International Guy: Milan, San Francisco, Montreal (International Guy Volumes Book 2)
Page 31
I miss you. I’m not me anymore . . . without you. I’ll be waiting. I think I’ll wait forever.
“Fuck!” I grate into the empty room, the desire to destroy my new phone just as prevalent as it was when I smashed the old one against her kitchen wall.
Tension builds in my shoulders, and I start to pace like a caged animal.
She wronged me. Me! I didn’t cheat on her.
Did she cheat on me?
The questions are endless, running a marathon in my mind, never stopping to take a break or a sip of water. Always just running and running. Making me dizzy, incapable of fluid thought.
I have to deal with her. Talk it out as the guys suggested. Kayla tried that. Lied her ass off trying to get me back. Greg, the same. The woman I loved and the man I trusted betrayed me years ago, then spent countless attempts trying to make it better, make me forgive their sins with excuses and rationalizations.
Well, I’m not buying it with Skyler.
She betrayed me!
With anger beating a heavy drum through my system, I bring up my texts.
To: Peaches
From: Parker Ellis
Stop texting. It’s over. You cheated. We’re done. End of story.
I read and reread the message. That knife in my heart twists, digging in another centimeter deeper. My mouth salivates, and once again, I want to toss my lunch like a little bitch. Taking several lungfuls of air, I get my rage under control.
This is it. You’re telling her goodbye. Just click “Send.” You can do it. It’s time. Let it go. Set her free.
With everything I have inside me, I do it and click “Send.”
My eyes mist over, and I rub at them with my fist.
I love her, but she was never mine to love in the first place.
My cell phone buzzes, and chucking it against the wall is really starting to have some serious merit—business contacts, email, work, and everything else be damned.
From: Peaches
To: Parker Ellis
Our story is never going to end. I didn’t cheat. I can see you need more time.
She didn’t cheat.
Cheat.
Cheat.
The word CHEAT fills every inch of my mind, takes over my body, pushing the knife deeper into my bloody heart.
“Fucking liar!” I bellow, hurling my phone so hard against the steel wall that it shatters into shiny red speckles like blood spatter. The red case I got at the airport did nothing to help protect the phone against my rage.
I walk over to the phone and stomp on the offender until there’s nothing but shards left against the concrete floor.
“You are a liar. A no-good cheat. Just like Kayla. Like Greg. Like every fucking woman out there!”
I slump into the cushy love seat along one wall and rest my head in my hand.
“It has to be a lie.” I shake my head and let the ugly in, invading my thoughts.
She’s trying to save her own ass. But why? Why would she hold on? What is she fighting for? Skyler is a rare beauty. As perfect in real life as she is on screen. With her, what you see is what you get. Her body, her stunning face, there’s no makeup needed. But makeup can’t take away the blackness in her heart. I cringe.
“What’s her motive?” I seethe through dry lips, and get up to pace once again.
With Kayla, she needed to be taken care of. I was her golden goose. Her family had money, sure, but her father wanted her to marry and be someone else’s problem. I signed up, hand in the air, screaming, Pick me, pick me! Only I signed up for love. For a woman who would be there for me in all things. Support me in life. Raise a family. Work in a partnership in the things we dreamed of having together.
Kayla just wanted money and a lifestyle she was used to. The man didn’t matter, which is why she was fucking me and my best friend Greg. It’s also why she fought so hard for me over Greg, because Roy and Bo both backed my play. Kicked him out of our business plan to participate in the creation of IG, which meant he’d have to find a job at a corporation and work his way up to having money. This would take time, and Kayla was not a stupid woman. With Royce running our finances and investment portfolios, we were already on the verge of being self-made millionaires. Kayla wanted a piece of that pie and played the odds. She lost.
I guess in the end, I won because I got out of committing to a gold digger. Of course, it didn’t feel that way at the time. It felt a lot like losing.
The thing is, Skyler has a hundred times the amount of money I have. What could she want? Why is she fighting so hard to save us?
In my swirling emotions and anger, the answer doesn’t come. Instead, I take a half hour pulling my shit together and calling the first person on staff I need to interview.
It’s time to dump my mind into the job. Let go of everything else that’s controlling me and focus on the work.
Focus on the work.
Focus on the work.
I repeat the mantra in my mind a few times before the first staff member enters the room. It’s Alexis’s assistant. She’s a shy speck of a woman named Molly. She looks like a librarian who’s usually got her head stuck in a book instead of reality. And I can tell just from her body language that she’s afraid to lose her job. This one is going to be a quick interview.
She’s not our spy.
4
My eyes are blurry as sleepiness invades my mind. The room is too damn comfortable. Even the chairs she has around the circular table are plush leather, so soft my body sinks into them. The chairs also rock. Not exactly conducive to getting work done, more like screwing off or taking a snooze.
Across from the table and chairs are a TV and love seat. I’m surprised there isn’t a fireplace in here. This looks like someone’s small living room and dining area. The walls are painted soft beige with various tasteful prints and paintings meticulously placed on them. She’s made a warehouse a home office with twenty-two employees who have their own sumptuous spaces. I think Alexis would give Google competition in a battle over who has the better work environment.
