A Tangled Web

by A. Claire Everward

  She slept the healing sleep that comes with finally letting go of hell, finally letting someone in on a secret kept hidden for almost half her life. When she opened her eyes to a sunny autumn morning, Ian was sleeping on the chair beside her, his feet on the bed, his hands folded across his chest. She stayed still, watching him, bewildered. She had told him what she had never told anyone, never thought she would. She had slept while he was here, in her bedroom, and woke up with him still here beside her. And it was right. It felt safe, and right. But what would happen now? she wondered with a tug of sadness. He knew now what she had done, and what had been done to her. Would this mar what had been growing between them, what had started to take its rightful place in both their lives? Would he look at her differently now, was it lost forever? She wasn’t sure anymore that she could bear that. She couldn’t—

  His eyes opened, meeting hers. And they had everything in them for her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ian went to his own bedroom in the morning, but not before he treated Tess’s bruises again. He took a hot shower, to take the kinks out of his muscles that ached after he had fallen asleep on the chair the way he had, dressed and returned to find that Tess had put on a dress, one that would hide the bruises but that was still part of that elegant, complimenting wardrobe the woman she had become would wear. It was a good sign, but too much about her was still not her usual self.

  “My laptop, it’s still in your office,” she said absently, stopping on the way down the stairs. “I left it there. But he could never hope to turn it on or take it apart without wiping everything on it.”

  “He didn’t take it, he scrambled out of there as soon as you left,” Ian said. “It’s in the den, with your bag. I had Jackson bring it here yesterday.”

  She nodded, still distracted.

  He watched her with concern. She had none of her characteristic alertness about her. “Tess, you need to rest. Please go back to bed.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m staying at home today, I’ll work here so that you won’t be alone. I’ll work in your room if you want me too.”

  She looked at him in surprise that turned to wonder, but at least now he knew why. She shook her head again. “I want to help.”

  He looked at her in question.

  “I want to take him down.” Her voice was low. And determined.

  He considered her. She was fighting back. Good. He would have liked her to rest, recuperate under his watch, allow him to envelope her with his protection, his care. His love. But perhaps right now fighting back against the man who did this to her, and who was still doing it to them, was the best thing for her.

  “All right,” he said. “But we do this here, at home, and you don’t push it. First order of the day,” he interjected again when she started protesting, “is breakfast. You’ve barely eaten anything yesterday.”

  Her eyes, raised in objection, met his. His were a warm gray that would not be argued with, not when it came to her wellbeing. You’re far too important to me, they said, and she was lost in them, in this care she was not used to.

  Breakfast was eggs, scrambled the way she liked them, and warm, soft rolls, her favorite sweet ones that Lina had made especially. Followed by pancakes this morning, made by Graham. No one could do them as well as he could.

  “Pancakes,” Tess mused and poured a generous amount of maple syrup on the ones on her plate.

  “Food for the body followed by food for the soul,” Ian remarked.

  “Philosophic,” she said.

  “Tasty.” He put sugar powder and berries on his.

  She concurred.

  She went straight to her bag, which sat on his desk, took out her laptop and turned it on.

  “He didn’t go anywhere near it,” Ian told her. “I think the way you stood up to him after what he did to you surprised him.”

  She shuddered at the reminder of what had happened, of what had almost happened, and Ian moved closer to her, let her feel that he was there. She relaxed again, visibly so, and managed to think. Analyze. “That’s why he came to speak to you despite what he said to me. He couldn’t trust that I would remain silent.”

  “You were supposed to be his victim, but instead you are a threat. Or were, as far as he’s concerned his talk with me took care of that.”

  She turned to look at him.

  “Before he came here, he sent me an email with that proof he threatened you with. It’s on my laptop if you want to see it.”

  She didn’t, not in the least. He didn’t think she would. He hadn’t either, hadn’t needed to, and he said so now. “He asked to speak to me in confidence, and came posing as a concerned friend who wants to protect me from the embarrassment that the woman I married could potentially cause me with her outrageous behavior if anyone found out. He actually apologized to me for having to do that, to cause me such grief, that’s how he said it. Luckily, I was prepared to act suitably. All shocked and enraged.”

  “I’m just glad you knew it wasn’t true.”

  “You thought I would believe it? Tess, we’ve been together for more than five months now. I know you. I’m just sorry I didn’t do enough to let you know that, to give you the confidence to come to me. It hurt you.”

  “It’s all right now,” she said, still too quiet.

  “It will be,” he said softly, and she breathed in, tried to draw a bit of confidence from him.

  “What does he think you’re going to do?” she asked. “It has to be something he would be sure would neutralize me while allowing him to continue with his original plan.”

  “He thinks I’m sending you away.”

  She tilted her head, just the slightest.

  He shrugged. “I feigned anger, a bit of a tantrum. My wife, my own wife! If this ever gets out I’ll be a laughing stock, it will be an absolute disaster.”

  She had to smile at the way he was playing it. It was easy, knowing that he knew the truth. Easy, except for the fact that the man who was doing this, who had hurt her and was hurting her husband, was still free to do what he wanted.

