by K. Webster
“But it’s mine,” I say, finally understanding a little of how Win feels when people are always out to get him because of his money. It’s frustrating and it makes you want to keep it from them on principle.
“Good girl,” Caroline praises. “That’s the spirit.”
Manda, the scheming, lying, cheating bitch won’t get a penny of it. I won’t let that happen and something tells me Caroline Constantine, an unlikely ally, won’t allow that to happen either.
“What do we do now?”
“We?”
“I’m Team Constantine now,” I remind her.
She smirks at me but doesn’t deny my words. “Keaton, get a hold of your brother. There’s much to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Winston
Halcyon bustles with activity all during the week from sunup to sundown. At night, though, once the cleaners have restored the offices back to their pristine glory, it becomes a silent tomb. Often, over the years, I’ve come in late at night to work in silence.
As I walk through the lobby on our floor, I inhale the fresh scent of lavender floor cleaner, turning on lights along the way to my office. My impromptu meeting will begin soon.
We need to talk.
I’ve spent the better part of nearly two decades avoiding “talking.” There’s nothing to say. Betrayal is the ultimate sin. It cuts off the tongue of the offender. Words are cheap and I’m anything but cheap.
Unlocking my office, I step inside and make my way over to my desk. As annoyed as I was to have to eat Greek takeout on the way here, I’m glad Perry forced me to. I don’t want to have this conversation on an empty stomach. If my gut can handle Ash’s canned food, I think it can handle the surprisingly delicious gyro from a cheap hole-in-the-wall restaurant he’d recently discovered.
While I wait, I text Keaton.
Me: Explain your texts.
The dots move and stop as he replies. An echo of the elevator dinging can be heard in the lobby. I pocket my phone and listen for the clacking of heels. Within seconds, the woman who tried to ruin my life appears in my office doorway.
Meredith Baldridge.
She’s perfect as ever—on the outside. Her blond hair is sleek and straight. A form-fitting black dress hugs her endless curves. Spiked heels make her taller than normal. Expensive tits all but spill out of the low-cut V of her dress.
Her agenda is quite obvious.
Too bad I’m not biting at the worm she’s dangling on her hook.
“Mer,” I say in a bored tone. “Please, have a seat.”
She flings her hair over her shoulder and struts over. The hem of her dress rides up with each long stride she takes.
Flawless.
Meredith has always been perfection.
I prefer messy and silly and sassy as hell.
Thinking about Ash nearly brings a smile to my face. I’ll be damned if I let that creep out, though, and have Meredith thinking she earned it. This woman will never get my smiles ever again. She’s lucky I’m giving her my time right now.
“You look tired, Winny,” she purrs, taking her seat across from me. She leans forward, letting her dress gape a bit to show the barely hidden red lace of her bra.
“So do you.”
She blinks at my words and stiffens slightly. “Uh, yes. Things are…stressful lately.”
“Because of the stalker?”
Her perfectly plucked brows pinch together. “That too. Well, there’s just so much to it really.”
You don’t say. You’re a conniving bitch, Meredith, and I’m onto your game. Ulrich had lots of interesting things to show me this afternoon.
“That involves me somehow?”
“Everything in this city involves you,” she says in a flirty voice. “You know that. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you. Your unwavering authority. You’re the man who runs everything and knows it.”
To think I used to fall for her adulation. When I was a teenager, I was a fucking idiot, too busy being dazzled by her adoration and blowjob skills. Looking back, she was just playing me. I was a tool for her to use.
I’m no one’s tool now.
“You flatter me.” I lean back in my chair, arching a brow. “I’m assuming you’ll get to the point of this meeting soon.”
She lets out a measured sigh. “I’m sorry for what happened when we were kids. That was a lifetime ago and I was a foolish girl who made foolish decisions. I realize that now. I’ve spent years regretting the day I hurt you.”
Blah, blah, fucking blah.
“Hmm.”
“I recently took a long hard look at what I really wanted in life.” She leans forward again, reaching a manicured hand across the desk toward me. “You. It was always you.”
My bland, unaffected expression or the fact I don’t reach to touch her back doesn’t deter her.
“I’m leaving Duncan,” she tells me, lifting her chin. “And not just because he’ll be bankrupt by the end of the year. He’s…well, he’s a useless idiot who can’t even get his dick up half the time.”
So cold this vicious barracuda.
“Poor Duncan,” I mutter. “His wife doesn’t want him because he’s about to be poor and he can’t fuck.”
“It’s so much more than that,” she mumbles, unbothered by my sarcasm. “He’s weak. I mentioned to him I had a stalker and you know what he said?”
“I could never presume to think like Duncan, so no, I have no idea what he said.”
“That I should stay inside and stop going out so much.” Her lip curls up. “As though that would stop a stalker.”
“Did you really call me here to complain about your marriage, because if so, I don’t have the time or patience for it?”
“My point is a real man would protect his woman.” She leans forward again. “You would protect me.”
“Before you tried to fuck me over when we were teenagers, perhaps, but you can’t seriously be deluding yourself into thinking I would now.”
