As I slammed the doors of the club open, they banged against the plaster of the wall. Marching in, I was met by a startled looking Cillian.
“Woah, blondie. You look like you want to high five someone… in the face… with this chair.”
“Where is he?” I took deep breaths in through my nose to try and settle my growing rage that was bubbling out of control. It wasn’t really helping.
“I’m here. What the hell happened?” Jackson was leaning in the doorway that led to the stairs and his office space at the back. He didn’t look like a man who’d been avenged. In fact, it was obvious from his relaxed body language that he didn’t have a clue what had gone on this morning. So much for Travis’s theory.
“I think you’re gonna need to sit down for this,” I said, stomping over to the bar and pouring myself a generous amount of whiskey.
“Hey, no drinking. Whatever it is, you don’t need that shit.” I knew Jackson meant well, but right then I needed that drink to steady my nerves and calm the beast inside me that was ready to explode. I was seconds away from full Hulk mode.
“Just one, I swear. You’ll overlook it when you hear what I’ve been through this morning. You might even need one yourself.”
“I said no.” He grabbed the drink out of my hand and threw it down the sink, slamming the glass onto the bar as he glared at me.
I met his anger with my own and slammed the USB down onto the bar. I held my breath as they both looked at it, then back at me like I was going insane.
“What’s on the USB?” Jackson asked.
Was he testing me? My gut instinct said no, but I was still wary of my skills for reading people correctly after the debacle that was my relationship with Justin.
“You tell me, Jackson.”
He frowned and came to sit on the stool next to Cill.
“If I had a fricking clue what it was I’d tell you, but I don’t. So, enough with the cloak and dagger stuff, angel. Just spit it out.”
I was shaking all over as I tried to conjure up my most confident, assertive voice to speak.
“That, right there, is a delightfully fucked up home video of you and me. Taken right here in your office last week.”
His eyes grew wide as the cogs in his brain started turning and the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place.
“Oh, yes. Stuff you wouldn’t want your grandma to see. Thank God mine’s dead, but my dad and brother still got the pleasure, along with every board member in my dad’s company. I don’t even know if that’s the only copy. For all I know, my mum is settling down with her coffee morning buddies to watch us right now. We certainly put on a good show.”
I gulped down a sob as my voice cut off. I knew Jackson wasn’t behind this. Any fool could see he was as clueless about it all as I was, but I couldn’t let him get off scott-free. I had to vent my anger somewhere, and the fact it was his office and lack of security that had been my downfall today, made him my number one target.
“How could you, Jackson?”
He sprang off his chair, sending it flying and toppling to the floor behind him.
“Me? You’ve got to be fucking joking. Why the hell would you think I’d do something like this to you?”
“I don’t know. But someone got us on video, and like you said, this place…” I gestured around me with my arms out wide, “…it’s your empire, your kingdom. So excuse me for feeling slightly pissed off that I got fucked over here in the worst way. Nice touch sending it to my dad, by the way.”
I didn’t for a moment think he’d sent it. I thought he’d taken his eye off the ball at work, but that was all. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop myself from goading him. I think all the pent up frustration from Justin, Mason, Travis, and then finding out what he thought about my dad on top of this morning’s shit show, had sent me into a spiral of craziness.
“I didn’t fucking send it. I didn’t do it. You of all people should know I wouldn’t do that. Not now.”
Something snapped inside me and I knew I had to curb my venom, or direct it at the right person. Either that or I was going to end up doing or saying something that could damage what we had forever.
“I know. Honestly, I do. But who else would’ve had access to your office to do this? I feel humiliated, Jax. I don’t think I can face those people ever again, not after they’ve seen… that. I’m so embarrassed. I feel ashamed.”
I hugged my arms around myself and wondered how I’d ever face my father again, let alone the board members.
“I don’t know what to say.” Jackson was trembling where he stood, and I couldn’t tell if it was in fear of losing me, or in fury at what he would do to whoever took that video. I guessed the latter. “I promise you, I will find out who did this, and when I do they won’t live to regret it, believe me. You have my word; I will unleash hell on them.” I believed him. From the look on his face, he was ready to unleash hell now.
“Can I watch it?” Cill piped up, gesturing to the USB on the bar with a deadpan expression on his usually cheeky face.
“Over my dead body.” Jackson grabbed the USB as if it was a priceless jewel he needed to protect with his life, and dropped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I can’t believe you thought I did this.” Jackson held my gaze with his, willing me to say what he needed to hear, but at the same time looking like he was dreading my answer.
“I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. I trust you, Jackson. I really do. But seriously, how the hell did someone get access to your office and get away with this? They couriered it to my dad’s building this morning with instructions for when it should be played. Whoever did this knew all about the meeting. They knew I’d be there.”
“And they were probably banking on you blaming me for the whole damn thing.” Jackson banged his fist down on the bar in anger. “Travis. He did this. He wanted to break us up. He knew you’d be there this morning. It all makes sense, Ryley. It has to be Travis.”
As angry as I was with Travis, I trusted him.
