by Shen, L. J.
“A confession, not an invitation, you moron. I don’t trust you. I don’t know what you want from me. I’m not even sure what part you play in my life. My father is MIA. My mother is an addict and a cutter. My brothers left me with this mess. And the only thing I know for sure is that the person I’ve been pining for over a decade doesn’t want me back but is willing to play with me whenever it tickles his fancy. I’m done.” I shook my head. “Let me go. I don’t want this anymore.”
We stared at each other. He knew this time was different from all the others. Because all the other times I tried to make light of things, to playfully banter with him while drawing closer and closer to him.
Now, I wanted to leave.
“You’re serious,” he rasped.
I jerked my head in a nod.
He sat up and let me go, allowing me to scurry backward toward the wall. I tugged my pants up.
The truth of my statement hit me all at once.
I was done with his games. Done with giving him what he wanted, whenever he wanted it. Done hoping he would someday wake up and realize he cared for me, too.
He stood up and stared at me, blinking somberly, like I’d just slapped him in the face. Maybe it felt that way. I doubted a man like Sam was used to hearing the word ‘no.’
“We’re done?” he asked, businesslike. The icy edge to his voice made me shiver.
“Yes,” I said, quickly retying my shoelaces. “Leave me alone. Don’t show up at my clinic anymore and don’t steal kisses from me when we see each other at family functions.”
“Why? Because I don’t love you back?”
He let the word ‘love’ roll out of his mouth like it was profanity. I licked my lips. Dawn was breaking outside beyond the pine trees, and the room began to wash with cool pinks and royal blues, the shadows framing his face making him look even more breathtakingly beautiful than usual.
“No. I can handle it if you don’t love me back. But I won’t accept indifference, humiliation, and unstableness. I am not your plaything. The little teenybopper who stared at you with starry eyes at a carnival. Those days are over. I deserve respect and consideration, and you know what? I changed my mind.” I frowned then began to laugh. A throaty, screechy laugh, not even caring how unhinged I looked anymore. “Yes. I don’t want to have sex with you anymore because you don’t love me back. Is that bad? Immature? Anti-feminist? I expect love. I want it all, so if you don’t intend to give it to me, I suggest you leave me be or I am going to tell my family how you dipped your hand into the honey jar, tasted the forbidden sweetness, then came back for third and fourth helpings.”
“I told you I will never settle down.”
“Then that means you are letting me go.”
He nodded once, sauntering over to the door and throwing it open. A chill rushed into the cabin, biting and claiming every inch of my exposed skin.
“Love is not a price I am willing to pay for pussy, no matter how tight and aristocratic. Goodbye, Aisling.”
He was letting me go.
Maybe I was on a roll because of my own speech, or perhaps the adrenaline still pumped in my blood, but all at once, I gathered my courage, stood up, grabbed my purse, and fled out the door.
He didn’t chase me. I knew he wouldn’t.
Men like Sam never did.
I followed the faint tire signs of the Porsche to find my way out of the woods, clutching my cell phone in a death grip. I slipped several times, and my knees and hands were soaked with melted snow. When I reached the main road, I called an Uber then continued walking. The foolish, desperate hope flaring in my chest that Sam would find me shrank more and more with each step I took.
My toes were numb, my fingers had frostbite, and I could feel myself coming down with something.
I played with the monster under my bed and felt the wrath of its claws on my skin.
This was all on me.
But that didn’t mean I had to put up with it anymore.
It was like my love for him had snuffed out after teetering on the brink of death for a while. A love that started as a sun-shaped blaze when I was seventeen, big and hot and impossible to extinguish, but as time passed, Sam’s actions doused water on it until there was barely anything left.
I slipped into the back of an Uber, thinking about that night at the carnival.
About the text I’d seen scribbled on that bathroom.
Maybe it wasn’t meant for me.
Maybe it was meant for someone with a happy ending.
