19. Travis
My mind was all over the place as I stood in front of the island waiting for my pot of coffee. The night had come and gone, and with it was my peace of mind and any hope of relaxation I had.
I had tossed and turned all through the night as my mind danced around various matters… all of them leading to one person. Emily.
I knew that I had been cold to Emily last night, before but I had not been able to help it. My emotions had been going haywire and I was in turmoil. Realizing you were in love with a woman the same night you found her breaking into the vulnerable heart of your company was a lot.
Try as I might to forget about it and move past it, it remained on my mind. I had allowed myself to be distracted by her, enjoying her embrace and the moment we spent together… but the realization of my feelings for her had thrown me off balance.
I had spent the night in the family villa, knowing fully well that spending the night at my condo, where Emily had once slept beside me, was a bad idea. If I had done that, I would have second guessed everything and gone running back to her, apologizing for the way that I had treated her and asking for her forgiveness.
I had chosen the easier path, spending time with my cousins and ignoring my feelings until they died.
That was the theory, anyway.
I poured myself a steaming cup of coffee and took a large gulp before filling it back up. I plated my breakfast of pancakes and some eggs with bacon before taking a seat on one of the stools at the island.
I cut into the stack of pancakes on my plate and stuffed them into my mouth, letting out a sigh as I chewed. I was exhausted from thoughts that had been running through my head from last night.
“Alright, spill,” Alexi said, looking at me. “What is your problem? What is wrong with you?”
“Why do you think there’s something wrong with me?” I asked, raising my brows at him as I forked more pancakes into my mouth.
“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you look a lot more shitty than you usually do?” Leo chimed in, causing me to roll my eyes at him.
Brendan and Jackson had left before the sun came up to attend some sort of urgent business, so it was just the three of us in the villa this morning.
“Wow, thank you so much for your observation,” I replied sarcastically.
“Why, you’re welcome.” His eyes filled with mirth as I narrowed mine at him.
Leo returned to eating his toast as though none of it mattered to him. Alexi glanced at him for a second and sighed before returning his gaze to me.
“Talk to us. What’s the matter?” he prodded some more.
I sighed and pushed my breakfast aside, dropping the fork in my grasp before focusing on him. I debated telling him and shrugged as I made up my mind to do so. My brothers being gone made it easier. Perhaps my cousins with their famous romantic exploits could provide more insight into my situation than I could figure out on my own.
“ I think I might have fucked up,” I said finally, knowing for a fact that I had indeed fucked up.
Leo looked up from his breakfast as though my statement had shocked him.
“Oh that’s new, you fucking up is unprecedented,” Alexi murmured. “What did you do? Did you make a mistake with the business?”
“No, of course not,” I said, rolling my eyes at such an outlandish idea.
“Of course not, I should have known that was not the reason. What then did you make a mistake in?” Alexi asked.
“I made a mistake with a girl. I think… I think I’m in love with her.” I sighed in defeat as I said it out loud for the first time.
“Ah feelings. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense,” Leo said suddenly, still focused on his breakfast as he poured a drizzle of syrup on what was left on his plate.
Alexi smacked his brother’s arm before I could react. “Talk to us.”
I sighed knowing that now that I had his attention, he would not rest until I told him what had happened.
“I haven’t really let myself fall in love since college. I have only felt that once before and that was for Barbara. She was perfect, everything was perfect.” I winced, wishing that I did not have to talk about this. “The day I proposed to Barbara, I came back home to surprise my parents with the news but then I walked into another fiasco… as was usual for us. Dad was um… hitting mom again.”
I looked at Leo when I could no longer hear his fork constantly scraping on the plate. He was staring at me in shock with a half-chewed piece of toast sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
“I was older and much stronger now, so I got between them and stopped him. I yelled at my father, calling him a monster.” I shook my head as the memory played like it had only just happened. “I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he slapped me. He always did. He laughed at me and asked what I thought I knew of the world and if I thought I was any different from him.”
I chuckled as I repeated his words. “What does a monster give birth to, if not another monster? That was what he asked me. He said one day, I would look myself in the mirror, and see that I had become him.”
I was quite young when this happened… just twenty years old. And the thought of being a monster like my father had been enough to make me reconsider the thought of marriage.
I did not want to ever have to hit the woman I claimed to love. The thought filled me with so much pain and knowing that my mother had endured it for so long in silence was even more painful than the image that had been burned into my mind. I didn’t want that to happen to Barbara. The thought of what I could become ate away at me for months, until…until I broke up with her.