  “So,” Ian continued, “he suggested that perhaps I should send you away for a while, and I jumped at the idea and said that I would much rather send you away for good. That I couldn’t bear to look at you after what he’s told me you’ve done. And after all, someone like me could make sure of that, make sure you wouldn’t return, wouldn’t go anywhere near me or mine or there would be consequences.” He spread his palms. “He bought it.”

  “So he expects me to be gone.”

  “I said I would do it yesterday. You’re supposed to be gone from my life for good by now. If he sees that, he’ll think you’re no longer an immediate threat.”

  “And you’ll be safe.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of you being safe,” he said gently. “I already knew what happened when I spoke to him, remember?”

  She did, too acutely. “So how do we do this?”

  “We already are. You can’t go anywhere outside the house, or the grounds immediately around it at the most. This property is big enough and the house is positioned in a way that the hills around it prevent anyone seeing it, and the airspace above it is closed, I made sure of that when I moved here. Also, no one will come here in the coming days, and Graham will make sure anyone who happens to ask will think you’ve gone away for a while. To visit friends, whatever. If Brett happens to hear that, he’ll think I’m trying to hide what happened. That should give us some time.”

  “So I’m grounded,” she mused, and he laughed. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “at least now that we know it’s him, we’ve got more to work on. I’ll start looking into him, see if there’s anything he did in the past or something in the way he thinks that will help me refine the location identifiers I’ve already prepared, and maybe also help uncover flaws, patterns, or access points in what he’s doing to Ian Blackwell Holdings.” Much like she’d done at InSyn, in the part of the work required to analyze t
he human element of the theoretical interface.

  “Can you dig into him without him knowing?”

  “Yes. Because he believes I’m out of his way. Normally I’d think he might consider me a greater threat now because I might be out on a vengeance, but you’ve made it clear to him that you’ve sent me away, and someone like you could easily make sure I won’t contact anyone, so that should be enough. Still, I’ll be careful .” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to get to him, and I’m going to disarm him.”

  Ian nodded. No fire there yet, but she was fighting what she could, in the way she knew best. He hoped that taking Brett down would go some way toward her healing. “I can help you get started,” he said and went over to his laptop. “I can get you all the information I have about him as well as about Additive Manufacturing. Including”—he was already preoccupied with accessing the information—“everything since its inception and until I purchased it, so mainly concept development and preliminary technology implementation. Since he’s on the company’s technological side, it could help, right?”

  “Very. It’ll show me how he thinks,” she said.

  And it did. Over the next hours she studied Brett using what Ian gave her and what he told her about him. Not about Brett as she herself had seen him before the day of his attack on her, the man she had met in social functions, but what Ian had seen when he had met Brett back when he’d first taken interest in purchasing Additive Manufacturing, and the professional side of Brett he had seen and heard in product meetings since the company became one of his.

  By nightfall, she had enough to integrate into her search additional parameters that would help her trace when and where Brett had begun to build his web. This would, she hoped, reduce the number of Ian Blackwell Holdings subsidiaries in which what she was looking for possibly was, the origin of Brett’s work, the point from where he could bring down her husband’s company.

  The intercom sounded a soft chime, and Ian, who for the past couple of hours had been sitting in his armchair watching her while she worked behind his desk, completely engrossed in her work, got up to answer it.

  “Mr. Blackwell,” Graham said impassively, “Mr. Sevele is at the gate.”

  “Let him in,” Ian said, glancing at Tess. “Show him to the living room.” He stepped behind his desk and activated the wall screen. Several clicks and a split view showed the main door of the house and the way to the living room and the room itself, for her to see and hear. “He must be here to make sure I did as he suggested,” he said. “You’d better stay in the den.”

  Brett already felt at home here. It would be different now, Blackwell owed him for saving him. Or so Blackwell thought. Their conversation the day before had gone well, and he had obviously succeeded in speaking to Blackwell before she did. It was pure luck that Blackwell had been on that fancy jet of his back overnight, pure luck that he’d already completed his business and had decided to return to San Francisco immediately to be present for the remaining subsidiary audits, he’d said. Yes, luck was certainly on Brett’s side, as it should well be. And apparently Blackwell was more preoccupied with his company than with his wife, so that Brett had met him before he had a chance to speak to her. He did say she was feeling ill. And he had said that rather dismissively, and so Brett understood that he’d been right, that Blackwell did not care much about his wife.

  Nice one, though, Tess Blackwell, he thought, for keeping away from her husband. Probably trying to think what to do, and obviously she was not about to tell Blackwell what he had done to her. Excellent, she was obeying him. Still, it worried him, the way she had fought him instead of simply succumbing to him. One never knew with women, it paid to be careful. And he had gone too far, he hadn’t meant to. Well, maybe he had, he’d had his eye on her, on having Ian Blackwell’s wife, since the day he first saw her. But he should have done it later, when she was too entangled in his plan to have any other option but to let him have what he wanted, and certainly in more appropriate settings. For him, of course. What had happened, it had gotten out of hand, he had lost control. But then he had not expected her to be so feisty. Or to be so protective of Blackwell, he had certainly underestimated how much she cared about him.

