by Stasia Black
Gentry’s thumbing at his phone, appearing totally absorbed as he completely ignores me. It’s such a petty power play, I just roll my eyes and cross my arms over my chest.
“Me and my prototype are happy to walk our asses right back outta this building if you’re too busy for us.” I toss a thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the elevator.
When Gentry continues staring at his phone’s screen, I turn on my heel.
“Show me.”
I allow only the briefest smile to flicker over my face before I make my features stone and turn back to face him. That’s right. I’m going to set the tone of this meeting from the beginning. I’m the one in control. Not him, no matter how much he believes he is.
Calmly, I walked toward his desk, unzipping my backpack as I go. I pull out the prototype of the drone and set it on his desk. Gentry immediately snatches it up. His eyes avidly devour every bit of the twenty-two-inch prototype. In this moment, I hate how intelligent he is. It’s not fair. Why would God create intelligence only to deposit it in this waste of human tissue?
Gentry’s eyes narrow as he looks back up at me. “Okay. Now where is the firmware that makes it fly? I want to look through the algorithms with a fine-toothed comb and see what he’s done. I’ll know if you’re giving me shit code. You’re a dumb bitch, don’t think you can pull one over on me.”
I look away if only because I can’t bear to lock eyes with the man who raped and debased me. Even now he’s trying to steal something else that’s become so precious to me—Jackson.
The only way to get through this is to make myself cold and shut down everything—emotions, thought, physical response. I have to. Gentry can’t see anything on my face. I won’t give him an inch of power. Not one iota.
I reach for the bag again but Gentry eyes my gloves, then stands up and backs away. “Just put the bag on the desk.” He eyes it like I’ve put a bomb in there or something. “There are contingencies in place. If anything happens to me, the video of you gets sent and you lose your son.”
I scoff in disgust. “It would serve you right if I had a gun in here, you bastard.” I bang my backpack on the table and step back. “But you think I would let you make me a murderer? You think I’d do that to my son?” I shake my head. “Front pocket.”
I step back and resume my position, feet planted, arms crossed, and stare him down. Of course, I don’t tell him I thought seriously about trying to stage his death as a self-defense kill. If I attacked him, I know the fucker would have no qualms about hitting a woman. Then, as long as I let him get some hits in and rough me up a little, I could just kill the fucker with my bare hands—I know a suffocation hold that would do the trick—and if all else failed, I could use the knife.
But there are too many ways for it to go wrong. And it’s too close to the custody hearing. I considered it in probably far too much detail. There were entire nights I spent lying awake planning just how I’d do it before I finally let the idea go. My hand clenches and the brass knuckles underneath my gloves dig into my skin.
Gentry retrieves the USB drive from the bag. Because he’s been inactive from his console for more than five minutes, he has to not only put in his password again, but go through his overly anal biometric security measures to unlock his computer—not just the usual eye scan but also the newest in palm imaging technology. An infrared scanner reads his palm print and also penetrates inside to read and confirm the pattern of veins inside his palm.
On top of that, he whispers a password for voice recognition. I’m close enough to hear it: “Pandora six gorilla ten.”
“You don’t think all of that is a little overkill?” I tilt my head at him sideways. I remember always thinking it was so ridiculous when I used to work for him. “Oh, I forgot. You think your secrets are so special.”
Gentry’s nostrils flare. There he is. The barely civilized animal that he tries to hide in tailored suits. He fools so many people. He fooled me.
“I would think someone in your position would want to be careful.” He holds up the memory stick he retrieved from the bag. “After all, you’ve already given me your bargaining chip.”
“No,” I sputter and take a step forward in spite of myself. “We had a deal. I gave you what you wanted. Now give me the video. And you swear it’s the only copy, right?” I hate the desperation in my voice.
“We’ll see,” is all Gentry says. “First let’s look at these algorithms.” He moves to put the drive into the input slot on his computer and then stops, glancing up at me with a sardonic smirk. “On a computer that is not connected to my network, just in case you thought you could infect me with a virus or something equally stupid.” He pulls out a laptop separate from his main computer.
I bite my lip and watch him insert the terabyte drive into one of the laptop’s ports. I tap my foot impatiently. He looks surprised when nothing happens except the software loading.
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not trying to pull anything.” I glare at him. “I only want to be free of you and get my son back home where he belongs.”
Gentry doesn’t respond. He just starts typing on the laptop and then flipping up and down through the code. His eyes widen at what he’s seeing. Yeah. Because it’s the real fucking deal. Everything he could never come up with on his own. The genius he has to steal from men and women greater than himself. That’s how he’s made his entire career. He’s smart, but never smart enough. He’s just a bully that eventually turned into a monster. Or maybe he was a monster all along.
My stomach drops in disgust.
Gentry looks up at me. His eyes seem to lose focus for a second. And the bastard fucking grins. “What’s it feel like to sell out your lover? What’s betrayal taste like?”
“Just shut up and give me what you owe me,” I snap, ready to be done with this.
“What the hell is going on here?”
It’s roared from behind me and if I thought I felt nauseous a moment ago, it’s nothing to now. I twirl and standing there in Gentry’s doorway is the man I love.