“It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. We were so young. Still, I was in love with her back then, and I knew that she loved me too. She cared nothing for my background or money. She simply was glad to be with me as I was to be with her. She was the one person I could always go to, but after hearing my father tell me that I was a monster like him, I feared to go near her… feared that I might hurt her if I did.”
“What’s the name of that girl you keep hanging on your arm all the time?” My father asked me. “You feel you’re so righteous, right? Just you wait until the day comes when you see her pretty little face turning red with your hands around her neck and tears in her eyes. Only then will you realize that you are just like me. You will become me because you are my son.’
“Hearing those words shook me so terribly that I ran away from home, ran from the reach of his words but it was too late. Just like the image of his hands on my mother, those words had been burned into my mind and had left a deep scar that served as a reminder.
I picked up my cold cup of coffee and took a sip, frowning when it hit my tongue. I got up and poured the cold brew down the drain before filling my cup with fresh coffee. My father’s actions had had deeper consequences than they would ever know.
Alexi and Leo sat behind me in silence.
I remembered the day I broke up with Barbara, unable to get the image my father had planted in my head out of it.
“Oh, hi Travis,” she said and I pictured her with her full pink lips turned upward into a smile and her eyes twinkling as they crinkled around the edges.
“Barbara… I’m sorry, it’s over.” My grip tightened around the phone as I waited for her to respond, knowing nothing good could come out of this conversation.
“What?!” her voice had lost that cheeriness she answered quietly… brokenly… completely caught off guard by what I just said.
“I am sorry, I can’t do this to you. I can’t be with you, I’m so sorry,” I apologized again knowing that no amount of apology would heal her broken heart. But it was better she had a broken heart than for her to be a victim of the monster I was to become.
“Travis, what are you talking about? Talk to me.” Her voice cracked on the other end of the line and I knew in that moment that although I had saved her from the physical monster, I was still every bit of a monster. I supposed my father was right, I was like him after all.
“It’s over, Barbara. I’m breaking up with you. You deserve better.” I ended the call before I could hear her cry and quickly blocked her line.
From that point on, I vowed to be everything my father wasn”t. To right his wrongs, to protect, not harm.And I’d never let anyone get close enough for me to hurt them the way he hurt our mother. Just in case.
“I never let anyone bring Barbara up to me after that,” I told Alexi and Leo. “Not even her friends who were trying to reach me were allowed. I completely stonewalled her. I always felt very guilty about it, and in my heart, she was the only one there. I hadn’t stopped thinking about her after many years. I even managed to go to her wedding where she had returned the ring I gave her all those years ago.”
“Then…what’s the problem? Do you want her back?” Leo asked.
I frowned. “What? No. She’s married. I fell in love with someone else. A reporter currently working at the company. Emily Skye. I keep trying to tell myself that it is not true but… I am in love with her. What I felt for Barbara is nothing compared to this.”
“Why did you fall in love with her?” Alexi asked.
I couldn’t help my smile. “She is everything. When she smiles…it feels like the sun coming out. When she speaks, I can listen forever. She makes everything better. I love her passion for doing the right thing and I know she will never call my need to help people pet projects. I feel like she is who I want to be.”
“Travis, you’re nothing like your father,” Alexi said. “You never have been.”
“Yeah, and it’s time to stop letting the abusive bastard haunt you,” Leo added gruffly.
Alexi got a familiar faraway look in his eyes. “I believe you will find someone who makes you happy. In fact, I’m sure of it. You’re a better man than I was before I met Aimee, and she puts up with me anyway. And let me tell you, she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” Alexi chuckled. “Even Leo got his happily-ever-after, and she started out as a one-night stand.”
“Hey!” Leo nudged his brother in the ribs, “I am an upstanding gentleman. Gemma’s the one you need to watch out for. You never know what she’s thinking.”
“That’s why you like her. She keeps you on your toes.”
My cousins descended into teasing each other about their wives, and this time it hurt a little less. With their encouragement, I could almost begin to imagine that the same kind of happiness was possible for me. But did I dare, even for a moment, to imagine that I could make someone like Emily Skye as happy as Leo and Alexi clearly made Gemma and Aimee?.
“Travis!” Brendan’s eyes found me immediately as he walked in.
“Why are you shouting?”
“We’ve had a security breach. Our data was stolen. All of it.”
No.
“What happened?” I asked as Brendan walked over to the counter with his laptop. I prayed his answer would be anything but what I feared.
“The data was stolen from the server room and our tracker shows that it has already been accessed. We need to trace the thief. I know it’s the same person that tried to hack us before. They have the same signature. I have no idea how they got in…”
Brendan’s voice faded into the background.
No.
I already knew who it was. But it couldn’t be.
“Emily.” The word left my lips unbidden.
