Seventeen
“Your boyfriend?” Bhavna leaned in, taking a break from snatching my eyebrow hairs from my face just long enough to subtly cast a glance in Wick’s direction before she continued.
“No,” I told her. “Just… um… a special friend.”
She lifted a perfectly groomed brow at me, and smiled. “My dear, I have never seen a woman’s “special friend” come and sit in the room while she got her yoni waxed. Only lovers.”
“Okay but can you mind your business, Mrs. Patel?” I asked, even though I laughed before I had to go still again for her to finish. This was yet another trip out of the house I’d had to negotiate for, but it was necessary. My monthly grooming kept me feeling human, and now that I had someone actually looking at me again, it was even more important.
“Do not get angry with me, Monica, I am just asking questions. You are so much more radiant now than the last time I see you, I have to ask. I want to know the secret, even though I already know your secret?” she teased.
“And what’s that Bhavna? What do you think you know?”
“I know that tall, handsome man is the reason you are glowing. Specifically, his lingham.”
“Could you not?!” I asked, in a whisper-yell-laugh that made the subject of our conversation look up from whatever he was occupied with on his tablet.
“I have to tell the truth, Monica. You are done now.”
Still giggling at our exchange, I sat up straight, looking in the mirror at my flawlessly shaped brows. “There is magic in that thread of yours Bhavna,” I told her, then reached into my purse for enough crisp bills to pay for my services and a hefty tip. “As always, thank you my love.”
“You are welcome. I see you again for brows in three weeks – not four. Three.”
“Is that shade, B? You trying to say I’m too much work when I wait the extra week?”
She grinned. “I have to tell the truth, Monica.”
“Mmmhmm. I’ll see you next time!”
With Wick in tow, I left the salon, feeling refreshed, and relaxed, and… way too cute for Wick to be blocking like he was. He was all over me, obviously feeling extra-protective since that thing with Asher two days ago, because his eyes wouldn’t stop moving.
“This is a disaster waiting to happen,” he muttered, repeating his ill feelings about coming to the luxury mall for what had to be the tenth time since we’d ventured out.
I stopped walking to face him. “Well, lucky for you, I’m done. I just need to pee before we get back in the car for that long ass drive back to your house. I’ll be right back.”
“Whoa, hold up,” he insisted. He stepped in way before I could reach for the door of the bathroom we’d stopped in front of. “A public bathroom? You can’t be serious.”
“Well, my bladder sure is,” I told him. “I’ll just a be a second. And I don’t want to hear about you coming in the ladies’ room. There’s no assassin waiting to get me while I pee.”
“You don’t know that.”
Sucking my teeth, I stepped around him to open the door. “I guess I’ll just have to take that chance.”
He must’ve agreed about the lack of danger, because after a harsh sigh, he let me into the bathroom unimpeded. At first glance, the bathroom seemed empty – which wasn’t uncommon at such a random time of the day, on a weekday. But I’d just reached for the door to one of the stalls when I heard a familiar voice, from a different one.
“Girl, I knowwwwah! I cannot wait to drop this fucking baby. Since his damn granny wants him so bad, she can have him.”
Crystal.
I quickly surmised that she must be on the phone, since I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation. But what I could hear was enough to confirm what I already knew – the girl was trash.
“Bitch, you think I’m playing, and I’m not. I only got pregnant because I thought the nigga had money. But I guess I’m the one looking like boo boo the fool, getting pregnant by a mark.”
A mark…?
“Hellllll no! Nigga didn’t have shit but a debit card linked to his wife’s account. She was the one with money. Hell, I should’ve let her get me pregnant. She deserved better than his corny ass. Can’t believe I faked it as long as I did, but at least I got paid.”
Paid?
“Byeeee,” Crystal cackled. “I told you from the beginning I was getting paid to fuck him. The baby was supposed to be an extra come up, cause I thought I was dealing with Obama-level niggas. Now I’m out here fucking up my body for the same type of nigga I was dealing with on the streets. Can’t stay off the damn toilet either.”
Crystal laughed at whatever was said on the other end of the line. “No such thing as TMI hoe. But seriously – soon as I have this baby, the turn-up has to be… on some next level shit. Soon as my six weeks is up. Granny can have her replacement son, and I can move on. I don’t even give a fuck about the money from the will anymore. I got paid for what I did, and I’ve got my eyes on bigger and better. Wifey bitch can do whatever she wants.”
Wifey bitch? Seriously?!