A few days after Aisling fled the cabin, Troy breezed into my office, tossing a newspaper onto my desk.
“Checkmate.”
I was sitting in front of a pile of Excel spreadsheets, trying to concentrate on the simple task of finding a way to help a client launder a couple of millions. Normally, I could do it with my eyes closed, hands tied, and dick buried deep inside a random. Shuffle the sum from place to place. Blow up expenses. Tamper with bank statements. Making money untraceable was an art form I’d perfected from a young age. It made me a darling in certain corporate circles. Nothing bought your way into a rich man’s heart better than helping him screw the IRS over.
These last few days, however, my head was so deep inside my ass, I was surprised I didn’t drop dead from lack of oxygen. My thoughts were on a loop, getting stuck on the same thing over and over again.
I saved Aisling.
Put my life in danger to keep her from harm’s way.
And what did the bitch do? She turned me down and cut me off.
I glanced at the newspaper Troy threw at my desk. The headline smeared in cheap, black ink.
Busted! Billionaire Gerald Fitzpatrick’s Mistress Writes an Explosive Tell-All!
Barbara McAllister’s testimonies could be a game changer for the royal American family. The company’s stock has dropped significantly since yesterday.
It did nothing to improve my sour mood, even though I knew, in all probability, that Gerald was on the verge of hurling himself out the window from the skyscraper he was currently holed up in.
Troy fell into the seat in front of me, lounging back, rolling a toothpick in his mouth.
“Time for a quick and efficient K.O., Sam. I will not sit here and watch you destroy a perfectly good family just because you have a boner for Gerald’s blood. Don’t forget your sister’s marriage and happiness is on the line, too. You are taking this God complex too far.”
“There’s nothing complicated about my godly gift to distribute pain. I’m merely giving Gerald what he deserves.” I dropped my pen, sitting back. “He—”
“Yes, I know. Killed your unborn brother. Made your mother leave you behind. No one is propositioning Gerald Fitzpatrick for knighthood.” Troy raised his palm up, cutting through my words. “Yet here you are, alive and fucking well, much to the Bratva’s chagrin. This means whatever damage he inflicted on you didn’t finish the job. So why don’t you get it over with, give him the final blow, call it even and move on?”
Because then I’ll have to face my other Fitzpatrick problem.
The pressing one I’ve been trying to ignore for weeks.
Their daughter.
Aisling stayed far away from me since she fled the cabin in the middle of the night like a dumb horror flick side character, the first to get murdered ten minutes into the film.
I knew she survived our little showdown because I drove by her clinic the following afternoon, just to make sure she hadn’t been chopped up by an axe murderer on her way out of the woods.
Her Prius was parked in front of the main door. She was alive, even if not well.
Consequently, she was also done with my ass.
“I want a confession,” I insisted.
“And I want to fuck my wife ten hours a day. Guess what? Looks like we’re both not getting what we want,” Troy snapped. “What makes you think Gerald is willingly going to come to you and tell you all about how he fucked your mother then fucked you over?” Troy stood up, spitting his too
thpick on the floor. “Grow the fuck up, Sam. Your story doesn’t add up, and frankly, with each passing day, I’m starting to think there’s more to this than you’re letting on. You’ve never given a damn about Cat, and yes, she left you, but she’d tried to contact you and you shut her down without a blink of an eye. It’s not the first time you’ve been wronged by one of your clients. You are a pragmatic person. You take things in stride. This is a part of you I don’t know and don’t care to discover. Emotional, messy, and above all—strategically faulty. You are about to make some pretty grave mistakes if you are not careful. I can see it. Be upfront with Gerald or drop it altogether. But this is the last prank you pull on him. Your sister is married to his son, and now that Hunter and Cillian are watching their mother and paying attention, they’ll be on your tail in no time. You understand?”