Her painted-red lips purse into a pout. “You’re still not angry about the past. I know you better than that, Winny.”
“You’re right. I honestly don’t care anymore. About you or that time in my life.”
She doesn’t even flinch at my words. “Because of Layla?”
“Layla is a friend.”
“Oh, that’s right, because of the little girl.” Her forehead wrinkles as she makes a sour face. “I understand you’re almost forty, hon, but that cliché midlife crisis of dating someone half your age is beneath you.” She flicks her wrist as if to dust off the thought. “These are small problems just as my marriage to Duncan is a small problem.”
“Small problems indeed in the grand scheme of things,” I agree. “We should discuss the bigger problems.”
This finally gets her attention.
“Oh?”
“I know about you and Manda.”
She titters out a laugh that makes her tits jiggle. “That she’s my friend. That’s not a secret, darling. We go way back.”
“Way, way back.” I lift a brow at her. “You met her at a retreat, didn’t you?”
“Does it matter where I met her?”
“I think it matters more how you two became to be friends.”
“And how do you think that is?”
“The both of you fucked that sleazy bastard Vincent Morelli. But whereas you got the abortion, she carried hers to term. All three of them.”
She swallows but her lying face remains otherwise unflinching. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I bet that was quite a conversation. The two of you in your jammies, snuggled up by the fire talking about boys at the retreat. How did that even come about anyway? Did you say, ‘Hi, I’m Meredith. I fucked a rat’? Manda confessed that, she too, fucked a rat. Just your usual rich lady gossip.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Meredith snips, losing her cool.
“Ridiculous. Hmm. Was Maggie a part of this rat conve
rsation?”
Her lips thin. “Who?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mer. Maggie. My teenager girlfriend’s dead mother. You know the one. Your bestie is now married to her husband.”
“What does this even matter?” she snaps, pinning me with an angry scowl that probably has Duncan tucking his pathetic tail between his legs anytime she does it.
Me? I’m unimpressed with her dirty looks.
“It matters. Tell me something,” I continue. “Did Maggie mention her own horrible fate that tied her to the Morellis? Here you two had gotten pregnant by one—the same one, in fact—and Manda was paid hush money to keep quiet about her babies, but Maggie was damn near being forced into their family and offered a considerable inheritance to do so.”
“As if I’d ever want to be a part of that rotten family,” she scoffs. “You know I hate them just as much as you do.”
Never.
She could never hate them the way I do.
“Still, it had to sting that the two of you weren’t allowed into the Morelli family. Not even Manda who carried their own flesh and blood.” I cross my arms over my chest and study her fracturing façade. “I bet it made the two of you bitter. You were able to commiserate together at how wrong you’d been done. To moan about all you were owed. I’m getting hotter. I can tell by the look on your face. So whose plan was it to have Maggie killed?”
“I beg your pardon,” Meredith scoffs. “I have no idea who you think I am, but I’m not some thug who has people killed. Seriously, Winny, you’ve lost your damn mind.”
“Don’t insult me,” I growl, my tone harsh and cruel. “I pay good money for the best private investigators. They uncover anything there is to find. No matter how hard you try and hide, nothing is safe when a Constantine goes digging.”
“I didn’t have her killed. Didn’t she die of natural causes?”
“Did she?” I shrug. “I guess I’ll eventually find out for sure. I always do.”
Her phone buzzes in her purse and she takes the opportunity to distract herself from our conversation to pull it out. She reads the text and then tosses it back into her purse.
“The idea to have Maggie killed probably didn’t happen right away, did it?” I goad, poking at her with each word. “Each year on your annual retreats, you both probably started to resent her more and more, especially Manda who was saddled with three Morelli psycho-shits. Maggie had it made with her cushy life with her handsome husband whom she loved and her little princess. She’d chosen love over money and kissed her inheritance goodbye while she still pulled in a sizable income doing speeches. Everything in her life was going perfectly. It wasn’t fair, was it?”
Anger flashes in her eyes. “You think you know everything.”
“I know your stalker isn’t a stalker at all.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mer, Mer, Mer. It’s like you don’t even know who I am.” I pause, letting that sink in. “That’s right, you don’t. You knew me intimately as a vulnerable young man. Not this man. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“Who do you think you saw?” she challenges, defiance making her nostrils flare.
“I had my guy retrieve the video surveillance at the restaurant that day I saw you and Manda. Your so-called stalker wasn’t a stalker. It was my friend. Nate.”
She gives a sharp shake of her head in denial. As if that’ll convince me.
“It was Nate,” I growl. “Question is, why was my friend, my best friend, meeting up with my ex and her bestie? Clearly, I intercepted a lunch between the three of you. Something I wasn’t supposed to know about.” I pause, quirking a brow. “To discuss Paris.”
The color drains from her face. “Winny…”
“He’s on the company phone plan you know. Nate. Funny how a little digging pulled up a number he talked to and often. Your number. Tell me. Are you his baby?”
“What? No,” she chokes out.