“No, she’s actually cute. Like… bad bitch status to be honest. And all he ever did was complain about her weight, like he don’t realize big girls ain’t with the bullshit anymore. Homegirl is a baddie. And his ass could barely get it up half the time. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she really was fucking his old boss like he thought she was. He was so obsessed with what she was doing, and I swear it didn’t seem like she was bothered. Until that day she threatened to kill his ass, and baby I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t let a nigga who could barely get his dick hard play me out either.”
The toilet flushed, muffling her next words, shortly followed by the running water of the sink.
“Uh, no bitch!” I heard her laugh, as she tore off paper towels to dry her hands. “I always said if I was going to wreck homes, it was going to come with a price, and I was well-paid, okay? And now, I’m about to get his mama to pay me for this baby, then I’m moving somewhere sunny, bih.”
The bathroom door clattered closed, and I stood there, reeling about what I’d just overheard. With all the other drama happening, it – strangely – had never even occurred to me that Crystal may have been paid to disrupt my relationship with Kellen.
But it made perfect sense.
And… it made me wickedly happy.
Kellen had been so convinced that she worshipped the ground he walked on, so to find out that her loyalty to him had been tied to a paycheck was delicious. And her long-term con, of getting Kellen’s mother to pay her off to keep the grandson she wanted so damned bad she was willing to drop me?
Ha!
My opinion of Crystal was suddenly so much higher.
I hurriedly finished my business in the bathroom, damn near breaking my neck from trying not to fall into the toilet while I hovered over it. I was excited, finally feeling like maybe this was a useful lead, and I transferred that excitement to Wick when I left the bathroom. My mouth was running at a hundred miles per minute all the way to his Tesla, and he pulled his tablet back out as soon as we climbed inside.
“Okay. Tell me what I’m looking for,” he said, fingers poised over the screen, ready to type.
I blinked. “Um… Crystal’s bank accounts. We need to know who paid her to go after Kellen. And maybe once we know that, some of these things will start connecting. Amanda’s disappearance, Kellen stepping out… what was the catalyst?”
“Okay, let me start with the first thing – Crystal’s bank account. Whoa… she has one-hundred eighty-thousand dollars and some change. And it looks like she has expensive ass tastes, too, because she started a lot higher… fifteen thousand dollars a month, dating back for the past two years. No payment since Kellen died.”
“That’s a lot of damn money just to screw Kellen.”
Wick nodded. “Yeah, but it was more than just screwing him, right? You said yourself, it was like he was in love with this girl. Got her pregnant, was building a life. Whoever set this up, they wanted this to be insurmountable.”
“Right,” I said, processing his words, and trying to make them stick. “Can you see who that was?”
“Gimme a second,” Wick muttered, fingers flying over the screen for several moments before he came to a stop. “Asher. Again.”
That hit me like a blow to the chest. Even after all the drama of the other night, I’d been holding out hope that Asher would prove us wrong, that he really hadn’t been a part of anything crazy, but at this point… those odds were nonexistent.
“At the house, the other night… he said he’d exposed Kellen, but you stayed. Maybe this is what he was talking about,” Wick said, which made sense. He’d initially hired Crystal, probably planning to orchestrate me catching Kellen in the act with her. Only, I’d done that by accident anyway, and wound up deciding to stay.
It hadn’t worked.
“Okay, so we answered that. We know Asher paid Crystal to play that role. But she mentioned something else… she mentioned Kellen thinking that I was sleeping with his former boss, but that news is mind-blowing, to me. I’ve been around Brad Barker maybe seven or eight times in the years that Kellen was at Barker Financial, and never, ever alone.”
“That may be true, but someone convinced Kellen that wasn’t the case,” Wick said, shrugging. “And you have to admit it makes sense. You told me on multiple occasions, that you felt like he hated you. I know you think you committed some horrible slight against him by not babying his grown ass after he lost his job, but that never quite felt right to me. But this… this does. I mean, think about it – Brad Barker is a major player in finance – hell, even I know his name. Now, if I’m Kellen, and I believe that you’re sleeping with this guy, it’s setting off all kinds of questions in my head. Including, “is this the reason no one will hire me?”. Not only are you stepping out, you’re playing with my money, and those are reasons to start hating somebody.”
I pushed out a breath. “I guess it does make sense, but also… it doesn’t. What would make Kellen even believe something like that? And if he did, why wouldn’t he confront, or expose me?”
“That’s… a great question. One I don’t have an answer for really. Unless… maybe he was just biding his time. Kellen seems like he was a pretty calculating man, and he was being paid by someone at Canvas too. If he confronted you about Brad, that’s it – the fun’s over. But if he’s working with Canvas, planning your demise, I could see that making him patient enough to kinda slowly whittle you down, and hit you with that last blow at the worst possible time.”
