by Iona Rose
“There’s only one problem with all of this,” Jess says as she roots through my drawers for a flash drive. She finds one and holds it up. “Can I put the footage on here?”
I nod.
She inserts it into the computer and goes back to her original point, “Beatrice taking your phone within the right time frame for her to have put the email together and sent it is pretty damning in our minds. But technically, it’s only circumstantial. All it proves is that she had your phone.”
“I think it’ll be enough to convince Elena I’m innocent in this. She already knows Beatrice doesn’t like her. I tried to convince her she was being paranoid, but she obviously wasn’t. And besides, I think it’s enough for me to bluff a confession out of Beatrice.”
Jess bends down and pulls the flash drive and her hard drive out of the computer tower. “All done,” she says, handing me the flash drive. “And remember, my name doesn’t come into this.”
“Thanks Jess. You’re a fucking legend. I’ll get the paperwork for your pay raise sorted by the end of the week.”
“I feel like I should protest that a little, but I’m not going to because you’re right. I am a fucking legend.” She smirks at me and then leaves my office.
I go back around to my side of my desk and I think for a moment. When I have a plan in place, I open my top drawer slightly and hit record on my phone then slip it into the drawer. It’s something else that will never stand up in court, but it’s not for court. It’s for Elena. So there can be no doubt in her mind that Beatrice did this.
Chapter Forty
Elena
I pick up my desk phone and call through to the secretary’s pool.
Karen picks up.
“Hi Karen. Can you ask Beatrice to come to my office please?” I ask.
She says she will and ends the call.
I don’t have long to wait until Beatrice appears at my door.
I take a deep breath and swallow down my anger. It’s going to be hard to do this without giving myself away, but I have to. “Sit down.” I smile.
Beatrice does as I say. She looks a little nervous, but she is holding herself together surprisingly well.
I decide to get straight to the point, “Beatrice I know you stole my phone yesterday and sent that email,” I say. She opens her mouth to speak but I go on, “You were seen taking my phone, so don’t try to deny it.”
“I did take your phone, but it was an accident. I picked some papers up and it must have been in amongst them. I brought it back as soon as I noticed,” she says.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just insult my intelligence with that story,” I say with a smile. “Look I’m not mad okay, I get it. And I want to help you. But I need you to be honest with me all right?”
She doesn’t say anything.
It’s not the confession I had hoped for, but at least she’s no longer outright denying everything. I’m going to have to execute my full plan, nudge her along until she snaps. “I understand that unrequited love can be hard, and I know that the only reason you did what you did was because you were acting on your emotions. You wanted to break up Elena and me, so you had a chance with her. I can imagine how much harder this is for you when you’re living a lie, pretending to be straight when you’re clearly into Elena. And to learn she doesn’t like women in that way. I can see how that would push you over the edge.”
“You think I’m in love with Elena?” Beatrice asks while looking stunned.
I’m pretty sure the shock on her face is genuine. I nod and smile kindly at her.
She shakes her head quickly. “I’m not in love with her. I fucking hate her.” She almost spits the word ‘her’ out like it’s a swear word.
“Now come on Beatrice, we’re all adults here,” I try to soothe her. “You can tell me the truth. I know you have a thing for her. Why else would you have tried to break us up? I’ve seen the way you look at her. The way you go out of your way to come to my office for things you could tell me over the phone, just so you can glance in at her.” Come on Beatrice, bite, I think to myself. I can see her starting to get angry and I’m confident this will work if I can just keep it going a little bit longer. “I can see why you’re so taken with her. She’s a very attractive woman, but—”
“I’m not fucking in love with Elena, you fool!” Beatrice snaps. “I’m in love with you. I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you, but you never saw me as anything other than dependable old Beatrice. And then that bitch came along and stole you right out from underneath my nose. And I had to make you see that she’s not right for you. When the email went out, did she give you the benefit of the doubt? Did she even let you explain?” She pauses.
