He gave an exaggerated sigh of resignation. “This is one of those days where I’m doomed to be unsatisfied.”
“You’ll be satisfied plenty. I promise. But I have to show you this first.”
I pulled the big file folder out of my bag, causing Sebastian to lift his eyebrows in inquiry.
“I found this today. In Gentry’s office.”
“What?”
“In Gentry’s office. His file cabinet was open.”
“So you went rooting through it? Ali, you know it’s dangerous. You could be caught and get in big trouble.”
“I didn’t get in trouble. You know this is important to me. And today it paid off. Look. Look at this.”
I handed him the one page that had caught my attention earlier.
He scanned it quickly, and because I was looking for it, I saw him stiffen.
“It’s proof,” I said. “It’s proof that they knew my dad and all the others deserved a lot more than they got. It’s proof that they did it on purpose, knowing fully how wrong it was.”
I saw him swallow before he looked up to meet my eyes. “It does look that way.”
“It’s exactly what I’ve needed,” I burst out, my excitement catching up to me. “We can take this and the budget stuff in this folder and make a case against them. I think we should go to the papers so they’re publicly outed for cheats and selfish bastards. If I just went myself, they might not believe me, but with you with me, they’ll take it seriously. I really think this is what we need. It will be front-page news. They’ll be taken down.”
“They’ll be... taken down.” He repeated the words slowly, softly. Not as affirmation but almost in shock. It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected.
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to do all this time, right? And I’ve finally done it. You’ll help me, won’t you? No one will be able to ignore me when I have you for corroboration.”
I gazed up at him, waiting for him, trusting him, experiencing a wave of affection for him.
It never even occurred to me his answer would be anything but yes.
“No,” he said at last, something closing down on his face. I didn’t recognize him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I can’t.”
I froze. “What?”
“I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“But... but why not?”
“Because it’s my family.”
“But they’re cheats. They hurt people. They hurt my father. They hurt me. They were the ones who came between us before, and I thought you weren’t going to let it happen again.” My voice cracked, so I paused to clear my throat. “You know this is wrong, Sebastian, and you’re doing it anyway.”
His head jerked away, and he must have remembered the words.
The same words I’d used when we broke up twelve years ago.
They hadn’t made a difference then, and they didn’t make a difference now.
I whispered, “You’re really not going to help me?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t. They’re my family.”
He was a Maxwell. I knew it, but I’d stupidly not thought it mattered anymore. I’d stupidly believed he would side with me because I was right and his family was wrong.
But he was a Maxwell, and evidently that made all the difference.
Nothing had really changed between us since high school after all.
It hurt so much—felt so much like a betrayal, like the crushing of all I’d believed about him, about us—that I couldn’t even speak. I felt my face break but managed to control myself.
I snatched the piece of paper out of his arms and stuffed it back in the file. Then I stuffed the file back in my bag, keeping my head down so he wouldn’t see my expression. “Okay,” I said, putting the strap of the bag over my shoulder. “Okay.”
I turned to leave because, if I didn’t, then I might just burst into tears.
It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t help me. It was that he wasn’t who I’d believed him to be. And that hurt as much as anything ever had.
“Ali, wait. Don’t just leave.”
“I have to go,” I mumbled, keeping my face turned away from him. “Sorry to bother you.”
“Damn it, Ali. At least—”
I didn’t hear whatever else he said because I was already out the door.
Ten
Sebastian
Okay, clearly I didn’t handle that quite right, but to be fair, she sort of came out of left field with her unreasonable request.
Maybe.
Or maybe I just really thought that Ali was different from everyone else. That what we had and what we shared was different. That she was real. That she didn’t attach strings to everything she gave me.
Clearly I was wrong.
At the end of the day, she saw me as a means to an end. My name. My connections. And she’d have all her problems solved. Why didn’t she just ask me for money and be done with it? Why go on with this charade about confronting anyone with evidence? If all she was looking for was a check to get her family back on track... well, I’d do it. And then walk away.
I’d be damned if I was going to let her continue to use me. And I didn’t so much mind being used for sex. I just wanted her to be honest about what was going on.
That was a load of crap, and I knew it. I did mind being used—for sex, my name, my connections, or anything else. It pissed me off, and it pissed me off even more because it was Ali. She was supposed to be... My first thought was to say “the one,” but it hurt too much to even think it.
Dammit.
Okay, maybe I was reading this all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t quite as it seemed. My head finally cleared, and I found myself sprinting down the hotel stairs in hopes of catching up with Ali in the lobby. With any luck, the elevator would take its time getting there and I could beat her down.
Slamming the door to the lobby open, I heard the ding of the elevator and held my breath. There she was. She looked pale and fragile, and I immediately calmed myself down. There was no need to be a bully and scare her off. We needed to talk. Alone. Privately.