“Right…,” I murmured. “Someone else just got to him first. But I still wonder why he would even believe such a thing about me.”
“This might have something to do with it,” Wick spoke, bringing my attention to him. He leaned over the main console, pointing to something on the tablet screen. “You see this? When I looked at Kellen’s email history before, I didn’t go far enough back. But these right here? These are emails between Kellen and an encrypted account. Those attachments you see there? Screenshots, supposedly of texts between you and Brad.”
“I have never exchanged texts with that man,” I declared. But for all Wick – and apparently Kellen – knew, that was a lie, because those screenshots looked convincing. They looked damning, actually, since that was indeed my phone number.
“You don’t even text like this,” Wick said, leaning in more so that he could see the screen too. “The cadence is off. And this sexting is horrible,” he laughed.
I cringed. “Yeah, it is. But Kellen and I didn’t really text – we lived together at this time. So it’s not like we went back and forth enough for him to pick up on that, like you did. Is there a way you figure out who sent these?”
“Not from my tablet. I need my wired connection. But even with that, there’s honestly no telling. Finding the banking information is actually easier, believe it or not.”
“Oh, wow. Well—”
My words were interrupted by the chime of a ringing phone, reverberating through the car. The console screen lit up, displaying that Wick was receiving an incoming call from “Calloway”, which I knew by now meant Marcus was calling.
“Talk to me,” Wick said, his way of answering the call.
“Kim woke up. They finally got the swelling to go down, from around her brain. She’s still fuzzy… had a hard time recognizing her mother and siblings. But she’s awake.”
Wick made a triumphant motion with his fist. “Okay. Okay, good. Awake is good. Lucid and eager to spill the beans would be better, but we’ll take awake. Can we get in to talk to her?”
“That’s a negative. Doctor is refusing any kind of interrogation.”
“As expected.” Wick glanced at me, and then looked again, this time fixing me with a long look. “Okay, so… no interrogation. Fine. What about a visit from her concerned employer, just checking in?”
Marcus chuckled over the speaker. “You know… I don’t see how anybody could have a problem with that.”
“Bet,” Wick nodded, reaching to pull on his seatbelt and motioning for me to do the same. “We’re on our way.”
I didn’t really like hospitals.
There was no deep, overwhelming trauma there, but after watching my mother and the only father I’d ever known waste away due to diseases that had rendered them regular fixtures at places like this, and then my own bout with infertility, and most recently, having to spend a few days here myself, I was just… not a fan.
I did not want to be there.
Especially when I had to feign support for Kim, with the things I knew now. But I wanted answers more than I wanted my anger, at least for now.
So I smiled in her mother’s face, played nice with her family, got them nice and comfortable and offered to pay for their lunch, so they could have a little break while I sat with her, alone.
And then I sank down into a chair beside the bed, unmoved by the heavy bandaging around her head, or the deep bruising around the eye that wasn’t covered by gauze, and asked her the question that had been burning me up since I first discovered the double-cross.
“Why, Kim?”
Instead of answering my question, she looked away, and a few seconds later, a fat tear rolled from her eye.
“No.” I shook my head. “No. you don’t get to sit here and be a victim after what you’ve done. You’re going to tell me something. Were you sleeping with Asher Ross?”
“N-no,” was her feeble answer, and it sounded as if she’d had to force it out. When we arrived, the doctor had been clear that her “talking” was limited, and they feared she’d suffered some sort of stroke, from the head trauma. I hadn’t expected it to be quite this bad though.
“Was this about money? You betraying me?”
“Y…yes.”
“Not because you hate me? No personal vendetta?”
“No.”
Small wonder.
“So… is somebody sick or something?”
That got another yes, but it only made me more frustrated.
“Okay so why not just come to me for help, instead of going about it like this? You had to have known I would do all I could for you, as long as you’ve been with me.”
Very subtly, Kim shook her head. “N-not… not e-nough.”
“Not enough… as in, you didn’t think I could give you enough?”
“Y…yes.”
Shit. Must be bad…
“Who, Kim? Who is sick?”
She closed her eyes again, leaning back into her pillows like she was tired. “Mama,” she whispered, and I nodded. I had noticed that the woman had lost a lot of weight since I’d last seen her, and was looking a bit fatigued. But speaking of fatigued – Kim seemed to be suffering from the same. As much as I wanted to ask more questions in this vein, to understand why she’d betrayed me, she had more pressing answers to give.
