“What else is there left for you to make a complete mess of?”

Jesus, was there ever going to be a time when women stopped having reasons to say things like that to him? One might think it would be something he would become immune to, but hearing it from Finnley, hearing her disappointment in him yet again, was a tough pill to swallow. He had been dreading this moment. God only knew how he had been dreading it. From the moment his father had told him what he had planned up until the moment when he saw the look on Finnley’s face, he had dreaded the outcome of his father’s plans. He hadn’t slept for a second night in a row despite the fact that he was in desperate need of rest, and he hadn’t been able to eat a bite before going into work. He had just sat in his office, listening to his dad play nice with all of the people waiting for him to deliver his speech and wondering what in the hell Finnley was going to have to say about all of this. Despite his efforts to tell himself that he didn’t owe her anything, that her opinion wasn’t something he needed to factor into his life, he couldn’t get her voice out of his head. He heard it before his father got his devil’s meeting underway, and once he saw the expression on Finnley’s face, it only grew louder. He had to stand and watch her expression change from one of suspicion to outright disgust, all the while standing beside his dad and showing support that he didn’t feel. When his dad had finally stopped talking, something that felt like it was downright never going to happen, he had bolted, chasing after Finnley, who had done the exact same thing.

“Finnley!”

He hadn’t thought she was going to turn around at all but when she did, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to keep looking in his direction. It was like she was looking right through him, and what she was seeing was nothing to be proud of. It made him want to crawl right out of his own skin. He wanted to become a different sort of man, the kind that never inspired looks like the one she was giving him.

“Oh, what’s the matter? No answer for that one? Nothing fancy to say to talk me out of it?”

“No, I mean, shit, Finnley, just give me a minute to think.”

“Ha! Give you a minute to think? Are you for real right now? You tell me why the hell I would do a thing like that? You didn’t exactly give me any time to think, did you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, I don’t know, why don’t you pick a time? Yesterday morning when your crazy girlfriend showed up at your front door?”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Finnley, I promise you that. She was a girl I spent time with when I was living in Colorado, but she’s not my girlfriend. She was hardly my girlfriend when the two of us were spending time with each other.”

“Sure, makes sense that you would say that. Well, then how about this ambush? You know, the one that happened just a couple of seconds ago? The one where you stood by and smiled benignly as your dear old dad told us all we’re going to be running a borderline-illegal gossip ring? Why don’t we talk about that one?”

“Finnley, this isn’t the place.”

“Fine. You know what? You’re totally right. This isn’t the place. And there isn’t going to be a place, either. We don’t have anything else to talk about. I quit.”

He was paralyzed by her words, unable to move until she was already out the front door. It was the sound of the metal hitting its own frame that forced him out of his stupor and got him moving, and by that time he was terrified that he would somehow be too late. He was sure that he would step out onto the street and there would be nobody there. She would just be vanished into thin air. His only connections to her would be her cell, which he highly doubted she would feel like answering, considering how pissed she was at him, and there would be Clara and her man Weston, but the good detective had made his feelings on Garrett pretty clear. That man was only waiting for some kind of nasty information to come out about Garrett Wallace, something more than the odd information about his grandparents miraculously still being alive. If Finnley wanted to make herself scarce, Garrett didn’t think any of her friends were going to help him. He was not, at least in that way, delusional.

“Finnley!” he shouted, feeling an almost giddy relief over seeing that she was only a couple of steps in front of him and had not, in fact, disappeared. He was sure she wasn’t going to stop, that she would just march forward and make him choose between chasing her down and looking like a total lunatic (something that wasn’t actually anywhere in the realm of unheard of when it came to New York City) or letting her go. Fortunately, she stopped in her tracks so that he wasn’t forced to choose between the two options, after all. When that was the kind of thing a man had to deem fortunate, things weren’t working in his favor, and Garrett knew it, but he was at the point where he was willing to accept small favors for what they were.

“What is it, Garrett?” Finnley asked, her shoulders raised and body stiff as she refused to turn to look at him. “What’s the deal, you’re just going to follow me now?”

“If that’s what it takes? Then yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“If that’s what what takes? What’s your end game here, boss? What is it that you think you want from me?”

“Don’t do that, Finnley. I know you want me to be the bad guy in all of this, but I’m not, okay? You’re going to have to find somebody else for that.”