I don’t say anything. She kind of has a point though. Elena was pretty quick to vilify me. I get why though.
My face must give my thoughts away because Beatrice smiles at me.“She didn’t, did she? She just assumed you were the sort of guy who would do that. And that’s why she’s no good for you. I would have listened to you. I would have believed you and stood by you when no one else would. Don’t you see it, Ashton? We’re meant to be together. I know you’re probably a little angry, but you’ll calm down and then you’ll see I only sent that email to show you the truth. One day, we’ll laugh about this. You’ll see.”
“Beatrice, you’re fired. Get the hell out of my office. I don’t ever want to see your face again. Think yourself lucky I’m not having you fucking arrested for what you’ve done!” I shout.
“You can’t fire me!” she shouts. “We’re going to be a couple. You don’t fire your girlfriend.”
Fucking hell. Her delusions go deeper than I thought. I stand up and point to the door. “You are not my girlfriend. Nor will you ever be. I would rather die than be with you. Now get the hell out of here before I call security and have you escorted out!” I shout.
Beatrice jumps to her feet and looks me in the eye. Gone is the excitable girl who thought this was our moment to kiss and make up. In her place is a cold, calculating woman. “Fine. I’ll leave. But tell Elena to watch her back, because if I can’t have you, she certainly fucking can’t.”
Her words chill me to the bone. It’s not so much what she said, as the cold way she said it and the way her mouth curled up into an evil smile.
Chapter Forty-one
Elena
My phone beeps beside me. I know who it is without having to look at the screen. Ashton. I’ve lost count of the calls, the voicemails, the text messages. He even tried to send me flowers earlier on this morning. As if flowers were going to fix this. I want to turn my phone off, so I don’t have to have this constant reminder of what I’ve lost, but I can’t. I quit my job yesterday and put myself right back into the mess that I took the job at Ashton’s firm to get out of and I’ve spent the morning sending out resumes. It’s hardly going to win me any prizes if anyone calls me for an interview and my phone is switched off.
I try to ignore my phone now, but the notification light flashes insistently at me, taunting me. I turn the phone over, but I still know I have an unread text message, and as much as I hate Ashton for what he’s done to me, I can’t help but want to know what he’s saying.
I snatch my phone up angrily and open the text message. I read it and shake my head.
I know you’re mad at me, but this is important. You’re in danger Elena. Lock your doors and stay inside. Don’t open them to anyone but me. I’m on my way over. I’ll explain everything. A x.
This is a new low, even for him. He’s not content with ruining my reputation and breaking my heart. Now he’s trying to scare me into becoming some sort of fucking recluse. Well fuck him. That’s not going to happen.
I stand up, leaving my phone behind. If anyone calls about a job, they can leave me a message and I’ll call them back later. I’m not going to sit here like an idiot, so Ashton can come over and laugh at me for being stupid enough to take his threat seriously.
I pull my jacket on, grab my keys a
nd step outside. I slam the door, lock it and start down my path. I already feel better for ignoring Ashton’s taunting and going out. I wonder what he’ll do when he gets here and see I’ve gone out. Hopefully, he’ll take the hint and stop contacting me, because as angry and humiliated as I am, I can’t just turn my feelings for him off. Every time he contacts me another little piece of my heart breaks.
I shake off the feeling of loss, telling myself I’m not missing Ashton at all. It’s a lie and I know it, but I have to get through this, and if lying to myself is the way to do it, then I’ll go there.
I pull the gate open and turn right. I have no idea where I’m going, so I just pick a direction at random and start walking. I have barely stepped out of my gate when I hear a noise behind me. I start to turn around, but a hand comes over my shoulder and clamps down on my nose and mouth. The hand pushes a piece of cloth over my face. A stringent, bitter smell like raw alcohol penetrates my nostrils and I taste something sweet on my lips. I try to push the hand away, but my arm is too heavy to lift. My energy is draining out of me.