“Kim. Kim,” I said, getting her to open her eyes. “Do you know who did this to you? Who beat you up?”
Barely, she nodded. “Yes.”
“Who? I need a name, Kim. Who did this?”
She turned her head away from me. “N…no.”
“Yes,” I insisted, turning her face back toward mine and holding it there, not caring if it hurt. “Answer me. Who did this?!”
“I… can’t.”
“Yes you can. Tell me!”
Kim squeezed her eyes shut as a few more tears rolled down her cheek. “I—”
“Don’t you fucking tell me you can’t. It’s the least you could do! Give me a name.”
“I’m… sorry.”
“Keep it. I don’t want it. What I want is a name, Kim. Who?!”
“A…ash. Ash...let… I…”
I stepped back, feeling like I’d been punched in the chest. Truthfully, that was the answer I’d already been expecting, but it didn’t make it any less painful to hear.
“Asher. Asher did this to you,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. I’d so wanted to believe that even if he were obsessed with me, even if he was a closet creep, that harming a woman was a line he wouldn’t cross. If he’d done this to Kim… what had he done to Amanda?
“N…no. No. N-no. no!”
In front of me on the hospital bed, Kim had gotten upset, and a pang of guilt flashed through me. Her eyes were closed as she shifted back and forth, flinching like she was being hit, and I wondered if my questions had brought up a repressed memory of the attack.
“Kim… hey, Kim,” I said, laying hands on her in an attempt to calm her. “I’m right here. Nobody is going to hurt you. He isn’t going to hurt you anymore. We’ll tell the police, and they’ll make sure, okay? Asher will never touch you again.”
“No,” Kim whimpered, shaking her head. “Ash… le… no. No, Ash—”
“Hey, you are okay,” I told her again. “Do you… do you know why? Did he say why he did this.”
Kim went still, and then opened that one good eye to stare up at me. “Y-you. The… the office.”
“This was retaliation for the office?” I asked, trying to clarify, and she nodded.
“Okay. Okay.”
I took a deep breath, trying to swallow the revulsion I felt, knowing that whatever delusion Asher had about our relationship, he’d done this because of me. Instead of subjecting her to further questions – questions that could wait – I left the room, finding Wick waiting for me in the small waiting area in the hall.
“I was just about to come and check on you,” he said, standing as soon as he saw me. Something about his tone sparked a little thread of suspicion, and I stepped back.
“What is it?” I asked. “What happened?”
He pushed out a sigh, propping his hands on top of his head. “Uh… Amanda’s aunt. Sheila. I had the idea to try to look further into the family, see if there might be someone else who knew something, and…”
“Just say it. Please.”
“She… she’s dead, Monica. That was the first thing I found when I started searching. She was found yesterday. Overdosed on prescription pain meds. The police don’t think there was foul play.”
“That’s bullshit,” I shot back, crossing my arms. “It’s bullshit. Completely. I just talked to her, days ago Wick. And now she’s just gone? You think that’s a coincidence?”
He glanced around, making sure we were alone before he answered. “No. I don’t. Especially not when Asher was on a flight there early yesterday morning, and a flight back a few hours later. I didn’t think much of it, because he attended a meeting that had already been on his itinerary for weeks – I know because I hacked his schedule. But finding this now…”
“It’s too convenient. When Asher was there in your kitchen… you remember how he reacted when I said I’d talked to Sheila? He said she knew “everything”. What is everything? And why didn’t he want me to find out?”
“It’s still circumstantial. It’s something we can take to the police like we have a case.”
“But we do,” I insisted. “Maybe not for that, but Kim told me – it was Asher who attacked her. In retaliation, for me getting attacked at my office. I… Wick, I barely want to believe that he could hurt a woman like this, but I cannot keep being naïve. We need to tell the police. He needs to be brought in.”
Wick nodded. “You’re sure she said it was Asher?”
“Yes. Yes. I mean… she’s a little out of it, and it was hard for her to speak, but… yes. I’m sure.”
“Okay.” He reached out, grabbing my elbow to give me a comforting squeeze. “I’ll call Sam right now.”
He pulled out his phone, stepping away to do just that. I turned, trying to give a bit of privacy and happened to look up in time to see a nurse stepping out of Kim’s room, and rushing off down the hall. Just seeing it gave me an eerie feeling, like something wasn’t right.
Had I freaked Kim out with my questions?
Shit. I hope I didn’t upset her too badly.
But even if I did… I had to come to grips that it really wasn’t my problem. This particular bed was one that Kim had made for herself.