When Ash revealed Nate seeing someone, I was surprised. He’d never mentioned it. Now I know why. His baby was Meredith. The phone records proved they communicated a lot. There’s a ton of video footage—footage I easily obtained because Nate lives in the building I own—of her showing up at Nate’s apartment. Sometimes she stayed the night. There were many pictures of them seen coming and going together, wrapped in each other’s arms like lovers. So fucking bold.
Today—well, this whole week for that matter—has been a busy and eye-opening one.
“Your lies are getting old, Meredith. You’re a conniving bitch. End of fucking story.”
She gapes at me. “N-no. You don’t understand. I was only seeing him to get close to you! He meant nothing to me!”
“You fucked him for no reason because your plan didn’t work. Who else did you spread your legs for, Mer? Besides the Morellis? We know it wasn’t for your pathetic husband.”
“Winny…”
Defeat shines in her eyes which has her doing what every diva would do when she doesn’t get her way. She throws a tantrum. Tears and all.
“Winny! I did this for us! All of this was for us!” Fat tears fall from her lids, streaking down her rosy cheeks. Unlike Ash, Meredith wears waterproof mascara. Even as she has a fit, she still remains put together. “Why do you think I called you tonight?”
This gets my attention. I arch a brow at her to continue.
“Nate’s not who you think he is,” she murmurs. “He’s…”
“What? Embezzling behind my back? Fucking up my foreign deals like in Paris?”
Money was being funneled right under my nose, opened up under international Halcyon accounts with my forged signature. Specifically, in France. I’d come across something strange months ago and pulled the contracts to look at with Harold eventually. But then Ash showed up, distracting me for the time being. I’d planned to get back to it eventually, even going as far as to change the accessibility on the accounts that now require a series of passwords, different for each one and all locked away in my home safe in my closet. When Perry and I had to make our Paris trip, it was clear I’d needed to move things along, and I got Harold working on it.
She stands from the desk and walks over to the bookshelf to grab a tissue. After she dabs at her cheeks, she frowns at me. “You knew?”
“It took me a minute, but yes, I came to this conclusion.”
It also must have been what Nate was searching for when he showed up at my house and somehow conned Ash into letting him in. He wanted access to the money he’d carefully funneled away for himself. If Ash was in on it with him, he’d have obtained what he needed because I gave her the access to it. But she wasn’t his accomplice.
“You’re not mad?”
“Are you insane? Of course I’m pissed.” I also rise to my feet. “Thanks for this wonderful waste of my time where you told me everything I already knew. It’d be in your best interest to vacate the premises and never contact me again.”
She rushes up to me, her face scrunching as more tears fall, her head shaking back and forth. “No, Winny. That’s not all. He’s…He’s been losing it. Paranoid that you’re going to find out. Ever since the Paris accounts he’d set up suddenly required passwords, he panicked. Worried that you knew and were playing some sort of game with him. Even went as far as to sneak into your house and look around for them but he couldn’t ever get inside the safe. He was mad because he thought Ash was messing everything up.”
Messing everything up?
Dread coils in the pit of my stomach and I don’t like it.
“Start talking, Meredith, and fast.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ash
I’m antsy without my phone. I don’t know how the meeting went with the Morellis and it’s driving me crazy. The second I hear Perry’s voice, I bolt out of my chair on a hunt for him. I find him in a hallway but Winston is nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Win? How did it go?”
Perry stops, runs his fingers through his hair, a
nd sighs. “It was stressful but we got what we wanted. He got a call after and had to meet up at the office. Sent me to check on you and Keaton.”
“Who was he meeting?” I demand, a sinking sensation in the pit of my belly.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Take me there,” I tell him. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“No,” Perry growls, sounding just like his bossy older brother. “We’re staying here until he gets done.”
“What if someone tries to hurt him?”
He smiles at me. “It’s Winston. He’s practically untouchable.”
“Perry, I’m worried about him.”
“He can handle himself. I’m not about to piss him off and go against his wishes.” He starts walking toward the living room. “Come on.”
“I’ll be right back. I need to visit the ladies’ room.”
“There’s a powder room right here.”
“Win’s room has a bidet,” I argue.
He snorts, shaking his head and leaves me. As soon as he’s gone, I hurry to Win’s room. It’s immaculate and beautiful as ever. The dread that started in the pit of my stomach has begun infecting other parts of my body like my heart and my mind.
Something is wrong.
I can sense it.
With a quick mash of a few numbers, I get Win’s safe open. He’s done the code in front of me here and at the office. It’s also the door code to the Escalade he bought me. They’re all the same. The fact he hasn’t tried to hide it from me makes me want to cry. He trusted me with his Bugatti.
Okay, well, maybe not the Bugatti specifically but the keys are inside and waiting for me, so it kind of feels like serendipity.
I snag the keys and then slip out of his room, weave my way through the halls, and end up in the garage. After mashing a button to open one of the garage bays, I run over to the pearly white beauty. The fob opens the scissor door and I hop inside. As soon as the door closes, I mash the button to fire up the engine. It purrs like a kitten. I buckle my belt and then reverse out of the garage. My heart is hammering in my chest as I skid down the driveway, trying to keep a handle on the extremely fast vehicle that costs more money than I could dream of having.