“No, he wouldn’t do that. Believe me, I saw his face when we walked in to the boardroom and the video was playing. He was as shocked as I was. No, it was someone else. My brother might be an asshole at times, but he wouldn’t have it in him to do something like this.”
“Your dad then?”
“Jesus, Jackson. Enough with the conspiracy theories about my family. None of them did this, okay? This falls solely in your camp. I think you need to look at everyone you’ve pissed off recently.”
“It’d be easier to make a list of the people he hasn’t pissed off,” Cill joked, but it fell on deaf ears.
“What about Justin?” Jackson’s brain was in overdrive, trying to pin the blame on anyone linked to me.
“What about Justin?” I counter-attacked. “I don’t speak to him anymore, neither does Travis. He’d have no idea about the meeting. Anyway, how would he get access to your office? Be real, Jackson. This is an inside job. Whoever planted that video knows you. They managed to get into your office for Christ’s sake.”
Jackson turned to face Cill. “Was it you?” I shook my head in despair.
“Of course it wasn’t me! If I’d made a sexy video of Ryley, do you think I’d share it with the world? That shit would be strictly private, just for me.”
Cill had chosen the wrong time to be trivial with his answer. Jackson lurched forward to make a grab for him, but I managed to step in between the two of them.
“Jesus, mate, chill out.” Cill held his hands up in surrender and backed away slowly. “I was joking. I’d never disrespect Ryley like that. Or you, for that matter.”
I turned to face Cill. “Now that was the right answer at the wrong fucking time. Why couldn’t you have said that first? You know, you don’t have to think of a funny or cheeky answer to everything.”
“You do know all this arguing is wasting precious time.” Cill reached for his phone and started scrolling down the screen. “I think the person you should be looking for
is Ed. I know you won’t appreciate me saying this, but doesn’t it strike you as peculiar that the video Ryley got today was the exact same video you planned on making a few months ago? Only you weren’t too fussy about the male lead back then.”
“You bastard.” Jackson tried to move me to the side to get at Cill again.
“Mate, I’m not trying to cause you trouble. And Ryley, I’m sorry to drag up the past, but that is what you’d planned to do, isn’t it, Jax? That’s what Ed was paid for. To get compromising pictures and videos of Ryley to send to her father. Taint that precious father/daughter bond they had. Maybe he’s coming good on his promise, only he’s using your revenge plan against you. Turning the tables, so to speak.”
I felt sick hearing this, but I fought the nausea. It was in the past, I couldn’t get caught up in the whole revenge thing Jackson had cooked up.
“So, how the hell did he get inside my office?”
“That’s where I come in.” My heart dropped, expecting Cill to admit to some underhand, backstabbing deceit. “I need to check the CCTV, talk to Dennis and the rest of the team. Someone here has breached our security. Whoever it was, I will find them. Trust me.”
I glanced back to Jackson and he nodded in agreement. Then he reached forward and pulled me into him, burying his face into my neck.
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
Cill got up off his stool and left to give us some privacy.
“When you first walked in I thought I’d lost you. I felt sick to my stomach.”
I ran my arms under his suit jacket to hold him as close as I could. “I told you, I trust you. I love you, and deep down I knew you’d never do something like this to me. I was just lashing out. I’m sorry. I felt so mortified I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me when I walked into that boardroom.” I leant back to look into his beautiful face and could see the storms brewing in his eyes. “You can trust me, Jax. I’m not gonna flake on you and bolt after the first hurdle. It’s not in my nature to quit. I won’t ever quit on you.”
“Thank God for that, because I have a feeling there might be a few more hurdles coming our way.” He brushed his lips over my forehead in a warm, gentle kiss that told me he’d got me; got my back. “I trust you too, baby. I mean it. I’ve never felt so connected to anyone like I am to you. It’s like you’re a part of me now. There is no me without you anymore.”
In that moment, I knew without a doubt that whatever hurdles were in our future, we’d get over them together. I also pitied Ed when Jackson finally got his hands on him. He was a dead man walking.
Cill wasted no time pulling up old CCTV footage and getting his head together with Dennis to find out anything that could help uncover what exactly had gone so wrong in the last few weeks. Jackson started to make calls to every contact he knew to find out Ed’s whereabouts. Word was, he’d gone underground pretty soon after severing ties with Jackson months ago. No one could stay underground forever though, not in the world Jackson had access to. I heard him say his greetings to Luca over the phone, and instantly thought of Chloe and how I hadn’t reached out to her after that fateful girls’ night out.
I grabbed my phone and saw numerous missed calls from Travis and my dad. I ignored them and sent a text to my mum telling her I couldn’t make her special lunch, but that I’d try to drop in later in the week and take her to her favourite restaurant for a proper catch up. I had to have some sweetener to keep her off my back. I was just about to send a text to Chloe when my phone started to buzz, indicating an incoming call from an unknown number. I wouldn’t normally answer an unknown number, but after today, I was fired up and ready for anything.
“Hello?”
I heard a deep sigh down the line, then a familiar voice. A voice that used to send prickles of a different kind down my spine, and I shivered involuntarily.
“Ryley, baby. How are you?”
Justin. After all this time, he chose today of all days to ring me? For what? A friendly chat?