Instead of pacing the floor, I took a seat, burying my face in my hands. I was still processing the possibility that Asher, the guy I’d known and loved as a friend for nearly half my life, could be a killer. It was a hard, bitter pill to swallow.
If I was acknowledging that he’d attacked Kim, and left the message on her floor, I had to believe that he was responsible for everything else as well.
Kellen’s murder, the break-in at my home, at the office. The business sabotage. Amanda’s disappearance.
All of it.
And for what?
Get rid of Kellen, and then make me so miserable that I fell into his arms, looking for comfort? It seemed like a long shot – like flat-out craziness, actually – but so did the entire last few weeks of my life. And when everything had been going bonkers, it stood to reason that the motive behind it all would be bonkers too.
But… did that really explain this?
If Ash was behind everything, where did Canvas Cosmetics fit into this, if they fit at all? Asher had done very, very well in the finance sector – he had money to blow. What if Canvas didn’t have anything to do with any of this – which I strongly suspected anyway, because what would their motive be? – and Asher had simply figured out a way to cover his tracks by implicating someone else?
God, this is all so… chaotic.
Hopefully, I’d be able to get some answers to the chaos soon enough.
“Okay, I talked to Sam,” Wick said, interrupting my thoughts as he approached where I was sitting. “He’s sending officers to pick Asher up. I already told him there might be a few… complications with the paperwork, after Asher’s unexpected drop-in the other night. But, he felt like what I gave him was at least worth talking to him again. So, we’ll see where it goes from here.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, dropping to a squat position in front of me. “I never trusted his ass, but… I know you did. Something like this can’t be easy for you.”
“It isn’t,” I said, chewing on my lip for a second before I shook my head. “But, I can’t keep ignoring what’s right in front of me. If Asher did this, he needs to pay for it. And if he didn’t… well… I just hope he gets a really good lawyer.”
Those words had barely left my lips when an alarm started blaring from somewhere. It only took a few seconds to ascertain that it was coming from Kim’s room. The next thing I knew, doctors and nurses were rushing in.
Immediately, my eyes went to Wick’s and the nod he gave me told me he was thinking the same thing I was – here was yet another incident that was too-well timed to be coincidental.
“I was just in there with her,” I whispered, standing up as Wick straightened from his squatted stance. “She was in bad shape, but stable. Suddenly now she isn’t? Kellen, Sheila, - two people who could’ve given me answers, dead. What do you want to bet that Kim is next?”
“You think that Asher is what… finishing the job? You don’t think if he wanted her dead, she would’ve already been?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know what to think anymore. But… I just have this feeling, and I know you do too. This is not happenstance.”
“I agree with you, but Asher isn’t here, and hasn’t been here. At least not since we have.”
“Okay, so he got someone else to do it. Someone like… the nurse. The nurse. When you were on the phone with Sam, a nurse came out of the room and practically ran to get out of here. Two minutes later, that alarm went off, and I did not see her in that rush to get back in there.”
Wick’s eyes narrowed, and then he walked away, pulling his laptop from his bag. He waited a few seconds for it to power on, and then his fingers were flying over the keyboard as he stared at the screen – a state I knew not to bother him in.
“Come here,” he told me, a few moments later, motioning at the chair beside him. When I sat down, my eyes went wide – he’d hacked into the security camera feeds for the hospital. “This is our hall, right here,” he said, pointing. “Now if I rewind back, instead of watching live… is this her? Right there?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “But… we can’t see her face.”
Wick sighed. “Yeah. Purposely angled away. She knew the camera was there. Probably where all the cameras are, and how to avoid them. Shit.”
“Right. Shit.”
My disappointment only magnified when I looked up to see Kim’s family coming down the hall, looking full and content from my suggested lunch. They had no idea what they were about to walk into. And just as I was working up the courage to stop them before they opened that door, the doctor stepped out, hands on his hips as he looked around.
I knew that look.
He was looking for the family.
And apparently, Kim’s mother knew it too. Before the doctor even opened his mouth, she crumpled right there in the hall, sobbing as her other children tried to pull her back to her feet. Tears welled in my eyes too – despite what Kim had done, she’d been with me so long that she was like a younger cousin to me. It was completely unfair – completely fucked up – that her mother was going to have to bury her.
Especially since a desire to take care of her mother was what had gotten her wrapped up in all of this in the first place.
It was sad, for sure, but… mostly, I found myself feeling guilty. Had I flirted with Asher? Stared a little too long, accidentally brushed against him at a party, something to make it make sense that he thought we would be together. Had I inadvertently been leading him on? For it to come to this… there had to be something.
