by Amelia Wilde
If you hadn’t been such a stupid bitch and installed the program correctly the first time....
Charlie’s words, echoed by Jett’s, ring in my ears so loudly that I can’t hear what he’s saying. It doesn’t matter what he says. The hurt—the rage—on his face is so palpable that it makes my hands shake.
“I wanted to stop,” I say, and Jett shakes his head, his lip curling.
“At any point,” he says, his tone soft and sharp again, “you could have come to me. I have the resources to deal with....” His jaw works. “I don’t even know what to say to you, Angelica. I can’t believe you would do this.”
“I know.”
“Was it all a lie, then?”
Jett’s accountant has his eyes glued to his desk, and the man is holding perfectly still. I can imagine he wants to get out of here as quickly as possible, but there’s no graceful way to make an exit—not at this point. My face goes hotter. If Jett would just cool down, just listen to me, then maybe....
“Tell me.” His green eyes are flashing, locked on mine, burning me up from the inside. “Was it all a lie?”
“It wasn’t—”
“The elevator. That first day. Was that a lie?”
“It was the first time I ever saw you.”
“Were you there to steal from me?”
“I was doing what I had to do.”
“And that flood at your apartment? Another lie, so you could get closer to me?”
It’s an effort to relax my jaw enough to speak. “My apartment didn’t flood. But that doesn’t mean it was all—”
“Just stop.”
I take a shuddering breath and pinch my lips together. I want him to know that I love him. I want him to know that I was afraid, I was doing this because I was afraid, because there was never a moment when my family’s lives weren’t at risk. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do?
“If I could make a suggestion, Mr. Brandon,” the accountant interjects, his voice soft, appeasing. “It’s probably time that we contact the authorities. And your attorneys.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jett
There’s a strange pain in my chest, a tightness in my skin that makes me want to rip the buttons off the collar of my shirt, throw my jacket to the floor, anything to be free.
Instead, I sit quietly, looking at Angelica.
She looks back at me, eyes wide, tears leaking miserably from beneath her lashes.
For all I know, it’s just crocodile tears.
Something in my heart hardens, a rock sitting in the center of my chest.
Twenty minutes ago I was looking forward to sitting across from Angelica at some exclusive hole-in-the-wall place, watching her face light up with each new dish, listening to her tell me about her day at work, about her horrible boss. Telling her that I love her.
Now....
I was exactly fucking right. Exactly fucking right. Emerald should have served as a true warning about getting involved with women, and I ignored it because....
Because why?
Because when I saw Angelica in the elevator, I thought she was perfection.
Magnetic perfection.
I didn’t want to walk away from her then, but I did.
Now I want to walk away from her, and I can’t.
“If I could make a suggestion, Mr. Brandon,” Cook says, calmly as ever. “It’s probably time that we contact the authorities. And your attorneys.” He’s doing is damn best not to provoke me any further. As if keeping things civil in his office is going to smooth over the lightning pain in my chest that throbs with every heartbeat.
“Call them, Cook.” It’s a near miracle that I get the words out.
He picks up the phone, speaking quickly and quietly into the handset. “They’re on their way, Mr. Brandon.”
My jaw locks together, and I have to work at it to get it to release.
I was so fucking right that I can’t stand it.
Never again.
Never again, after this.
Not a fucking chance.
“I want you out of this building,” I say to Angelica before I can stop myself. Acid rises in my throat.
“I can understand that.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper. She presses her lips together again, and more tears fall down onto her skirt.
We sit in silence for a long couple of minutes.
“Would you like me to step out, Mr. Brandon?” Cook says.
“No.”
He doesn’t question it, just pulls a folder to a space in front of him and flips through it. If he leaves, Angelica will probably start talking to me again. And if she speaks to me enough, if, God forbid, she tries to kiss me, I could get sucked in all over again.
Because the truth is, the awful, stinging, horrible truth, is that I want her to take it all back. I want her to tell me, right now, that this is a joke, that this is an incredibly ill-planned prank and none of it is real. I want her to tell me that everything we did together was for the sheer pleasure of it, for the sheer pleasure of being in love.
Being in love.
Not like with Emerald. How could she be another Emerald, after all that we shared?
Angelica folds her hands in her lap and stares down at them. Can she feel my eyes on her?
The moment stretches out, it feels like a century.
Angelica looks up. “Mr. Cook?”
“Yes, Ms. Chandler?” Leave it to Cook to keep a sense of decorum about him, even in fucked-up situations like this one.
“I’m—” She cuts her eyes toward me, just the hint of a glance. “I’m very sorry to have put you in this position.”
Cook nods, giving her the ghost of a smile.
“Him?”
I can’t help myself. I can’t stop myself.
“You’re going to apologize to him?”