“What do you want, Justin? I’m busy,” was the politest response I could give, and quite frankly he was lucky to get that.
“I need to see you.”
I cut him off right there. “Not a chance in hell. I don’t want to see you. Goodbye.”
“Wait!” he shouted down the line, making me hold the phone away from my ear. “Please, Ryley. It’s important. There’s some things I just need to say. Maybe it would be good for us both to meet. You know, a bit of closure or whatever.”
“I’ve had my closure. I don’t need to see you for that.”
He wasn’t giving up that easily though. “I found some of your things in the apartment. I thought I could give them to you.”
“Send them through the post. You don’t need to see me for that.”
He was grabbing at straws now, that was obvious. He was thinking up anything to get me to agree to see him.
“It’s not just about your stuff. I need to speak to you about something private. Something I can’t talk about over the phone. Please, Ryley. Just five minutes, then you never have to see me again. I promise.”
I don’t know why, maybe after the morning I’d had I didn’t mind seeing another fuck up, but I reluctantly agreed to meet him. I refused to go to the apartment though. Instead, I asked to meet him in a public place, somewhere neutral.
“I… I can’t do the coffee shop or the park,” he stuttered. “My anxiety is through the roof these days, baby. I’m struggling to leave the house. Could you meet me at Liam’s? I can manage Liam’s, just about.”
I knew he’d struggled with anxiety in high school, and ever the sucker for a sob story, I agreed to meet him later that afternoon at Liam’s. I couldn’t tell Jackson. He’d lose his shit if he knew I’d answered the phone, let alone agreed to meet him. No, I’d go to the meeting, get whatever he had to say over and done with, then move onto the next item on my shitty to-do list. I figured my day couldn’t get any worse. In fact, I decided I needed an injection of female sass into my day to help me cope. So I texted Chloe, asking if she was free for a catch up.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing outside a pair of huge steel gates. Every security camera known to man was pointing at me, and I waited anxiously for the intercom to buzz into life.
“Hey, come through,” Chloe’s voice sang through the crackling intercom system.
Then the gates creaked open to reveal a stunningly modern home. Well, more of a mansion really, with numerous performance cars parked across the drive.
I didn’t need to knock on the front doors, they flew open before I’d even made it halfway up the driveway, and Chloe bounced out of the house, brown curls tumbling all over the place and her face a picture of excitement.
“I’m so pleased you came. I love having people over. Most of them don’t take me up on the offer though. I think my grumpy man scares them off.”
She pulled me into a warm embrace, then linked her arms through mine and led me inside. I was used to a large home and all the opulence money can buy growing up, but this place had more gadgets than Jackson’s apartment, and that was saying something.
Chloe pressed some numbers on a keypad as the door clicked shut behind us, then she activated their home entertainment system that sent mellow R&B music pumping throughout the house.
“Come through to the kitchen and I’ll make us a coffee.”
We made our way through to her state-of-the-art kitchen and she got busy setting up the coffee machine and putting muffins out onto plates.
“So, what’s up? I’m guessing you need to offload about a certain male, seeing as you called me and not one of your other girlfriends.”
We sat up at the island and I filled her in on everything that had happened since I’d left Justin, including the shameful video premiere I’d walked in on this very morning.
“Oh my God, Ryley. That’s awful. I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through all that. It shows how tough you really are though, that you’re still smiling through it all. It’s
hard to destroy someone who refuses to give up, and we can’t ever give up. Not when there’s so many people out there ready to pull us down.”
For a little woman, she had a big heart, and when she spoke it really hit home.
“I’m no stranger to heartbreak myself, but you know, each time you face those demons that set out to hurt you, it’ll help you develop your own inner strength. You might not realise it now, but you’re kickass, Ryley. You’ve had shit thrown your way, but you haven’t let it beat you down. I’d expect nothing less from the woman who tamed Jackson Caine though.”
“I feel awful. I blamed him for the video this morning. I shouldn’t have done that, I know, but I couldn’t help it.”
“He wouldn’t do that to you. If there’s one thing I know about Jackson; and none of us know that much about him he’s so private, but if there’s one thing I do know it’s that he’s honest and he stands by those he loves, regardless. Look at how much shit Cill’s brought his way over the years. He stands by him every damn time.”
“I know. I love him and I trust him one hundred percent.”
Chloe’s eyes glistened as I said that. “Aww, babe, that’s so sweet. Remember, these tough times, they don’t last forever. Look at Luca and me. We’ve been through shit you wouldn’t believe. But at the end of the day, tough times will end, but tough people? They never give up.”
I loved her outlook on life. If I’d have told Lisa or Maddie, even Daisy for that matter, they’d have told me to dump Jackson. They’d say he wasn’t worth it. I knew he was, and so did Chloe. She got it.
“Luca always tells me that my smile is more beautiful because of all the tears it had to fight through.” She closed her eyes and shook her head as if shaking off any negative thoughts that might try to invade her subconscious. “Our men are more alike than we realise. Maybe we are too.”
This Cruel Love (A Dark Hearts Stand-Alone Novel Book 2) Page 27