Right?
Wick and I slipped out, to save me the heartache of dealing with her family… for now, at least. I knew that at some point soon, I would have to talk with them, addressing the fact that I no longer considered Kim an employee, after finding out how she’d double-crossed me. For now, my head was spinning with everything I’d learned today.
All I wanted to do was lay down.
In the car, I closed my eyes for the long drive home, not opening them again until Wick’s phone rang. Curiosity drew my gaze to the console, where “Turner” was displayed as the incoming caller. Wick glanced at me first, seeming to hesitate, but I stared right back, and nodded. I didn’t have a good feeling about it, but I wanted him to answer.
“Talk to me,” he said, and Sam answered right back.
“We got him. Heading down to the station now.”
Wick grinned. “Good. He have anything to say for himself?”
“Not really. Wanted to call his lawyer. And… he wants to speak to Monica Stuart. I wouldn’t advise it though. This motherfucker is a wack job, through and through.”
“Why do you say that?” Wick asked. “You found something in his apartment? Proof?”
Sam was quiet for a second. “Not of what he’s accused of, not yet. But… Ms. Stuart would definitely have grounds for a stalking charge.”
“Wait, what? Sam, explain.”
“I’m just gonna send you some pictures I snapped. Shit is self-explanatory.”
With that, Sam ended the call, but a few moments later, I heard the phone buzz again. I looked at Wick, even though he was driving, waiting for him to give me what he knew I wanted.
“Fine,” he sighed, after a few minutes. “You can pull them up on the console screen.”
I did exactly that, opening up the text thread with Sam after Wick keyed in the numbers that unlocked his phone. For a second, I just stared, not fully processing what I was seeing, but then a blunt wave of nausea hit me as the image focused.
Pictures.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of pictures of me, lining the walls of Asher’s apartment. I could tell just based on my hairstyles that some of the pictures were older, but others were very, very recent. Not promotional shots, or images taken from my social media. Clandestine shots of me at the grocery store, at the gym, from a gap in my curtains. Racy pictures I’d sent to Kellen back when we were still on good terms. Shots where I’d flashed the camera, shots where I’d… pulled my panties aside. Pictures that were only ever meant for my husband’s eyes, and now…
“I’m going to be sick,” I said aloud, and Wick immediately pulled over, even though we were nearly back at the house. I barely had the door open before the contents of my stomach relieved themselves from my body. With my head still hanging, I stepped away from the car, trying to take in gulps of fresh air.
After a few moments, I felt Wick’s hand on my back, but I was so mortified that I stepped away, shaking my head.
“Monica… I am so sorry. But Sam is lead on this now – he took over the whole thing. He took those shots to send me, so that we would know the full scope of this, but if I know him – and I do – he’s making sure no one else sees these pictures.”
I scoffed. “What, he’s gonna destroy evidence? Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“I’m saying that he’ll make sure you aren’t further violated, yes. Cops make shit disappear all the time. Nobody will blink about this. I know that doesn’t make it okay, but… I hope it at least… I don’t know. Tell me what to do.”
Just the fact that he wanted to make it better almost brought a smile to my face, but I was still so disgusted that it wouldn’t surface. Just knowing that Asher had intentionally surrounded himself with those images – my personal, private images – every single day…
“Let’s get you to the house, okay?” Wick asked, wrapping his arms around my shoulders to lead me back to the car. There, he pulled a bottle of water from a compartment in the armrest, and I used it to rinse out my mouth before accepting the gum he’d offered.
I appreciated that he didn’t say anything for the rest of the short drive home. His mind was racing – I could just tell – but whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.
There was a Range Rover – Kay’s – in the driveway when we pulled up, but Wick didn’t immediately seek her out. He took me to his room first, running a bath and settling me into it before he left me to myself, to soak, and to… think.
But I didn’t want to think.
What I wanted was to not think about any of this, for all of it to go away and stay away. Earlier, I’d considered all of this to be overwhelming, but that was nothing when compared with… this. Those pictures… that had been the thing that launched me over the edge, whereas before, I’d just been toeing the line.
Where did he even get them?
That was the question plaguing me now. And the other shots… had he been following me? Stalking me, like Sam had suggested? Whatever the case, it occurred to me now the danger I’d been in without knowing. I’d been alone with Asher countless times, and the only time he’d indulged his apparent desire had been that night in the hotel.
But he’d seemed so apologetic, so ashamed of himself afterward.
Had that just been a test?
Was he simply gauging my reaction?