Jackson.
Chapter 20
Cue the face of absolute devastation. “No,” I gasp. “You don’t understand.”
Jackson storms into the room. His face is dark like I’ve never seen it before. There’s no softness for me. No gentling around the edges of his eyes. He looks at me and doesn’t see me. It hurts more than I expected.
“It’s not what it looks like, I swear,” I say.
He doesn’t hear my pleading though. I try to meet him halfway. To step in front of him and grab his arms, to make him look at me, at my face. To see me. The woman he loves.
He brushes me aside. I stumble and fall to the ground. “No. Jackson. Please, you have to listen to me.” Tears choke my words.
“Always with your games.” Jackson’s voice is murderous as he approaches Gentry. Like before, Gentry stands up and backs away from his desk.
“Look old friend,” Gentry lifts his hands and smiles, “I don’t know how you got past security, but you can’t do anything to me. Our gentleman’s bargain still stands. Anything happens to me and I release the tape of you raping that poor girl.”
I gasp even in the middle of my choking sobs. He’s the fucking devil.
Jackson keeps stalking Gentry. He looks like a lion next to Gentry’s gazelle frame. Gentry always relied on manipulation and trickery to get his way, never brute strength. It can’t save him now.
“Guess what, motherfucker?” Jackson growls, eyebrows arched and face full of menace. “It’s called the statute of motherfucking limitations.”
Gentry’s eyes widen as if realizing that for the first time in his life he might just have to pay for his actions right as Jackson’s giant, muscled arm rears back and swings at his face with the force of a decade and a half of fury.
It lands with the most satisfying noise I’ve ever heard in my entire life. There’s a crunch of cartilage and a high-pitched scream of pain from Gentry before he slumps to the floor.
Jackson’s still breathing hard from hulking the fuck out, but he stands up slowly before turning back around to look at me.
“Well that was disappointing,” he deadpans. “Pussy went down with just one punch.”
I grin as he reaches down to help me off the floor. He doesn’t stop when I’m on my feet, though. He pulls me into his arms, lifts me off the ground, and swings me in a circle. Then he kisses the hell out of me.
“I was so worried letting you come up here alone with that psycho,” he says between kisses.
“I was fine. I told you I had this.”
He kisses me again. “God I love you.”
I squeeze him to me. “Love you too.”
I take one more minute to enjoy the moment of victory, then I start patting him on the back. “Okay, let me down, let me down. We gotta get to work. Let’s nail this bastard to the wall.”
Jackson pulls back and grins at me. “I like the way you think, babe.” He lets me down but not without a smack on my ass as I head around Gentry’s desk to his computer.
* * *
Confused about what’s going on? All right, let me rewind a little. So remember that night back in Jackson’s office when I was trying to steal the software for the prototype? And Jackson came in and sorta caught me, but then we all thought I’d distracted him by hopping up on his desk, wrapping my legs around him and distracting him with sex?
Yeah. My dude’s way smarter than that.
Here’s what actually went down:
* * *
“What are you doing in here, Callie?”
“I’m… I’m just… Um. I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t stop thinking about the code.”
The program finishes copying and I think I’m so suave slipping it in my pocket while moving the monitor for Jackson to see what I was supposedly working on.
Jackson’s eyes come back to rest on me. “Are you sure that’s all that’s going on here? You could have talked to me about this on Monday.”
“Maybe I was hoping to catch you here because I know how much your head is on this project too.”
I do the kiss and leg wrap thing, pulling him into me.
“I need you so much, you know that, don’t you Callie? You’re a part of my life now. I can’t imagine it without you in it. I hope you feel the same.”
“I do,” I whisper and break the kiss to bury my face in his neck. Because how can I kiss him or look him in the face and say that? How can I even be touching him right now? Touching him is a lie in this moment.
I’m pretending to be… what? A loving girlfriend? Two seconds before he came in, I was actively plotting to betray him. Right before he came in, I was still waffling on the idea. At this very moment, the object of betrayal is burning a hole in my pocket.
But Charlie. Whatever it takes… Wasn’t that what I swore to myself? I swore—
Jackson pulls back suddenly and cups my cheeks in both hands, forcing me to look in his eyes. I want to avert my gaze, but that would make it obvious something is wrong. Make the lie so obvious. Oh God, I hate myself right now. Hate what Gentry is making me. Like an animal slinking around with its belly in the shit and mud.
“Callie.” Jackson shakes me slightly. “Callie. Stop. Whatever’s running around in your head, just stop. Be with me in this moment.”
And I do. I stop.
It’s his voice.
It’s him.
It’s us.
Everything else falls away.
He can sense I’m finally here with him.
“Do you trust me?”
Such a simple question but so devastating. It’s an echo of the question he asked that night when he held my very breath. And just like when I finally gave in and abandoned myself to it then, I’m hit anew by the concrete knowing that it’s safe to give my trust to this man. To be one with him.
I don’t have to do this alone. I don’t have to let Gentry make me a monster and shape me in his own image.
I stand up straight and meet Jackson’s gaze firmly for the first time all night. “I trust you so much, I’m going to trust you with my son. And he’s my everything.” I fight through my throat trying to close up to get out the words. “I’m trusting you with everything.”
