Our Happily Ever After: BWWM Interracial Romance Black Women White Men (That Forbidden Love Book 3)

by Ellie Etienne

  What kind of maternity leave policy did his company have? Anna took care of details like that, usually, but it seemed like the kind of thing that he should know, too.

  It was twenty minutes – they felt like twenty hours – before Leigh felt good enough to get to her feet shakily.

  “I’m moving the appointment up. We’re going to the doctor in an hour. I’m calling Roger and telling him that you’re working from home today.”

  “No, that really isn’t necessary, Harrison. I feel fine, I really do. Besides, you have Darius coming over. You guys will be doing all that stuff that I don’t understand.”

  Harrison shook his head firmly.

  “It does not matter, because you’re not doing anything that will worry you anymore. We’ll handle this. I’ll hire an entire team to handle this. You’re not getting in the middle of it. It cannot be good for you or the baby. We’re going to start taking care of you a lot better, Leigh.”

  Leigh frowned, ready to do battle.

  “Harrison, I’m pregnant, not dying. Will you please calm down? I’m perfectly able to work through my pregnancy, unless the doctor tells me that I shouldn’t, in which case I won’t work through it. But I’m perfectly healthy, and I know my mother had a good pregnancy, so I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. And speaking of my mother, I should tell them, shouldn’t I? Or should we wait twelve weeks? Don’t they say that you should wait twelve weeks? Apparently, miscarriages are common then. I don’t want to have a miscarriage.”

  “You’re not going to have one,” said Harrison, looking absolutely panicked at the very thought.

  “I…”

  The rest of whatever he had been about to say was cut off because there was a buzz. He sprang for his system quickly.

  “What? What is this?”

  “He’s online and trying to get through. We’ll see about that. Now, look away, Leigh, I don’t want you getting stressed. No worrying for you.”

  Leigh began to wonder if Harrison had completely lost his mind. He wanted to look away from something she couldn’t understand, anyway, because it might stress her out – as if closing her eyes would do something magical to keep stress away.

  He was going to be an overprotective father, and he was already turning into an overbearing husband. She would have to do something about that.

  “Come on, you little piece of shit, you want a piece of me, come and get it. Oh, you think it would be that easy. You’re wrong. Got you! Oh, smart, slithered out of that one. That’s right, you’re not the only one who can set up trip-codes. I’m going to get you now. Who are you? Give me a real signature. Give me a real one.”

  Leigh watched, fascinated, as Harrison typed furiously, waging a war she couldn’t see or understand.

  “Almost, almost,” he muttered, and Leigh was shocked to find herself ridiculously turned on.

  Why, it was like watching him fight. She had never known that watching Harrison in his hacking persona could be so arousing.

  Hadn’t she read something about pregnancy making women’s libido skyrocket? Maybe that was true.

  He took a break – well, one hand took a break – long enough to grab his headset and put it on.

  “Got it, Darius? That’s right, run it.”

  The commentary was a mix of instructions to Darius, expletives aimed at the hacker, and sounds of triumph or disgruntlement.

  It seemed to go on forever, but it was really only five minutes or so. Leigh’s tongue was almost literally hanging out by the end of that.

  “Damn it. Damn it, he’s cut and run. Damn it.”

  There was a pause.

  “Yes, I know we almost got him, but almost isn’t good enough, Darius. We need to actually catch him. The stakes are higher now. We have no choice. This isn’t just about the business anymore. Can you be here in an hour? All right, see you then. Sending car.”

  Finally, he looked up at Leigh.

  “What?” asked Harrison.

  Leigh grinned and shrugged.

  “Nothing. I just decided to work from home, that’s all. I’m calling Roger.”

  The hacker was shaking so hard that the chair rattled against the wall.

  They had almost had him. How dare they? How dare they?

  He was better than them. He was the best. He had worked long and hard to make sure that he was.

  There were two of them. He knew that one was Harrison Bloom. He had found the addition of the second player, who had not been invited and had no place there, a challenge at first. An interesting though irritating challenge, he had thought. But now…

  Now, that infuriating third wheel, the third wheel that nobody wanted, was getting in the way. They had almost broken through his firewall. He was supposed to be the aggressor! He was supposed to be the one who attacked!

  It was his destiny, his birthright, to destroy everything that Harrison Bloom had. It was his duty to make sure that all of it turned to ashes, with nothing left for them to pass on to their spawn. There would be nothing. Harrison Bloom’s progeny would be left with nothing, just like he had been. Born with silver spoons in their mouths, when one twist of fate could take everything away from them – they deserved to know that. They deserved to know that the son had paid for the sins of the father, and that they would keep paying, till the end of their lives.

  He was supposed to destroy everything that Harrison Bloom stood for. He was supposed to turn it all into ashes.

  The flame would purify them all. The flame would purify him, too.

  He would make them pay. He would make them all pay. He would find out who that… that insect, that insignificant insect was, and he would swat them until their existence was inconsequential.

  He would make them pay – he would make them all pay.

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to smash something.

  If only he could stop trembling! He couldn’t type, couldn’t code on the fly, when he trembled. Maybe he shouldn’t have stopped taking that medication. But they made him dull.