I pushed out a deep sigh, and closed my eyes. I was feeling sick to my stomach again, and I’d already brushed my teeth twice before Wick put me in the bath.
There was no sense in making myself queasy over someone else’s actions, when I had enough other things to be stressed about. Instead of running it over in my mind any further, I kept my eyes closed, and focused on pushing away every thought.
When I opened my eyes again, the water was cold.
As I woke up, my body reacted to the frigid water with violent shivers, so strong that I barely pulled myself out. I silently thanked Wick for the heated floors in his bathroom, and the towel warmer he’d draped my robe over.
I let out a long sigh as I wrapped myself in the heated terry cloth, then looked around, realizing that there was no longer any daylight streaming in from outside.
Was I really in the tub that long?
My heavily pruned fingers and toes said yes, but I was still skeptical as I pulled open the door to the bedroom. Surely Wick would’ve checked on me before now, not letting me stay in a cold bathtub for hours. But… the clock beside his empty bed told the same story as the darkened sky.
Something had to be wrong.
When I opened the door to his room, the hallway, and most of the house, was dark. There was a light on behind the door that led to Kay’s room, and behind the door to Wick’s office. I chose the office.
Without knocking, I opened the door to find him seated at his desk with his head down, resting in his hands. Immediately, my eyes shifted, searching for the bottle of liquor that he’d had before, but the desk was empty, save for his laptop and other knick-knacks.
“Wick,” I said, and he looked up with red-rimmed, wrathful eyes, that quickly softened when he realized I was at the door.
“Monica… shit… are you okay?” he asked. “I… completely fucking forgot you were here. I… fuck!” he exclaimed, loud enough to make me flinch. Still, I stepped inside, closing the door behind me.
“Hey…” I made sure my tone was soothing, but didn’t move any closer. “Tell me where your head is at?”
He pushed out a sigh, then shook his head. “Kayla. Somebody tried to grab her as she was leaving rehearsal earlier.”
“Oh my God! Is she okay?!”
“Yeah. Khalil was with her, and Kay… can fight, for lack of a better way to put it. So, she’s fine. She’s safe now. I’m just pissed that it happened. Some officers came by and took her statement.”
I put a hand to my chest, pressing it into the steady thump of my racing heart. “Good. I’m glad she’s safe.”
“Yeah. Me too,” he said, and then sat back again, quiet.
Too quiet.
“Um… you said you were pissed. At… me?” I asked, leaning back against the door.
Wick’s eyes came back to me, narrowed. “Monica… what do you think?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I… I think yes. I think that this is the reason you didn’t want to be involved with me in the first place. Why you never wanted to see my face again, because of how it might involve, or hurt Kay. I wouldn’t blame you, for being pissed at me. I would be pissed at me. You don’t have to pretend to not be pissed at me. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
His eyes narrowed even further as he sat forward. Even with his mouth closed, I could tell he was running his tongue over his teeth, thinking.
“Monica… why do I get the feeling there’s something you aren’t telling me?”
His gaze was so intense that it already felt like he was seeing right through me. Yet again, I was reminded that this man was nobody’s regular “computer geek”. He’d been trained to spot lies – and expertly tell them too. But I had the feeling that between us, there was only one potential liar in the room.
Potential I couldn’t force myself to live up to.
Not now that his daughter was involved.
“Because there is,” I whispered.
Across the room, Wick stood, then came around to the front of his desk. He leaned back into it, taking a seat on the edge before he motioned for me to step forward.
I didn’t want to, but it was like I was being pulled by some invisible thread. As soon as I was in front of him, he gently grabbed me by the wrists, with his thumbs at my pulse points.
“Tell me, Monica. Now.”
“Glen Pearson is my father.”
The words tumbled out immediately, with barely any pressure from him. As soon as I said it, I felt like a weight had been lifted – I’d never spoken those words out loud to anyone still living, not even Kellen. But that relief was short-lived, as Wick realized the gravity of what I’d just told him.
“Glen… Pearson,” he repeated, with a tightness in his jaw that hadn’t been there before. “As in… owner and CEO of Canvas Cosmetics, Glen Pearson?”
With my lips pressed tight together, I nodded, and he pushed out a rough sigh that made me flinch.
“Monica… what the fu—why are you just now telling me this?!”
“I didn’t think it mattered!” I exclaimed – well, tried. “It’s not common knowledge. No one knows. Not even him!”
Wick frowned. “How the fuck would he not know he had a kid?!”
“Are you really asking me that question?!” I shot back. “You didn’t know about Kay until she was damn near a pre-teen, Wick!”