“Ali,” I called out to her because she was walking and looking straight ahead, and I knew she didn’t see me. Her eyes went wide when she spotted me, and I did my best not to run toward her. Keep it slow. Keep it calm. But don’t let her leave like this.
Her eyes went defiant as soon as I was in front of her. “I think you’ve said enough,” she said, crossing her arms across her middle. It was a defense mechanism. I knew it.
“Can we please just sit down and talk about this?”
“No.”
The woman was beyond frustrating. “Look, you took me by surprise up there. Aren’t I allowed a minute to process all this? You’ve had hours to come to grips with what you’ve found and to think about what you’re going to do with it. Don’t I get the same consideration?”
I could tell that she was thinking about it because her posture slowly began to relax. “Fine. You’re right. But not up in your room. Here. In the lobby.” Without waiting, she walked over to an alcove in the lobby that had a small sitting area. I had really hoped to get her back upstairs where I could guarantee our privacy, but I was not about to argue about that on top of everything else.
As soon as I sat down, she began to talk. “I don’t understand why you won’t just—”
“Ali.” I interrupted. “Please.” I took a deep breath and a moment to get my head together. I wanted to reach out, to take one of her hands in mine—anything to make a connection to her—but she was sitting so primly that she practically had a Do Not Touch neon sign on her. “Look, I know that you think you have some information there that’s going to help you—”
“I know that I have it,” she countered. “It’s all here—in black-and-white—everything I need to prove that they lied. They did it, knowing it was wrong. If you’d just look.” She reached into her bag to retrieve the folder.
This time I did reach out and touch her. To stop her. “I’m not saying that y
ou don’t have something. I’m just saying that I want you to really think about what you’re hoping to accomplish here. Say you go to the press or whoever and present this information. What then? What do you think is going to happen next?”
“They’ll have to make it right,” she said simply. “They’ll have to admit it and compensate everyone they screwed back then.”
I felt bad for her. Honestly and truly felt bad. She really believed that was how it would work, and it sucked that it was up to me to try to make her understand. “Ali, if you go and make this public, the company...”
“You mean your father.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration but ignored her statement. “The company,” I continued, “will fight you on it. If anything, they’ll make you look like the criminal because you broke in and stole the file.”
She rolled her eyes. “I did not break in. I was working in the house and happened to stumble upon the information.”
“You snooped purposely in hopes of finding something.”
“They don’t need to know that.”
“But that’s what they’re going to prove. Trust me on this— They will show you no mercy. Not only will you be painted as a criminal, you’ll never find another job again. No company is going to hire someone who goes into people’s homes and snoops through their private belongings.”
“But that’s not how it was,” she said defensively. “You know that. You’ll make them see it.”
I shook my head. “It is how it was, Ali. I covered for you more times than I should have, and I honestly didn’t think you’d find anything.”
“I think you’re wrong. I don’t think I’m going to come out looking like the bad guy here. Too many people are on my side.”
Time for a different tactic. “Okay, say that you don’t get painted as the bad guy. Suppose you go out there and present your findings and you convince the company to say ‘Oops... our bad’ and then what? They will tie this up in court for another ten to twenty years. They’ve got lawyers on retainer whose job it is to make sure that things like this get lost in the court system. It will cost you and your family money that you don’t have—not to mention any of the other families that you drag into this with you. Is that what you want? To cause more of a financial drain than they’ve already suffered?”
I could tell by the look on her face that she hadn’t considered any of this. Her expression had gone from one of indignation to one of defeat, and all I wanted to do was comfort her. “Ali...”
“Don’t, okay? Just... don’t.” She shrunk back against the sofa, and it pained me to see her like this.
“Sometimes bad things happen that can’t be fixed,” I said. “Sometimes we can’t bring the kind of justice we want to the world. One of my best friends was killed by a roadside bomb, and there was no reason or justice or honorable choices to answer it. It just happened, and there’s no taking it back. For anyone. There’s more about what happened then we’ve ever been told, but I won’t ever have all the answers. I won’t even know if there was more I could have done to stop it from happening. It’s just done, and I have to accept it.”
“I know all that,” she said, her face twisting slightly as if my words touched her in spite of herself. “But this is a different situation.”
“It’s different in some ways but not in every way. I know you want to make this right for your family, and that’s a really honorable thing to do, but in this situation, I don’t think that what you’re doing is going to right the wrongs.”
“How would you know?” she demanded, obviously growing angry again. “You have no idea what it’s like to struggle—to have to sit back day after day and watch all your hopes and dreams just disappear. I was supposed to go to college. I was supposed to have a life. My brother and my sister were supposed to have a life. But thanks to your family and... and their... greed, we lost everything.”
“Ali.”
“You’ve never known what it’s like to not have money—to have to worry about whether or not you were going to eat this week or not. Or to wonder if you had enough blankets in the house in case the heat got turned off. No, you Maxwells never have to worry about things like that because you lead a charmed life. I should have known better than to expect anything more from you.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Don’t go comparing me to my father or to his company, Ali, because you know that I’m nothing like them.”