As I blink harshly a few times and stand up to move around, I note a ginger tabby cat walking along a wooden beam outside of the office, where I’ve left the door open. It stares momentarily from its perch, and I wonder to myself how a busy woman like Alexis can take care of a cat. I can barely take care of myself. Definitely not a pet. I’m not home enough. Even plants that are given to me as gifts end up in the trash after a few weeks of being neglected.
The cat jumps down and saunters into the office as though he owns the place. He pops up onto the arm of the couch and then the back, casually making his way to where I stand. When he gets a foot away from me he stops, looks directly at me, and meows.
I reach out my hand. “What is it, boy?” He rubs his head on my hand, demanding to be petted. I take the bait, because who wouldn’t? He’s a furry, cute entity rubbing his sweet head on my hand. I give him a few pets and scratch against his cheek. He starts to purr melodically.
A voice interrupts me and my new furry friend. “I see you’ve met Spartacus.”
I turn to the man standing in the doorway. “It seems I have.” I stop petting the cat to reach out my good hand.
He shakes it. “Kidd Stanton. I’m next on the list of interviews,” he supplies helpfully. Alexis set the schedule so that the last person would notify the next person in line for their interview.
“So, you are. Come on in, have a seat.”
I pull out his employee file from the folder on the table, as well as my tablet, which has the information Wendy provided on each staff member. I read them all on the plane ride over so I’m aware of what his “other” file states. The big surprise was finding out Alexis filed for guardianship when Kidd was fifteen and their parents didn’t contest it, signing over their rights without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Kidd sits down across from me, seeming perfectly at ease with being here. Probably because he knows his sister would never fire him.
“Tell me about what you do here.”
“I lead the coding and analysis team. Under Alexis’s watchful eye, of course.” He chuckles.
“Course.” I smile, making sure to keep the conversation easy and my body language relaxed.
“Been coding under Lex’s guidance since around the age of fifteen, so ’bout eight years. As my file there will show.” He jerks his chin toward the file I’m holding in front of me. “Lex hired me right outta high school. I didn’t have the grades or desire for college anyhow.”
“And you took to the job.”
“Like a drunk to a mickey, eh?” He laughs heartily.
The young man smiles a lot, seems to be comfortable in his own skin, and has a happy nature. His features mimic his sister’s. Blond hair, blue eyes. His hair is more of a dirty blond than a golden hue. He has a solid day or two’s worth of scruff on his jaw and a silver hoop in his left ear. Tattoos line his forearms, depicting a myriad of images. A lion on one, a sword on the other. A distinct red heart adorns his left inside forearm, and the word “LEX” in thick block letters is drawn in its center.
I nod at his tats. “Nice ink.”
He pushes up his henley farther, showing off more artwork. “Yeah, I’m proud of it. Drew each design myself. Kind of a hobby.”
I look closer and note the scars slicing horizontally underneath the ink close to the dip in his elbow. I don’t say anything, for one because it would be highly inappropriate, and two because sometimes a person needs their secrets. The wounds look old, aged enough that the ink over them is a tad faded. My guess, he did those when he was a teen, before he was old enough to get the ink to cover them.
“Lex?” I ask, making note of the blood-red, vibrant heart.
His smile before was happy and unguarded; this one is sensational, inspired. “My sister. Alexis. Big boss lady.”
I grin. “You tatted your sister’s name on your arm?”
He nods with glee. No bullshit. Happy as a clam. “For sure. I know it sounds odd, but my sister is my life. My whole heart. Without her, man, I wouldn’t be the me I am today. I’d probably be in jail or dead for fighting.”
Without her. I wouldn’t be me.
I’m not me anymore . . . without you.
I close my eyes as Skyler’s words in her recent text come back to haunt me. Chills race up my spine, and I clench my jaw and breathe through the pain those words cause. I grip the pencil I’m holding so hard it snaps in half.
“Whoa. You okay?” Kidd frowns.
I blink a few times. “Headache. Sorry. Probably from the travel. I’m fine. Continue.” I grab the water bottle that was brought to me earlier and swallow down half in one go.
“Yeah, well, what I was saying is”—he fingers the heart tattoo—“my sister, man, she’s like my mother figure and best friend all rolled into one. We’re tight as two sibs can be. I got this for her when I turned eighteen. See, if I pull my arm up against my chest”—he imitates the words by bringing his left arm up to his chest, inner forearm facing in—“it touches my heart. Right where she’ll always be.”
“Powerful,” I offer, still shaken by his remark so closely mimicking Skyler’s text.
Kidd leans back and rocks the chair. Not a care in the world. “I think so. Anyway, why are you here? We’re not hurting for money or productivity. Lex would have given me a heads-up. There’s not a lot we keep from one another.”
On a split-second decision, I choose to give him half of the truth since I’m getting absolutely nothing in the way of nerves or fear of any kind coming off him. This could be because he’s completely innocent of any wrongdoing, or a very good liar who is using his relationship with his sister against her.