“I…” whatever he was going to say, he swallowed it, knowing I was right, even though the situations were completely different.
“My mother… was never supposed to get pregnant. And when she did, she was supposed to have an abortion. He paid for an abortion. She used the money to pack up and leave instead.”
Wick pulled his head back. “Wow. Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow. She moved away, had me, raised me by herself. Never contacted him again, never asked for anything. She only finally told me who he was because I threatened to stop speaking to her if she didn’t.”
“Wouldn’t he recognize your last name as the same as hers? See you, and connect those dots? He had to have looked you up when he tried to buy your company.”
I shook my head. “I took my stepfather’s name, when he and my mother got married. And then, I married Kellen, so I was Monica Stuart. And as far as seeing my mother in my face… I’m thirty-six years old, and it’s not like the two of them were in love. She was his mistress, Wick. Probably one of many. So… I doubt he was pining away every night, trying to remember her face. It was more likely that he was trying to forget.”
“Okay. Okay,” he repeated with a heavy sigh, still holding my wrists. “So… your father owns Canvas. The same company whose account signed all these crooked ass checks. You’re telling me now, why?”
“In case it matters. Even though… I never thought it did. My reasoning was that, he has to still be in the dark about it, because if not… why come after me with this kind of tactic? I’ve never dropped a hint, never said a peep, to anyone. He has no reason to think I’m a threat, no reason for all of this. So I just keep thinking… there’s no way it’s him.”
Wick dropped his head back, looking up at the ceiling for a bit before his gaze came back to me. “I… don’t disagree. It makes no sense for him to come at you like this. The Asher angle is a better fit, but that puzzle is still missing a lot of pieces. I just… I really would’ve liked to know this before now. For the sake of transparency.”
I nodded. “I know. I know. I swear, if I’d thought that it mattered…”
“I understand. You’ve really never told anyone else?”
“No,” I said, giving him a wry smile. “The only people who ever knew my mother was pregnant were him and my mother. And… his wife, when I showed up as a teenager, looking for him. She wrote me a check, asked me not to tell anyone, and… asked me to never come back. So I honored that.”
“Wow. That’s…”
“Dysfunctional? Yes. The only reason I’m telling you this, is on the off chance that maybe he is involved, now that somebody tried to harm Kayla. I… I couldn’t live with myself knowing I was holding on to that secret, if something happened to her.”
Wick nodded, and then released his hold on my wrists to slip his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. “Well… the fact that Kay factors highly enough to you for you to tell me this means a lot me. It’s appreciated. Greatly. Along with the fact that you’re trusting me with something you haven’t told anyone else… I’ll do my very best to preserve your secret.”
I relaxed into his arms, glad for the opportunity, but still… “Why do I feel like there’s a “but” coming?”
“Because there is,” he said, looking down to meet my gaze. “The attempt on Kay… it wasn’t related to this madness that’s going on with you. One of the other dancers, Anais. She has a fucked-up ex. Ol’ boy sent people for her, and when Kay stepped out of the building – similar body type, skin tone, wearing a hoodie, hair in her face… they thought she was Ana. Khalil caught one of the guys, kept him hemmed up until the police got there, while the others ran.”
My mouth dropped open. “So… you were never mad at me? Never thought my mess had anything to do with it?”
“Never,” he said, leaning to kiss my forehead. “You’re the one who started acting guilty. I just let you say what was on your mind.”
I put my hands on his chest, giving him a playful shove. “That was not very nice. At all. I was thinking you almost let me end up with hypothermia because you were pissed at me!”
“Even if I was pissed, I wouldn’t do any shit like that. The bathtub thing… was an honest mistake. I was with Kay, and then I came in here to try to look this guy up, and the time just got away from me. I’m sorry.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I tried to feign annoyance, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As much as he’d done, as much work as he’d put in for me, certainly I could give him a pass.
“Apology accepted,” I told him, then let out a long sigh as I sank back into his arms. “It’s been a rough day.”
His hands came to my back, starting a gentle circular stroke that if I were a cat, would’ve had me purring. “I’m starting to notice a trend, of you forgiving me because you’re just too tired to be mad.”
I laughed. “Lucky you. I am too tired to be mad.”
“Come on then. Let’s go lay down.”
I nodded. “Yes. Let’s.”
He grabbed me by the hand, leading me toward his room. “Probably a good idea to get some rest.”
Inside his room, he closed the door behind us. As soon as I heard the click in the doorframe, I turned around, unbolting and dropping my robe.
“You’re right. And I know the perfect medicine to put us to sleep.”