Panic tries to grip me, but even that takes too much energy and I feel myself sagging, my consciousness slipping away as my eyes close and the world goes black.
I START TO WAKE UP although I keep my eyes closed. My eyelids feel too heavy to open yet. My mind feels groggy, and my thoughts are fuzzy like my head is filled with cotton wool. My throat is dry and scratchy while the insides of my nostrils are stinging ever so slightly. I am sitting up right. I must have dozed off in front of the TV or something.
My memory comes back in one blinding flash and my eyes fly open. I didn’t fall asleep anywhere. I was on my way out, trying to get away from Ashton, and the realization is sudden that some fucker chloroformed me. Ashton was telling the truth. I was in danger. I should have listened to him. But I didn’t and here I am. I need to try and work out what’s going on rather than thinking what if.
I am alone in a semi dark building that looks like a warehouse. It has high ceilings with rows and rows of shelves. The shelves are all empty. Great. An abandoned warehouse. I’m probably going to be murdered, and it’s not even in an original place. My death is going to be a cliché.
I rein my thoughts back in and take a further look at my surroundings. There’s nothing here except empty shelving. Even if the place were full of loaded guns, they’d be no use to me. My wrists are tied up behind me, my ankles and waist are bound to a wooden, straight backed chair. I’m not gagged, but I don’t bother to call for help. Whoever did this knows what they’re doing. If there were a chance of anyone hearing me scream, I’d be gagged.
I don’t know who has me, why they took me, what they want from me, or where they are, but I do know that if I start yelling and they’re close by, they’re going to know I’m awake. Something tells me that won’t end well for me. I pull at my wrists, trying to drag them apart, but it’s no use. I’m bound too tightly. I pull them closer to the chair and try to saw through the ropes on the chair back, but it’s totally smooth and I can’t get the right angle to build up any friction at all.
There’s a large roller shutter ahead of me, and next to it is a fire door. I have to try and get over there and just hope to hell that the fire door works. I push down against the seat of the chair and then spring up into the air. The chair jumps an inch forward and I smile. This is going to take a long time, but it might just work.
“Well, well, well, look who woke up.”
The voice from behind me dampens any hopes I had of escaping. It’s a male voice, deep and with a hint of the local accent. I don’t recognize it. A large man steps around in front of me and grins down at me. I have no idea who he is or what he could possibly want with me. If it wasn’t for the warning I got from Ashton, I would assume I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this has to be more personal than that.
“What do you want?” I say.
The man reaches out and caresses my cheek.
I resist the urge to retch as I shrink away from his touch.
He laughs, a humorless sound. “I want to mess up that pretty little face of yours.” He grins.
My insides shrivel up. This man is a fucking tank. He could kill me with his bare hands without even breaking into a sweat.
“Soon,” a female voice says.
The man smiles at me again and then he leans over me, grabs the back of the chair and spins me around. He steps aside.
Now, I see a woman sitting on a similar chair to mine, although she’s not bound to hers.
“Beatrice?” I say, shocked at seeing her.
“What? You don’t believe stupid little Beatrice who’s only good for fetching coffee is clever enough to pull this off?” she demands.
“Well actually, I didn’t believe you were psycho enough to do something like this,” I say.
She frowns and the thug closes in on me. Beatrice waves him away. “All in good time Henry. I’m not going to let the wonderful fucking Elena get under my skin anymore.”
Somehow, Henry isn’t the right name for this guy. He should have been called something like Spider or Satan, some nickname that sounds a bit edgy. Henry is the name of a posh school boy.
“You must be wondering why you’re here Elena,” Beatrice says.
“I am a little curious,” I admit. My outward nonchalance is the polar opposite to how I feel inside. Inside, I am a wreck, terrified of what’s going to happen to me. But I guess I have Ashton to thank for my outward calm appearance. I learned early on that if I showed fear, Ashton’s torment grew. If I maintained a causal indifferent attitude, like I was mildly amused by him, he would get bored quicker and move on. I don’t think Beatrice is just going to get bored and let me go, but maybe I can buy myself some time to come up with some sort of plan. God knows what that might be though. I have no weapon, no phone, and I’m tied up. It’s looking pretty hopeless to say the least.