“Then you know that the last three products have been leaked and released in advance by Stanton Cybertech’s direct competitor.”
He scowls. “Yeah, bunch of hosers, the entire lot of them.”
I flatten my lips. “Be that as it may, we need to see what’s happening on the production scale. Perhaps something is leaking into public knowledge without a person being the wiser.”
“Or maybe we have a mole on the team?” he suggests.
Interesting how he went there first. “What would give you that impression?”
He crinkles his nose, his happiness dissipating instantly. “The coding and security is done entirely by Lex and me. We are the only two who know the back end fully because we created the damn thing from scratch. The rest of the team creates new codes and programs to work inside of it but could never break through a firewall we’ve created.”
“And if there were a mole in the system, would you have any idea who that could be? New employees, anything could be helpful toward figuring out how your sister, your legacy . . . ,” I add to see how he reacts. He simply nods and looks off into the distance. “. . . is being sacrificed. Anyone you have a strange feeling about or suspect might have a negative feeling about working here?”
He shakes his head. “There’s a new girl, Wendy Pritchard, who was hired, but she’s brand-new. No reason to suspect her. We actually have very little turnover. I don’t think we’ve hired anyone new outside of Wendy in over two years.”
Wendy Pritchard.
Looks like my office nymph changed her last name to her fiancé’s. I’ll bet she enjoyed the hell out of that. Probably created an entire life around the name too.
I nod and stand up. “If you think of anything, I’ll be here all week evaluating the processes and workflow as well as the productivity of each member of the team in the hopes of figuring out how the information is leaking. I’m sure it’s safe to say your job is secure.”
He grins, the happiness he entered with seeping into his form once more. Kidd offers his hand and slaps the side of my bicep. “Hey, if you need a bud to hang out with after hours, get some drinks, see a little of Montreal, I’m your guy. I know a cool bar called Brutopia. They have great beers, good pub food, and often have some stellar live bands, if that’s your thing. My girl and I would be happy to show you around.”
“Your girl?”
“Yeah. My fiancée. Just asked her to marry me a few months ago. Best decision of my life, sharing it with her. She loves my sister—they’re like two giggling little girls when they’re together—and she looks up to Lex like a big sis same way I do. Can’t wait, man. We’re getting married next summer when the weather’s nicer. Up in Old Quebec.”
“Wow. Marriage.”
Marriage. He’s already found the woman he wants to settle down with. And me? I’m scratching the surface of thirty and have just lost the love of my life. An empty hollowness fills my gut, making it twist and churn.
“How old are you again?” My throat sounds raspy when I reply.
“Twenty-three. Smart enough to know when I’ve got a good thing and to hold on tight and never let it go, stupid enough to rush it. Me and my girl don’t care. We’re soul mates.”
Soul mates.
I thought Skyler was my soul mate. A zing of lightning hits my stomach, and I curve my arm around myself protectively, trying to breathe through the sudden pain.
“You got someone, man?” He cracks a grin. “Aw, sure you do. Good-looking guy like yourself.”
I shake my head. “Actually . . .” I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “We’re uh, on the outs.”
His body sways toward mine, and he locks his grip around my bicep again. “Sucks. You’ll pull through. If she’s the one, it will all work out.”
I should stop the conversation where it is, get things back onto professional turf, but something inside me is screaming out, and I have to ask. “What do you think makes this woman your soul mate?”
Kidd purses his lips and rubs at his chin. “Well, for one, I had a girl I loved in the past. Had to end things with her to focus on the job. I was a punk kid and not paying attention to the responsibilitie
s that Lex entrusted me with. My work was suffering, my life was turned upside down, and I hated the path I was headed down. Spent the next few years focusing on the job until I met Victoria. She adds to my life and doesn’t take away from it.”
“That’s it, she adds to your life, unlike the first woman you scraped off?”
He shakes his head emphatically. “Naw, it’s more that Eloise wanted all of my time and attention. That’s my ex.”
I nod, following along as though every last word is the last I’ll hear. For the life of me, I haven’t a clue why.
“With Victoria, she fits right in, you know? Like the last puzzle piece of a whole picture. She just fits. She completes me. When I’m down, she lifts me up. When I’m not with her, I feel her absence, right here, man . . .” He points to his abdomen. “In my gut. Yet I know she’s thinking ’bout me and I her. Then, the times we are together, it’s explosive.”
I run my hand over the back of my neck, massaging the ever-present tension I haven’t been able to shake since I left San Francisco.
Kidd walks over to the door. “Most of all, though, Vic is someone I can’t imagine not being in my world. Like Lex. She’s integral to who I am now. I appreciate who I am with her. She makes me like myself.”
“Well, man, hold on to her and never let her go, because in my experience with women, I can promise you, a love like that is rare.” Practically nonexistent, more like it. Though I don’t add that, because he doesn’t deserve my bullshit layered on top of his happiness.
“I know. It’s why I’m going to make it mine legally.” He waggles his eyebrows.
I chuckle, and he taps the doorframe the same way his sister did earlier today before leaving. I stare at the cat, who’s now sleeping perched on the edge of the love seat back.