“Are you done?” I asked, sitting perfectly still in my seat, rejecting any sentiment that stemmed from Troy looking royally and thoroughly pissed at me. This was a first. We’d had our arguments before, of course we had, but we always ended up seeing eye to eye. Not this time. “Because if so, you know where the fucking door is. I’m sorry the student outdid the master, but sometimes, old man, that’s just the way it is.”
He stared at me with a look of complete disbelief. Despite myself, I felt my stomach roiling, turning over and over, like it was folding into a small origami square.
He offered me a noncommittal grunt and dashed away, leaving the faint scent of his cologne and a hell of a headline on the newspaper.
I turned my attention back to the Excel sheet, noticing, for the first time, a company trip to the Maldives I could use to max out the expenses proportion. An easy eight-hundred-thousand-dollar hole in the budget to throw the IRS off.
I started making the necessary moves.
Gerald would pay for what he did with his blood.
Even if it cost me my relationship with my adoptive father.
After working into the wee hours, I stopped by the card rooms again, checking on the tables, making sure we were making killer profits before locking up my office door.
The night turned from black to blue by the time I made my way to my (newly fixed) Porsche. I unlocked the doors and put my hand on the handle when the cold barrel of a gun dug between my shoulder blades, biting into my skin.
The voice that came after it was unmistakable.
I would recognize it anywhere because I’d spent nearly a decade listening to it wail.
“Busted, kiddo.”
Gerald.
“Now get into the car, nice and easy. I’ll take the passenger’s seat,” he instructed, his voice and the gun quaking with both adrenaline and fear.
I lifted my hands haphazardly, smirking.
“Do you even know how to use a gun, Gerry?”
“Don’t call me Gerry.” He dug the metal into my skin. “My name is Gerald. You’re the only person to call me Gerry, and I despise it. I only let you get away with it because I thought it was a term of endearment.”
“You were wrong,” I deadpanned.
“Tell me about. In the car. Now. No funny business. I will shoot to kill, Brennan. You’ve left me with nothing. Not my family, not my business, and not my pride.”
I slid into the Porsche calmly, not breaking a sweat. My fear of being shot by him was somewhere below zero. Firstly, because I didn’t think he had the guts to pull the trigger, and, secondly, because even if he did shoot, which was unlikely, he would miss. He didn’t have a steady hand, and all I needed was one small error to snatch the gun from between his sweaty fingers.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I didn’t care if I died. I never was much of a fan of living in the first place. I enjoyed very few things, and one of them was Gerald’s daughter, who did not want anything to do with me anymore. My fault, of course, for pushing her away, knowing beyond reasonable doubt that her family would never let her flaunt the help in high society.
“Put the gun down, Gerry. I’ll take us to your apartment, but not because you’re threatening me with a gun. I can grab it from you blindfolded with my arms tied behind my back. I’ll come willingly because I’m interested in what you have to say and how much you know,” I said, my voice soaked with amusement. It was high time we had a conversation about what mattered.
“B-b-bullshit!” he stuttered. “You will do as I say because I—”
I had no interest in letting him finish that sentence. I turned around quickly, elbowing the gun and sending it careening across the road. Gerald let out a high-pitched moan of surprise, making a beeline to seize it, squatting down to the ground. I was taller, leaner, and faster. I sauntered my way to him as he bent down to take the weapon, pressed my loafer onto his hand—breaking a few small bones in the process, no doubt—just as his fingers curled around the base of the gun.
I smacked my lips together.
“You rich pricks aren’t very good at listening.”
“You will do as I say, goddammit!” He wiggled under my foot desperately. I grabbed him by the shirt, dragging him toward my car as he kicked and grunted in annoyance, pocketing his gun after checking if it was cocked (shocker: it was not).
I hurled Gerald inside and slammed the door, getting into the driver’s seat next to him and starting the car.
“Where to?” I grumbled.
“The penthouse. The one Hunter and Sailor lived in before moving into their own house.”
I nodded, noticing that he shook beside me. Unbelievable. I put his daughter through so much shit, and she always gave me one hell of a fight. But this guy, he couldn’t even sit still without wanting to piss his pants. I didn’t know where Aisling got her strength, but it sure wasn’t from her fucking parents.