  He didn’t want to be dull.

  They said that he needed to be cured, but he didn’t want to be cured. Why would he? He had been created for this purpose. He had only one purpose.

  If curing him would turn him away from him, then being cured was no desirable. He had no intention of making anybody understand that.

  For five years, he had played along, pretending to understand what they were talking about. Spending time with all of those people who had been so earnest, both those who followed all those instructions so diligently and those who gave them – it made him sick.

  That’s what had made him sick.

  Slowly, he made himself calm down, even if the fire raged inside, and made himself stop trembling.

  Mind over muscles. That’s all it was.

  He would fulfill his purpose.

  He would destroy Harrison Bloom, and everything that he thought would be his legacy. He would erase the very name of Harrison Bloom, and his existence.

  Forever.

  Chapter 12

  Leigh sat there and watched Darius – who was apparently on Harrison’s payroll now – work as Harrison took a break. She was glad that Harrison was taking a break, really. She felt like her system was getting overheated.

  “I’ve got something,” said Darius, suddenly.

  Leigh and Harrison crowded around his chair. Harrison huffed and hit a few keys to project the screen onto the big one.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s a photo, obviously,” said Darius, making Leigh want to poke him hard.

  “What photo am I looking at?”

  “It’s from a newspaper archive, covering some event. But that is the Lacy family.”

  Harrison peered closer.

  “The Lacy family – there’s a wife, and a child.”

  “That’s taken about a year before the accident. That’s about the only thing I can find, really – it’s like somebody has gone online and wiped out the existence of this person
from the files. But now I can run a facial recognition on the mother and see if I can get any more hits.”

  Leigh’s eyes widened.

  “You can do that?”

  “Watch and learn, lady. Or just watch,” said Darius, and bent over the keyboard again.

  Leigh had expected some kind of magic, but it was soon obvious that it would take time. Leigh decided that a nap would be the best way to pass that time. Somehow, now that she knew that she was pregnant, she just wanted to sleep and sleep. She’d convinced Harrison to move their doctor’s appointment for the next day, but he had gotten her prenatal vitamins.

  The short nap left her more energized. She was just wondering whether she should play soothing music for the baby, and wondering if it was going to be a boy or a girl – names were going to be fun – when she heard whispering.

  “What’s going on?” asked Leigh, walking into the study. Harrison and Darius both looked very definitely guilty.

  “What were you hoping not to tell me?”

  “We got a name,” said Harrison, obviously making a decision. His face went blank. Leigh knew that face – it was as if a mask had been pulled over who he really was.

  “Harrison?”

  “The woman’s name is Rita. She seems to have married three times. Her second husband’s name was Glades.”

  No bells rang in Leigh’s head.

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me, Harrison.”

  “Jonathan. Jonathan Glades.”

  Leigh went still.

  “Jonathan?”

  “I’m going to adapt one of the programs I wrote for a game to clear up that photo we found and age the kid twenty years. It won’t be perfect, but it should give us something close enough.”

  Leigh nodded, feeling nothing. She was numb.

  Somebody Harrison had trusted, somebody he had let into his business, was possibly behind all of this.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know if…”

  “Starting transformation now,” interrupted Harrison, and Leigh watched, on the screen, as that photo began to gain clarity. Then it changed, subtly, growing older, hitting puberty, becoming an adult. Harrison tapped a few more keys and pulled up Jonathan Glades.

  There were glasses, he was skinnier, and he was paler. The nose was a little crooked, as if it had been broken once and had never set right. The ears weren’t quite right. The hair was different, both the color and cut.

  But there was no question that it was Jonathan Glades.

  “Harrison… We need to call the police.”

  But Harrison didn’t seem to hear her.

  He moved to the door.

  “I’ll be back soon, Leigh.”

  “Harrison, you can’t! Where are you going? You can’t possibly be thinking of finding him yourself!”

  Harrison took his phone out and called Anna.

  “He’s not in today? I need an address, Anna. No questions.”

  Leigh looked at Darius pleadingly, but he just shrugged. There was nothing he could do about it, of course. Leigh knew that.

  “Harrison, please. Look, you can’t go and do this yourself. It’s madness.”

  Harrison turned to Leigh and smiled, the coldness of it nearly breaking her heart and frightening her until she wondered if her teeth were chattering.

  “I’ll be fine. He threatened me and my parents. I’ll take care of this myself. Stay out of this, Leigh.”

  “Like hell I will,” said Leigh, and blocked his way. But he just picked her up and shifted her out of the way as if she weighed nothing. Leigh had never been more aware of the strength disparity between them.

  “Harrison…”

  “Trust me, Leigh,” he said, and he grabbed his coat, and walked out, leaving Leigh there, her hands clasped to her heart and wondering what the hell she was supposed to do.

  Harrison knew that he was worrying Leigh, and he was truly sorry for it. It was the last thing he wanted to do.

  But he wasn’t sure that Leigh could understand that this had become personal – very personal. It still was personal.

  Now that he knew who he was attacking, he could easily have found Jonathan Glade’s online existence and waged war. But the rage that filled him demanded something a lot more intimate and a lot more feral. He wanted to get his hands on the man.