Angelica looks back at me, chin quivering. “Would it matter if I apologized to you? Because I’m sorry, Jett. You have no idea how sorry I am. I never wanted....” She has to stop to swallow hard. “I’m so sorry.”
It doesn’t fix anything.
This could have played out so differently. I could be kissing her on the landing on the way out. I could be asking her to stay for as long as she wants. I could be holding her hand right now.
I clench my fist. I will not reach out to her. I will not touch her. No matter how much I want to, I won’t touch her.
She doesn’t deserve to be comforted by me. Not after what she’s done.
Cook’s phone rings, and he picks it up and answers it with a terse, “Cook.”
He nods once as he listens, then says, “Thank you. Goodbye.” He looks from me to Angelica, then back to me. “The police should be here any moment. They’re bringing along some members of their tech crime team to attempt to sort out what’s happened here.”
“Great news.” My voice is cutting, sharp, and I want to get it under control, God damn it. I don’t want anyone other than Cook to see how much this has rattled me, how much this woman has affected me, gotten under my skin....
Betrayed me.
So there’s one thing left I have to do before they get here.
“Angelica.”
She looks up at me, her eyes like storm clouds rimmed with red. There’s pain there, and a tiny spark of hope.
“When we leave here, I want you to understand something.” My voice is even, steady.
I can do this.
“Okay.” She threads her fingers together and holds on tight, her eyes searching my face like she’s looking for a sign of what’s to come. Surely she cannot be imagining that I’m going to forgive her, that I’m going to ask her to solve this with me, together.
Not now.
Not ever.
“We’re over.”
Angelica’s lips go white.
The flicker of hope in her eyes extinguishes.
She turns her face away, toward the closed door of the office, and blinks three times, swallows.
�
�I thought you might say that,” she whispers, and then she falls silent.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Angelica
The questioning goes on forever. My head is swimming, my heart pounding, the officers blurring into one endlessly gruff person asking the same questions over and over again.
“I didn’t want to do it,” I say at one point. “It was because of Charlie.”
Maybe they think I’m insane, that I’m inventing the character of Charlie to save myself, but I’m not.
Sometime during the middle of the night, an officer comes into the room where I’ve been sitting for hours now with a bowl of chicken noodle soup and half a sandwich that’s been delivered from a deli down the street. Every bite tastes like cardboard.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
A woman police officer comes in and glances at the empty tray, then sits down across from me.
“They’re checking up on your story,” she says, folding her hands on the metal table that’s bolted into the floor.
“Which story?” My lips are slow to move.
“About Charlie and this supposed crime ring. Let’s go over it one more time. You say you saw Charlie himself several times, and one other associate who was posing as a CD seller on the sidewalk.”
“Yes.”
“How many times did you see Charlie?”
The time at Adam’s apartment. Two times with the flash drive...no, three.
“Four times.”
“And when was the first time you saw him?”
“At my brother Adam’s apartment.”
“Do you have a way for us to contact Adam so he can confirm that?”
“Yes.” I give her Adam’s cell number. “But you have to call him soon. You have to get him somewhere away from Elsie.”
“Elsie?” Her forehead wrinkles.
“Do you guys take notes or anything?”
She gives me a wry look. “Yes. But they’re not always available when you need them. Who’s Elsie?”
“My hometown. That’s where my brother is, and Charlie has been threatening to hurt him and my mother if I don’t keep giving him the information he wants.”
The policewoman leans across the table and lowers her voice. “Angelica, be honest with me.”
“I am being honest with you.”
“Are you in any way associated with the account those funds are being transferred to?”
“No!”
“Are you sure about that?”
I hold up both my hands. “I swear to God, the only reason I did any of this is because Charlie attacked my brother. Adam will tell you.”
“We’ll attempt to locate him right now.”
“Hurry.”
A little while later, my lawyer comes in. Turns out Sisterspark offers legal services for its employees. She’s a tiny woman, even shorter than I am, and she is wearing a terse expression. She explains that I haven’t been formally charged yet because it’s starting to appear as if I’m actually a victim of extortion.
“I’d say.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen. They’re not going to book you right now. In fact, it seems Mr. Brandon has urged them to proceed with caution.”
“I doubt that.”
“Did they find my mom and brother?”
“Yes, and a local watch is being posted at the residence. They’ll be safe for the time being.”
“Great. And what about me?”
She gives such a slight shrug that it’s almost imperceptible. “You’re not considered a flight risk, and if this Charlie character you told them about is actually running a crime ring targeting the ultra-rich, they don’t have any room for error. People with a considerable amount of influence are going to make life miserable for the NYPD if it turns out they didn’t invest their resources in shutting down a scheme like that.”
I nod. What else is there to say?