“Well Ashton and I had a little chat this morning that resulted in me being fired,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. I did not see that one coming.
Beatrice smiles at me. “That must make you happy, huh?”
“No. Why would I be happy about that?” I ask.
“Because it keeps me away from Ashton. And while I’m not around him, I can’t make him see that he should be with me,” she explains. She says it as though she’s explaining something to a child. She really is totally insane.
That doesn’t bode well for me.
“Ashton was going to be mine long before you came along. And then you came swanning into the office with your pretty little eyes and your shiny fucking hair and the rest of us didn’t stand a chance. But I wasn’t going to give up that easily. Oh no. You see, you might be used to getting your own way princess, but I don’t play by those rules.”
It seems like she doesn’t play by any rules, not even the actual fucking law, but I don’t bother pointing that out to her. She would probably think it was a compliment.
“I figured you were this shiny new thing and I could understand why Ashton was interested, but I knew he would get bored of you and come for me. The thing is, I’m not a patient person Elena, and you were getting in my way, so I decided to get rid of you. I switched out a report and you gave the shareholders the wrong information, but instead of firing you, Ashton took your side. He knew precious little Elena could never fuck up like that. I did a few other things, things that made you look like an incompetent fool and yet, Ashton still couldn’t see past those long eyelashes and those pert little tits of yours.”
I don’t know what to say to any of this, and I keep quiet, just taking in Beatrice’s level of crazy while trying and failing to think of some way out of this mess. I am glad to hear that I was right about her being off with me though. I wasn’t paranoid. She was sabotaging me. Bitch.
“It was the final straw when you two started dating. You’d look at each other all starry eyed and Ashton might as well have gotten ‘Beatrice who?’ tattooed on his fucking fore
head. But I knew it wasn’t his fault. I knew it was all you. That you were tempting him, seducing him. I knew if I could only make him see what a bitch you were, I could take him for myself. I went into his office and took his phone. My plan was to send you a couple of nasty text messages. You’d get pissed off and he’d see you never trusted him in the first place. That’s what you would have done right?” She pauses.
I then realize she’s waiting for an answer. I nod. It’s exactly what I would have done, and there’s very little point in denying it. She wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“See? Isn’t it nice when we’re honest with each other Elena?” Beatrice beams.
No, I think. It’s fucking terrifying. It’s like a glimpse into the who’s who of the lunatic world. I nod again.
Satisfied, Beatrice goes on, “As I was thinking of what I could write in this text message, I had a quick look through your old texts, wanting to see how Ashton worded things. I didn’t want it to be obvious he hadn’t sent the messages after all. And I found a real gem. The photos. It was obvious what I had to do.”
“You sent the email,” I say.
“Yup!” Beatrice nods while beaming. “It was genius, although even I have to admit it was a stroke of good luck rather than planning on my part. And you reacted exactly as I had predicted. You accused Ashton of betraying you and you wouldn’t even hear him out. It never even occurred to you that he might not have done it. Proving what we both know you don’t deserve him.”
I look down into my lap, feeling ashamed. She’s right. That’s exactly what I did. Maybe I don’t deserve a guy like Ashton. A guy who was still trying to get me to talk to him even after I accused him of something terrible. Who still warned me I was in danger, despite me not even giving him a chance to explain himself to me.
“Yeah. You should look ashamed of yourself,” Beatrice says, pulling my attention back to her. “You’re a bitch Elena and you don’t deserve anyone, let alone someone like Ashton. I figured he’d see it now that you’d shown your true colors, but he didn’t. Like a fucking love sick puppy, he ran after you, trying to get you to come around. And then he had the nerve to fire me.”