“What?” Brendan asked me, looking confused just as Jackson walked in.
“I already went through the security footage. I saw a woman walk in and I had her looked into. Her name is Emily Skye. She was one of the people who came in for the project. I believe you ran into her last night,” Jackson glanced at me. “You should have detained her.”
“Fuck.” Brendan looked at me. “Is this true?”
“She told me she left her purse in the server room.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, wishing I were anywhere but here. “She said the door had opened for her key card. I thought it must have been a permission glitch.”
”I thought we ran background checks on everyone?” Brendan snapped. “How did this get past us?”
“I don’t know.” Jackson looked just as lost as I was.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” Brendan’s voice was furious.
“Permission glitch, my ass,” Jackson scowled. “She didn’t get in with her key card, Travis. She got in with your fingerprints.”
The world stopped.
“My fingerprints? How…”
Of course. She’d been in my apartment. She’d been in my bed more than once. Of course.
No wonder she had slept with me.
“How indeed?” Brendan stared at me.
I closed my eyes, my face burning with shame. “I…may have let her into my apartment. Before her assignment with us started. We met at a club.
“Fuck. She took your fingerprints.” Jackson massaged his forehead tiredly.
How could I have been so stupid as to get betrayed like this? She hadn’t just gotten my fingerprints: she’d gotten much more than that from me. More than I had given anyone since Barbara. Maybe even more than I had given her.
“There is something else.” Jackson’s voice filled me with dread. “A lot more actually.”
He came over with a tablet and showed us a file. “Since I saw her in the security camera, I already sent people to look into her and they have come back with some findings. This is her, she works for a publishing company owned by Blackwell.”
I felt my legs go weak. There was no way that this was possible. This meant that she had been working for Blackwell all this time. And I’d been nothing more than a pawn to her. Maybe that was why she’d seemed so alluringly distant.
“Huh, that’s strange.” Brendan’s sudden words drew everyone’s attention to him again. “I can’t find anything about her. There’s nothing about her save for her getting into NYU. That is all I could find. There was nothing on her high school education or where she went. It’s like she just vanishes once you go too far back. Is she so important to Blackwell that he would scrub her background so she’d pass our security checks? That’s expensive. Let me see if I can find a relative to get more information on her.”
My heart was pounding in my chest as my brother worked.
“Okay, I found her mother. There is not much on her save for the fact that she was once married to a Jacob Anderson.” His eyes moved as he perused the details in front of him. I watched as his eyes widened. “Oh fuck!”
“What? What is it?” I asked him, feeling lost, confused and so many other emotions I was not willing to get into yet.
“Her name isn’t Emily Skye. It is Emily Anderson.”
I blinked at the fact that I didn’t even know her name, but I didn’t understand why Brendan said it like that. “So?”
“She’s the daughter of Jacob Anderson and Maria Anderson. Maria remarried after Anderson died. Jacob Anderson was one of the people that dad screwed over. It looks like he died just a few years after his company went under.”
All the feelings of hurt and betrayal that had been going through my head came to a grinding halt at that piece of information.
If she was one of the people that his dad screwed over… knowing her and her crazy sense of justice, then maybe she was only doing this to get revenge for her dad.
That I could forgive. I could even reconcile it with the image of her as a good person. This wasn’t just a paid hit piece for Emily Skye: this was justice for her family and countless others. Or at least, she thought it was.
“We need to call the police and have her arrested as soon as possible,” Jackson said suddenly, causing me to panic.
“No!” I shouted instinctively, causing everyone to look my way. “I…just give me one day. I need to speak with her.”
“What are you talking about?” Brendan asked, staring at me as if I had grown two heads.
“Just one day,” I reiterated. “Do you really want to arrest a woman whose life dad destroyed? I don’t think she will do anything to harm us. If I’m right… this is just an unfortunate misjudgment on her part, and she’s just looking for justice.”
Brendan looked like he wanted to cuss me out, and Jackson had a brow raised.
“Do you know how stupid you sound right now? She already stole the data right under your nose!” Brendan began.
I winced. It was true. Still…
Alexi came to my rescue, pulling my brothers aside for a moment.
I waited tensely. Hell, I wasn’t stupid, I knew that what I was doing was ridiculous. To my brothers, it would seem like I had screws loose.
When they turned back to me, I pressed my lips together, waiting for the verdict from their blank expressions.
“Fine,” Brendan ground out. “But at the end of the day, we are going to call the cops.”
With a heavy heart, I simply nodded, ”Okay.”My emotions were going haywire, but I knew that standing around was not going to help me find clarity. I grabbed my car keys.
I needed to speak with Emily.