was a foolhardy one, and it would force him to reveal far more than he'd ever anticipated, but at this juncture, it was his only chance to keep his secret, “I can.”
“Explain, then.” This time it was Charlotte who spoke, and her voice trembled slightly, as her blue gaze locked on him.
She loved him. She trusted him.
He couldn't lose that.
“I am the one who's been accessing your files.” Charlotte’s cheeks turned pink in outrage but she said nothing, letting him continue. “I was looking for information about...an event. Something that happened in my family's past and was connected with this company. I was trying to do it discreetly so that the news wouldn't be circulated if I found it, but obviously that didn't work as well as I intended.”
“Obviously,” said Adeline with a snort, rage still evident in her features. “I call bullshit, Marscomb.” The redhead turned to Charlotte, her mouth tight. “Charlotte, he's lying. If his family had had any prior connection with this company, we would have seen it in the records. Let me call security and have him removed.”
David's stomach twisted. He should have expected such a violent reaction from Adeline. She saw herself as Charlotte's protector, and if she thought anyone had wronged the woman, she lashed out with full force.
Now, he would have to get Charlotte to believe him over her best friend.
“Charlotte, please.” His entreaty was earnest, and his hands turned upward in surrender. “I swear I'm telling the truth.” He thought of his nearly comatose mother, his dead father, and the suicide note moldering in the drawer of his desk. “You see I didn't take any money. I didn't steal anything from you. I only wanted very specific information.”
“About what event?” Charlotte's arms were folded protectively around herself, and when she spoke, her lower lip quivered in emotion. “Tell me what happened. We'll find the file together if that's what you really want.”
“...I can't.”
“You bastard. I'm calling the cops right now.” Charlotte caught Adeline's arm, as she began to storm off, her eyes still on David. She wanted to believe him. He saw it in her eyes. She wanted to hope that he could prove his innocence.
“Why can't you?” Charlotte demanded in nearly a whisper. “Please, David, make me understand.”
God, this was tearing his heart out, and he had no one to blame but himself. “It concerns something very precious to me...a secret. You told me once that you could respect secrets. Did you mean it?”
“Charlotte, no.” Adeline was shaking her head frantically, as she examined her friend's expression. “No.”
“Trust me, please.” David made his voice pleading, and it wasn't so difficult because he needed her to believe that he could be a good person. Then, maybe he could believe it himself.
Visibly torn, Charlotte looked from her tech department head and adviser to the man she loved and then back again. Adeline's disbelieving expression grew even more, as she watched a change come over her companion. Her breath hitched, her trembling ceased, and David knew that he'd won.
“Alright. I trust you.”
“Why wouldn't you trust him?” Every party present turned, Charlotte inhaling sharply at the low voice of Emerson Mathers as he entered the room, flanked on both sides by security guards. “He has a very trustworthy face, wouldn't you say?” The man's face was twisted in a kind of ironic disgust as he pushed past Adelaide.
David could only stare at him – every potbellied, sagging inch of the man he'd hated for the past twenty years of his life. He'd imagined meeting him one thousand times – each and every way he would torture and hurt him for tearing his family apart. But now, in the moment, he found that his anger was so great that he could only tremble in rage, his face contorted into an expression of disbelief. “Did you really think I wouldn't weed you out, you little mongrel? That I wouldn't know who was working for my company? Fucking my daughter?”
“Dad!” Charlotte's outraged cry was huge in the small office, but her father only ignored her, advancing further on David. “I could smell you, like a cat smells a huge, disgusting rat.”
“You're the one who's disgusting.” When David finally found his voice, the raw emotion in it was such that he could barely form the words. “You destroyed my family.”
Emerson only chuckled darkly, feigning amusement at his quarry's incensed words. “Boy, I am your family.”
“What?” Her eyes wide, Charlotte looked from one man to the other, utterly confused. “What are you talking about?”
Emerson only broke into a nasty grin. “Haven't I ever mentioned, Charlotte? You have a half brother. And his name is David L. Marscomb.” ###
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