  But he wasn’t a fool. He set up an alert to be sent to the police after he’d had ten minutes alone with Jonathan Glades.

  For one thing, he wanted to get him alone and hear from him, in his own words, why he had done all of this.

  Harrison needed to know just what his parents had done to make a young boy turn his life into a tool to take Harrison down. He needed to know what had triggered it.

  Leigh would have to understand and trust him.

  Harrison drove to the address he’d been given, and wondered if he would find the man there. If it had been him, he would’ve given a fake address – or a real one and then moved.

  But he checked the name plates outside the apartment building and saw that Jonathan Glades did live there.

  Harrison pressed a couple of buzzers until somebody let him in. He walked up the two flights of stairs and hesitated. Then he made up his mind.

  He had a few skills he had developed as a hobby – one of which was lock-picking. He liked hacking. This had seemed to be real life hacking.

  Quickly, he checked his pockets and found what he needed. It only took him a minute to get the lock. Then he took a little device and did a check, found the security that had been installed. He got to the panel, disabled the outer layer that was impressive, and quietly disabled the rest of it.

  He was good, of course. Jonathan Glades was good.

  But Harrison Bloom was better.

  Now that he knew who he was fighting, he knew what to expect. He knew Jonathan’s strengths and his weaknesses.

  He let himself in, and found himself blinded. The light was dazzling.

  So, a low-tech device to make sure that intruders never really had the element of surprise, thought Harrison, but he didn’t have time to think more. He heard a click, and his blood ran cold.

  That was a gun.

  He hadn’t considered guns.

  Why hadn’t he considered guns? Because he had run a check on Jonathan Glades and found no weapons registered in his name? Since when did that mean anything?

  He had, realized Harrison, made a stupid, pathetic mistake.

  Leigh. Their baby.

  How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so cocky?

  “So, you found me. How?”

  Harrison blinked.

  “I can’t see you.”

  “You never could. How could you? You’re blind. It runs in the family. Blind to the truth. No, you don’t deserve to see me, Harrison Bloom, until I decide it’s time. Don’t try screaming, and keep your hands where I can see them. I’ve soundproofed this place. There’s no point trying anything. You were remarkably stupid to come here.”

  There, thought Harrison, he could agree. He had, indeed, been remarkably stupid. But it was done, so now he had to find a way out of it.

  Surely he could do that?

  He had to do it.

  He had to, for Leigh. And for their child.

  Keep him talking, thought Harrison.

  “I needed to know the truth.”

  “The truth,” said the young man – Harrison’s eyes were beginning to adjust that he could see now, though he was still standing in the shadows.”

  “The truth,” repeated Harrison.

  “Well, now, Harrison Bloom, what qualifies you as a seeker of the truth? What have you ever done to deserve the truth?”

  “Everybody deserves the truth. The truth is not a prize.”

  Jonathan laughed, and Harrison realized, as a cold chill ran down his spine, that he was mad – he was definitely mad.

  “Everything is a prize. Only somebody like you, Harrison Bloom, who had been given all the prizes without having to compe
te would think that the truth, something as precious as the truth, is not a prize, to be fought for and won. I’ve fought, Harrison Bloom. I won it. What have you done?”

  “I don’t know. What have I done?”

  “Your existence is an affront to me. Your existence hurts me. You, with everything that should have been mine. I’m better than you! I’m smarter than you, more talented than you! But I had nothing. Just like your father cheated mine out of what should have been yours, you cheated me out of what should be mine.”

  Harrison looked around, wondering if there was any way he could get to the gun, if he could get close enough.

  Jonathan laughed.

  “Look at the powerful Harrison Bloom, with his hands up, wondering how he can get out of this. Let me make it easy for you, Harrison Bloom. You’re not walking away from this. Neither of us is. I don’t care. My life’s purpose is to make sure that there will be no more Harrison Blooms. You shall have no legacy. I’ve planted enough booby traps in your company to make it unviable. Without you, there will be nobody who can clean it up. It will be sold, and there will be nothing left of you or your legacy.”

  Something clicked in Harrison.

  “The timing. You did this because I was getting married. Carrying on a legacy. My child.”

  Jonathan moved closer, and Harrison could see him now. He was trembling. The gun was shaking.

  Harrison didn’t think he’d be able to hit a barn door with a shot, not trembling like that. If he could distract him enough, maybe…

  “You don’t deserve a legacy! It should be mine! It should all be mine. You got everything that was supposed to be mine. And then you, marrying your sister! Your sister, of all people. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. What’s rotten would only produce more rot. You have the rot in you. I’m doing the world a favor by ridding it of your rot. There will be no more. No more, to steal and destroy. No more!”

  “So you got the job to destroy me from the inside.”

  “I got the job because you must know your enemy. My father… My father drank himself to death because of yours. He cheated and swindled my father. My father had dreams. He had vision. He had deals all lined up. But your father, oh no, it all had to be perfect. He said no. Put his foot down. When my father tried to get him to understand, to show him how much profit there was if done right, yours fired him! Bought him out for one-tenth of the value of his share of the company, threatened to go to the police otherwise!”