  No matter. Blackwell didn’t care about her, and if he had in fact done what they had talked about the day before, Brett was free to continue what he’d been doing, to destroy Blackwell as he wanted.

  Blackwell came toward him now, a somber look on his face, and dismissed that butler guy who had remained with him in the room. Not wanting anyone to know, Brett thought. So he had him, he had Ian Blackwell right where he wanted him. And she was indeed gone, Blackwell then told him. She had denied, he said, but he had shown her the proof, the implicating images he now thanked Brett for again, and she’d been shocked into silence, no longer trying to deny. He had sent her off to one his more isolated properties the night before, threatening her not to speak to anyone until he finalized all the necessary arrangements, and she had not objected, she had wanted nothing but to leave.

  So maybe he was wrong, Brett thought. Maybe he had scared her more than he’d thought. Or maybe she simply understood that leaving was the way to protect Blackwell, women were like that. Either way, she was gone. He assured Blackwell that the matter would remain between the two of them, and, yes, of course, an attorney, he understood that one must be employed to help deal with getting rid of her and ending the marriage.

  It worked, he thought with glee as Blackwell himself walked him to the door. The only person who could stop him was out of the way, and he was free to do whatever he wanted.

  Ian returned to his office, allowing the ice back into his eyes. Tess was sitting behind his desk.

  “Looks like he believed it,” she said quietly.

  “Just as long as you didn’t.”

  She smiled a little, her eyes on the screens of both their laptops.

  He came up behind her to see what she was doing and leaned over her shoulder, his hand on the back of the chair. He was close, but she didn’t mind. He wasn’t touching her, though, not like he had the day before, and she wondered fleetingly if he was avoiding touching her on purpose.

  And then he did. As he leaned closer to the screens, he put his hand on her waist, and immediately moved it away with an abruptness that for her could only mean that he’d had time to digest what she had told him, what was done to her, and was repulsed by it.

  She wasn’t prepared for the force of the stab of pain she felt. She struggled to contain the emotions, to hide them from him, but it was different now, so much more difficult to do that. Her eyes remained glued to the screens as she finished setting up the refined search, and as soon as she could she excused herself, saying she wanted a bit of rest, which Ian accepted.

  She was sure he would leave her alone, and that’s what she wanted now. She was still raw from what had happened to her, still hurting, still trying to come to grips with it. And after the previous evening, having told Ian the truth, what she had never told anyone before, what she had never uttered out loud, and reliving the horrific memories in the process, she was now far too vulnerable. Not in the least because the entire ordeal had also shown him how much she cared about him, and that too she had no idea how to deal with. She felt exposed, and entirely uncertain as to how to tread in this new territory for her.

  With the storm of emotions raging inside her, she had no idea what would happen once she was alone in her room, the room he’d been in with her the night before.

  She had no idea she wouldn’t be able to keep the tears back.

  Ian knocked on the door and came in. “Tess, I asked Graham to serve dinner in the den, looks like your search turned up—”

  She had no time to turn her back to him. Her eyes were red, and he saw it and covered the distance to her in two steps. “Tess, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She tried to sound as if nothing happened, but she’d been caught unprepared. “I’m just a bit tired.”

  “No, that�
�s not it,” he said slowly, racking his brain, trying to understand what was going on.

  She breathed in, trying to steady herself. “You know, I can handle the search by myself,” she said. “There’s no need for you to be here. Why don’t you take my place at the Corwell banquet in the meantime?” She was originally supposed to attend the charity event herself while he was in Tokyo, but obviously couldn’t, not now, and it had slipped her mind. She hadn’t told them she wasn’t going to be there after all.

  “I can’t. Brett is going to be there. Thinking I had sent you away, he would expect me to behave as if I’m no longer married, maybe even leave with a woman by my side.”

  “Maybe you should,” she said, her voice quiet. “I would understand.”

  “Would you? It would be okay with you if I was with another woman?”

  “It will happen at some point. And you’ve . . .” It was difficult for her to say this, excruciating. “You’ve made it clear that . . .”

  “Clear? How the hell did I do that?” He was truly absolutely confused.

  “You moved away, earlier. It’s the one thing I recognize well, isn’t it what I’ve been doing to you all this time? Look, now we both know that it’s not . . . that I’m damaged, okay?” She found the strength to say it as it was. “So there’s no need to continue—”

  He took a step toward her, finally understanding. Frustration flared. At her, for thinking this. At himself, for letting her think this. At this goddamn situation that was preventing him from touching the woman he loved like a man should. “Is that what you think? I moved away, so you think, what, that I don’t want to touch you?”

  She turned away from him and he did something he had never dared do before. He caught her hand and pulled her back to face him. Her eyes opened in surprise, then anger. Good, he thought with relief. There was that spirit he’d been waiting to see again.

  “You were raped,” he threw at her.