And then I tell him. I tell him about Gentry blackmailing me in order to force me to hand over the prototype we’ve been working on. I tell him Gentry has a video of me and that it would damage my court case if it came to light. I leave it there. Of course Jackson’s eyes go alert at the mention, but he lets me gloss over it. For now at least.
He grabs my hands and kisses my knuckles. I let out a breath of relief, not sure how he was going to react. Only minutes before he came in, I’d been about to go through with the plan. I tell him that too. I don’t sugar coat anything. Though in the end, I’m not sure I ever could have done it. But then again… Charlie. Maybe I could have. Fuck.
“I hate all of this.” Including the stupid tears leaking out of my eyes. I swipe at them angrily before pressing my head back into Jackson’s chest. “You must hate me.”
“Of course not. It’s okay,” he strokes my hair. “Remember, I know better than anyone what Gentry is like. How he backs you into a corner. And this was about your son.”
“Still,” I look up at him, incredulous. “How are you just automatically being so cool about this?”
He lets out a breath and I see weariness enter his eyes. He wipes a hand down his face.
I pull back from him. “What?” A shiver of alarm sweeps through me.
He offers a bleak smile. “I told you. I know how Gentry works. From the first meeting, I guessed Gentry wanted my prototype. Corporate espionage is almost a given with him.”
“Guess you never expected the spy would be me, huh?” I give a bitter laugh, swiping at another goddamn tear.
Then I see that look on his face. Wary and like he’s waiting for me to catch the punch line.
“Oh my God,” I yank my hands away from his. “You did. You knew all along it would be me. Is that why you hired me? So you could control who he used to spy?” I run my hands through my hair. Oh my—
“Christ, no!” Jackson’s face twists in disgust. “Why do you always assume the worst? Even after all we’ve been through?”
His words kick me in the gut because of course he’s right. My mind does jump to the worst possible scenario. But that might as well be the title for the book of my life so far. Callie Cruise: Worst Possible Scenario, a Case History. But it’s not fair to him. He’s never done anything to deserve it—always the opposite in fact.
“I hired you because of your skill and because I wanted you away from that monster,” Jackson continues and I feel my own face crumble. My body sags with it and Jackson catches me in his arms. He sits in one of the plush leather chairs by his desk and pulls me into his lap, cradling my head in one of his large hands so that our faces are only inches apart.
“But after you resigned,” his eyebrows narrow in pain, “you were so different. I knew he’d done something.” His eyes search mine. I don’t look away but neither do I give him anything. It’s enough to be close to him like this. “I know he destroys people and then manipulates them to do what he wants them to. It’s his M.O.” He runs a thumb tenderly over my cheek. “When I saw you spending extra time in the machine shop, I suspected what it was he wanted you to do.”
I open my mouth, but Jackson silences me with a quick kiss. “I know you. I know you wouldn’t willingly steal from me if you had any other choice. He was obviously forcing you somehow.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and sink against him. How can he believe in me so strongly when I’ve doubted him at every turn? “I don’t deserve you.”
“Hush,” he says, brushing my hair back from my forehead.
Even as he does it, I’m reminded of soothing my son in the same way, the very same words in a position that actually wasn’t much different than this. Just the thought almost makes me jerk away. I’m not about to let any man treat me
like a little child.
Except didn’t you soothe Jackson the same way after the session with the gland stimulator?
He was the one shaking in my arms then. Damn. It looks like vulnerability might go both ways. Is this what grown-up relationships are supposed to look like? Leaning on one another and alternately being each other’s anchor?
Either way, I think it’s finally sinking in that I was wrong when I thought I had to bear the burden of figuring out what to do about Gentry alone. Or that I had to fight him alone. Suddenly here Jackson is in my life. With me. My partner.
“Tell me what’s on the video he’s using to blackmail you.” Jackson’s words are a bucket of ice-water over all the warm-fuzzies going on inside me.
Jackson must feel my body stiffen because he grips me tighter, as if sensing my next move is to pull away.
“You can tell me,” he coaxes, running a hand over my hair and undoing the pins, then combing his fingers through the length of it, scalp to tips. “You trusted me with your son. Trust me with this.”
Damn his logic. When he puts it in those terms, it should be easy… But it’s not. I look away, then down, anywhere but up into those too-penetrating dark eyes of his.
“Callie look at me and tell me,” he snaps, Dom voice out in full effect.
Not fucking fair.
Okay, well, it sort of is because I did the same thing when I was ferreting out his secrets, but still. My eyes go to his. It’s instinct at this point when I hear that voice. This give and take is at the heart of the relationship we’re building.
And he needs to know what happened to me that day in Gentry’s conference room. How I was violated over and over. It’s time he knows. More than that, I want him to know. All of me. Everything.
So, even though my lip is trembling and my legs feel shaky, I tell him. At various points in the telling, Jackson’s face goes pale, then peaked with nausea like he’s about to throw up, then red with fury. By the end, the vein on his forehead is pulsing like it has on the handful of times I’ve seen him truly pissed.