“Is that what you think? I really wonder if you’re as different as you think. You’ve just made the same decision you made when you were nineteen, to side with your father against what’s right, against me. If you were different, then you’d be willing to help me when I need it.”
A sense of unease began to work its way up my spine. “I did help you. I kept you from getting found out. More than once I had to cover up for you.”
She gave a mirthless chuckle. “Yeah, you’re a real prince.”
Now I was pissed. “You would have lost your job if it wasn’t for me.”
“Then it’s a good thing that I kept you around, isn’t it?”
Everything inside me went cold. I knew how to interpret her comment, how she was behaving right now. Ali had used me. Her companionship, her passion, her sweetness—they all came with strings.
I wanted to grab her, shake her, and demand that she take it back—that she tell me she didn’t mean it, that she was just lashing out because she was hurt—but to what end? Even my anger seemed futile all of a sudden.
I wouldn’t let her see that she’d hurt me—or that her words had any effect whatsoever. “Yeah, if nothing else it was fun.” Her eyes went wide at my tone, and for a minute I almost felt bad.
Just not bad enough.
“If nothing else, it felt good to get laid. Didn’t get a whole lot of that while I was deployed so... thanks.” Her mouth worked like she wanted to say something, but I didn’t give her the chance. Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, I reached out and snatched the file from her. “And thanks for this. I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”
“You son of a bitch!” she cried, coming to her feet. She made a good show of trying to grab the file back, but I was quicker and taller. “That’s mine! I found it, and it’s mine to do with what I see fit!”
I glared down into her eyes and did my best to intimidate her—maybe even scare her. “No. It’s not yours. It was never yours. You stole it, and in my book, that makes you no better than Gentry and my father.”
“You’re... you’re not going to tell my boss, are you?” She stood very still now, like she’d pulled into herself, like my hurt and anger and her outburst earlier didn’t even exist.
“She won’t hear it from me.” That was all I could say. I turned and walked away.
It wasn’t until I was in the elevator and the doors had closed that I felt like I was going to be sick. What the hell had I just done? I had out-and-out bullied Ali—the woman I thought I loved. Thought, I reminded myself. You thought you loved her. It was a good thing I never said anything to let her know of my feelings.
She was just like everyone else. Her love came with strings.
The elevator doors opened on my floor, and I stalked to my room and slammed the door behind me. I was done. Done being manipulated like some damn puppet by my father, my family, Gentry... everyone. No one was going to do this to me again. There was no way I was ever going to let another woman play me like Ali had for the past month. Maybe for the last twelve years.
Ever.
***
It was near midnight when I barged into my parents’ house. It was worth the fifty-minute drive to get there. Most of the lights were out, but I had a key. I let myself in and made my way to my father’s study first. I highly doubted that he’d be in bed already, and the idea of facing him alone—without my mother to witness it—was what I was hoping for.
Sure enough, there he sat. One light was on in the obscenely massive study as John Maxwell sat and sipped his
brandy and read though yet another batch of financial reports. I’d witnessed the scene so many times in my life that I knew it by heart.
My first instinct was to go in with guns blazing and force him to admit what he’d done, how his unethical business practices had caught me in this emotional snare. But force wasn’t what was needed here. No, I needed to come at this from a completely different angle and maybe, just maybe, catch him off guard.
“Good evening,” I said in a low voice as I walked into the study.
He looked up at me with mild surprise. “Sebastian?” He then glanced at his watch. “What on earth brings you out here so late?”
For a moment he almost sounded like a concerned parent. Then I remembered whom I was dealing with and forced myself to stay focused. He wasn’t going to catch me off guard—not like Ali had earlier. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” I said, taking a seat in a leather chair across from him.
“Really, Sebastian,” he said with equal dryness as he took off his glasses. “Isn’t it a little late for social calls?”
“Can’t a man come home when he wants to?”
“I suppose,” he said cautiously. “Is that what this is about? Feeling nostalgic?”
Not likely. “Would it surprise you if I said yes?”
Taking his glass from the table beside him, he swirled the beverage for several long moments. “Let’s cut through the bullshit. Just tell me why you’re really here.”
I nodded and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “What would happen if word got out about how you had tampered with employee contracts and screwed dozens of people out of their benefits?” At the somewhat shocked look on his face, I sat back and relaxed. “Hypothetically, of course.”
If there was one thing my father excelled at, it was that he’d never let anyone see him sweat. “Well, first we’d have go find out who had access to such information and do our best to keep it out of the press... issue gag orders and such. My legal team would make sure that it was nothing more than a blip in some second-rate newspaper.” He took a drink of his brandy. “Many people have tried to make a fuss out of trivial things—mainly out of greed—trying to make a buck off Maxwells. They try. And they fail.”
Protecting the Enemy (The Protectors) Page 12