When we got to the penthouse and Gerald pushed the door open and started his verbal diarrhea, I pressed my finger to my mouth then started looking around the living room to see if it was bugged. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t. I sat at the dining table, smiling sardonically at him.
“You may continue with your meltdown now, Gerry.”
Gerald erected himself to his full height, jutting his chin out, trying to appear braver than he was. The weight loss made him slightly less deplorable physically, but I still knew that behind the exterior was a man who deserved a slow and painful death.
“You’ve been caught, Sam Brennan. I set a trap for you, and you fell for it,” Gerald boasted, still standing up, for some reason beyond my grasp.
“You already said,” I yawned. “Care to elaborate?”
Gerald leaned forward, pressing his fingers to the oak dining table as he spoke.
“When you asked me to give you a list of all the women I’d had an affair with, I got suspicious. It seemed farfetched, and as time went by and you dragged your feet about my little problem, I got even more suspicious. You’d never failed a mission I’d given you before, and suddenly, you didn’t have as much as a lead. I couldn’t understand why you left me to drown. Then the poisoning happened. And the cufflinks …”
“Christ, Gerry, I was there when all of this happened. Get to the juicy part. My time is precious.” I looked around, wondering if he had any good coffee.
He straightened his spine.
“Aisling made me do it. She told her mother and me what to do, that way we could know for sure.”
“Made you do what?” I spat out, losing patience.
The mention of her name made me nauseous. This was outrageous. I couldn’t be nauseous. I wasn’t a fucking damsel in distress.
“Plant a bug. A mole. A trap. See, Aisling said that the only way to outsmart you is to beat you at your own game. Together, we found a woman from my past—Barbara McAllister, in this case—and had her assist us. We knew if you contacted her, that would mean that you were after my throat and not those who harmed me.”
I stared at him, speechless.
Aisling played me.
And she fucking won, too.
She loved me, yes, but not so much that she was bli
nded by my actions.
Even more than her affections for me, she was loyal to her family, and hell if it didn’t make me miss her even more.
“The newspaper—” I started.
Gerald shook his head, walking over to the coffee table, picking up what looked to be today’s newspaper, tossing it into my hands. I picked it up and glanced at the headline.
Keaton Hints at Firing Clayborn After Elections: What’s Next for the White House?
Motherfucker.
“The headline was fake.” I let the words churn in my mouth, deciding I fucking hated how they tasted.
Gerald plopped down next to me, rubbing at his face tiredly as he reached for a whiskey with two tumblers at the center of the table, pouring us drinks. I took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up, making myself comfortable. This bullshit wasn’t going to be over anytime soon.
“Quite.” He nudged my drink in my direction, his fingers still trembling. “I didn’t believe Aisling when she said you were probably a double agent, so I came to see you a few times at Badlands. Each time, I turned around, losing my nerve. But I noticed the same newspaper was rolled and left at the entrance each time, so I figured that was your media outlet of choice. From there, faking a headline wasn’t too hard.”
Then Troy picked it up at the entrance to my club, on his way in, and showed it to me.
Goddammit, Nix, you’re a clever one.
“Now, Barbara McAllister is a college friend. She is not at all what you believed her to be. But for the purposes of helping me, she put on a show. Her sister has an address in a shithole part of the city. I added her name in the lease, knowing you would find her, see the poverty she so-called lives in, and decide to press her because she is easy prey,” Gerald continued.
“Aisling said that if I gave you information that didn’t match what you’d find on your own, it’d raise a red flag and you’d take the bait. She was right.”
“Did you decide to do all this or did Ash?” It seemed like a sophisticated operation, and Gerald was only good for managing a company that’d been handed to him by his own father. Even that, he half-assed. Cillian was a much better CEO than Gerald ever was, something Gerald secretly resented his son for.