“Oh yeah? So yesterday morning in your hotel—?”

“Wasn’t what you think,” he closed the gap of space between them in three steps flat, taking her shoulders into his hands and all but forcing her to look up and into his eyes. “I need you to listen to me, Finnley. Please, okay? I know you don’t have to, believe me, if life has taught me anything, it’s that strong women like you will do what they want. But I’m asking you to listen anyway.”

“Fine. Say what you need to say. Not that I think it’s going to make any difference, but if you really want to expend the energy, it’s your funeral.”

“Good. I do. Becky was a woman I was dating when I was in Colorado. It was casual, although it has become painfully apparent to me that it was a hell of a lot more casual for me than it was for her.”

“Huh. Well, that’s something we can agree on, at least. So if you had any inkling that she had the potential to go all Fatal Attraction on you, why the hell did you let her know where you were?”

“I didn’t! I swear to God, Finnley, I didn’t do anything like that. I had no reason to. As far as I was concerned, the two of us were done. There would have been no reason to give her my information. Things didn’t exactly end on good terms, you know?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she was pissed off, that’s what it means. It wasn’t the kind of breakup where the two of you say you want to be friends at the end of it.”

“So you’re honestly trying to tell me she just guess where you were. You must think I’m a total idiot, Garrett.”

“No! I’m not saying that!” He was starting to feel desperate, like he was on a merry-go-round saying the same thing over and over again and he was the only one who saw the repetition. He wanted nothing more than to make Finnley understand, to make her believe him. He was somehow sure that if he could do that, he could get to the bottom of all of the rest of it, whatever the hell the “rest of it” might be. “I’m not saying that at all. It was one of my parents. They told her. I don’t know why. I don’t know why they would go to the trouble, but it’s what happened.”

“Any chance you feel like telling me which parent?”

“Can you take a wild guess?”

“Your dad? Seriously? What the hell? I mean, why would he do something like that?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s some kind of a punishment.”

“For what though?”

“For not falling into line. My dad has very specific ideas of how I’m going to be in this new version of Cubed. He’s not a man that takes dissention very well.”

“And you haven’t been behaving like a good little boy?”

“No, I guess I haven’t. Basically, because I haven’t been doing every little thing he says. I think he’s trying to remind me that he has plenty of power and that he’s not afraid to use it on me. Being his son doesn’t mean I’m off limits, it would seem.”

“And is he getting to you?”

“Getting to me? I don’t know what you mean.”

“The war inside of you. It’s been there since you got here, hasn’t it? You’ve been trying to figure out whether you want to be the guy who lived in Colorado, or the guy you’ve started to become since moving here…the guy I’ve been falling for against my better judgement. If what you’re saying is true, your dad wants to make you into a thing of his own creation. So my question for you is, is it working?”

“No,” he answered so quickly it surprised even him. “I would say it’s doing the exact opposite. I’ve never known my dad all that well, not really, and I never bothered to think about that fact. I just thought of him as my dad and went on about my business. But now? Now I’m starting to wonder what all there is to him that I don’t know.”

“Are you thinking about your grandparents?”

“Sure, of course I am. At least in part. The fact that he never told me anything but lies about them is beyond strange. But it’s everything else, too. There’s something going on with him, something going on with what he’s doing with this company, and whatever it is, it’s dangerous. And I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“So then what’s your play? You just going to walk away, leave the rest of us here to either abandon the company we’ve loved and helped build, or become complicit in something skirting the line of legal?”

“No, that’s not my play. I’m going to help you guys figure out what the hell is going on. I’m going to figure out what all I don’t know about my family in the process. We’re going to figure this shit out. I’m finally going to do something that matters with myself.”

“And then? Even if we figure out what’s going on, your dad still owns the company.”

“If he’s the kind of man I’m starting to think he is, this ends with him doing time. If that happens, I’ll buy it right out from under him. I have plenty of my own money, whether he realizes it or not.”

“Huh.” She smiled at him for the first time since all of this had started. “I had no idea.”

“No idea of what?”

“No idea that you had a backbone.”

She took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply, kissed him so that he forgot for a moment that they were standing on a crowded New York street and trying to figure out how to take his own father down. He was so engrossed in the kiss, in fact, that he never noticed when the door to Cubed opened and his father’s cold eyes peered out at them.