“So, Angelica, go home and stay there. The best thing you can do is sit tight while they investigate. It doesn’t hurt to cooperate, okay?”
“Okay.” There’s no clock in this room. “Is it going to be a pain in the ass for me to hail a cab right now?”
“I’ve got one waiting outside for you.”
When the cab pulls up outside my building, tears well up in my eyes.
“Thanks,” I tell the lawyer, handing her half the fare. I never got her name. I assume I’ll be seeing her soon.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
My apartment is just as I left it, silent and neat. Sarah still isn’t back—her business trip was extended—and at first I can’t tell what’s off about the space.
Then it hits me.
Jett.
I haven’t spent an evening without him since all of this started.
The lump that rises to my throat is so painful that for a minute I think I’m choking. I swallow past it, flipping on the lamp in my living room, but when I sit down on the sofa by myself, my body aches for him so badly that I can’t hold it in anymore.
It’s pathetic, sobbing alone in my apartment, so loud and fierce that I’m sure any neighbors who are still awake at this hour will hear and wonder if someone is hurting a dog or killing a seagull.
I cry until my stomach hurts, until there are no more tears left to shed, and then I get up and go into the bathroom. Turn the shower on hot so the steam fills up the room, and then I step inside pulling the curtain closed.
The water cascades down over my skin, washing off the nervousness and fear. I wash and rinse my hair meticulously, then scrub every inch of skin until it’s pink and clean and I’m confident there is nothing from the police station left on me.
When I step out, I reach for the fluffy robe that Jett kept for me next to the shower in his master bathroom, but my hand finds empty air. I settle for a thin towel. I should get around to replacing those sooner rather than later.
I take a look in the mirror.
I still look mostly the same, just with red eyes and skin flushed from the heat of the water. I could use a trim. I could use some sleep.
But there was one thing the shower couldn’t wash off.
The heartbreak.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jett
I’ve never been more desperate to put something behind me than I am right now.
I thought Emerald was a disaster, the way she distracted me just long enough to get what she wanted, the way she played me like a fucking fiddle, the way she almost yanked me off course.
Now I know better than that.
Every time I think of Angelica, my face goes hot, my gut churns, my heart feels like someone has stabbed it with a blade.
Why didn’t I learn my lesson? How fucking stupid am I?
Angelica was the disaster. Angelica played me better than Emerald ever could have.
I toss and turn in my empty bed, thinking of Angelica at the police station. They call to update me when she’s released for the night. Not a flight risk, they say. Extortion, they say. It’s all part of some plan to reel in the guy at the center of the crime ring. She’s agreed to turn herself in if charges are filed.
I start to say that they should press charges against her right this very fucking second, but bite back the words.
She affects me even now, in the black depths of my anger.
The way she approached me so tentatively, never wanting to pry but wanting to know...the way she made me want to curb my temper....
It pisses me off.
It pisses me off that someone who lied to me so well and for so long could still have a hold over me.
I force myself out of bed and stomp over to the walk-in closet, choosing the first workout clothes I find. Then I stalk out of the penthouse, stalk into the elevator, stalk across the street to the gym—which is always accessible by key card to VIP clients like myself—and lose myself in hours of sweating, pressing weights up and up, heavier and heavier, and running on the treadmill.
When I’m done, my muscles ache and
burn.
But my heart is still an open would.
I manage to claw three hours of sleep out of the early morning. Then, even though it’s Saturday, I go to the office.
I don’t want to be in the fucking penthouse.
I should sell the damn thing and never go back.
I tear through paperwork, reading every single God damn word. By the time Monday morning arrives, I’m going to be so far ahead that Emily’s not going to know what to do. But I’ll tell her. She can schedule meetings into infinity because I’m going to be involved now.
This is going to be my life.
The thought makes my stomach tighten. This office, these people, making money hand over fist, that’s going to be my life.
It was the right choice to end things with Angelica. How was I going to sleep at night knowing there was a liar lying next to me in my bed? A scam artist who just wanted me for my money? A thief who apparently had no qualms about sleeping with the man she was helping to rob?
She didn’t get anything out of this.
The thought bubbles up and my hand clenches around my pen, ruining the signature on the form I’m signing.
“Fuck.”
There’s nobody in the office to hear me.
When the papers are gone, it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and the silence of the building rings in my ears.
My phone has been buzzing throughout the day, but none of the messages are from Angelica.
Good.
I don’t want to hear anything she has to say.
What could she say that would make her actions any less heinous?
That she loves you, and she loves her brother, and she couldn’t let him get taken out by some creep. That the stakes were too high. That she got in over her head.
No.
Not even that.
She can never take back what she’s done.
I text Stuart and tell him to take the rest of the night off, then walk home, looking in the windows of all the shops and restaurants.
