Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
ACE
I was just two minutes away from Tessa’s salon when my phone rang.
Glancing at the screen, I saw Kash’s name. My heart pounded at the sight of it, and I grew more concerned than I already was.
“Yeah?” I answered.
“Ace, man, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I know where your girl is.”
The words should’ve been enough to offer me some relief. To some extent, I guess they did. But it was Kash’s tone and one thing he had said that prevented me from fully leaning into that relief.
He hated to be the one to tell me. That meant he had bad news.
“Where is she?”
I asked the question even though I already knew that Kash had been surveilling Hastings. If he knew where Tessa was, that could only mean one thing.
“Hastings left work almost as soon as you and I got off the phone earlier,” he started. “Something felt off about how he was moving and the way his face looked. I followed behind him out of the parking lot, and I just watched as he walked up to the front door of your girl’s place.”
My brow furrowed. “Why would he go to Tessa’s home?”
“My guess is that she invited him, considering he knocked and the door opened not more than a few seconds later.”
My stomach plummeted.
It was my worst fear realized. I’d spent so much time trying to give Tessa and me time together before we took things too far. I allowed my feelings to take over and told her about them long before I should have.
She wasn’t ready.
She wasn’t over him.
And his sweatshirt on her body this morning had been her way of telling me, despite how vehemently she’d denied feeling anything for him.
Fuck.
Fuck, how had I fallen in love with her? Why had I done this to myself?
I didn’t think I’d ever get over this. Over her.
Feeling sick, but knowing I couldn’t just walk away without saying what needed to be said, I asked, “Will you wait there until I get there? I need to deal with this, and I don’t trust myself not to put my fist through his face.
Since he’s an attorney, it’s probably best I have a credible witness with me. ”
“Yeah, man. Anything you need. I’m sorry about this.”
I huffed. “Yeah. Me, too.”
I ended the call and drove to Tessa’s place. And the closer I got, the worse I felt.
TESSA
I was in trouble.
The worst kind of trouble a person could find themselves in.
This had been the most terrifying experience of my life, and it was becoming clear that I hadn’t reached the worst of it. From the moment I’d been kidnapped outside my salon, things had gone from bad to worse.
After being knocked out, I hadn’t woken up until I was at the place this kidnapper hadn’t wanted me to be. I was shocked to open my eyes and find myself in my own home.
I’d jerked up on the couch to a seated position, my head spinning in the process.
I needed a moment to allow the dizziness to fade, but it was then I realized my hands had been bound behind my back.
Glancing down, I noticed my ankles were not and moved to stand up.
But before I could scramble to my feet, I saw a movement and halted.
A man I didn’t recognize had shifted his body into my line of vision, and he was pointing a gun at me. Being run off the road weeks ago was child’s play compared to this.
Body still, I asked, “Who are you?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“What do you want?”
“Me? Nothing.”
I groaned. “So, what am I doing here?”
He smirked at me. “You’ll see soon enough.”
I licked my lips and swallowed roughly, desperate for the trembling in my body to subside. “Did he put you up to this?”
The man’s brow furrowed. Clearly, he hadn’t expected I knew that Ryan was behind all this.
When I got no response, I tried a different tactic. “You were the one who ran me off the road, weren’t you?”
“It seems you got lucky that day.”
Who was this man? I realized there were bad people in the world, but I was baffled that someone would ever consider doing this kind of dirty work, the kind that would lead to killing another human. This guy didn’t even know me.
“How much is he paying you? Is it really worth the years you’re going to spend in prison?”
I received no response. No matter how many questions I asked, it appeared I wasn’t going to get any answers.
For a long while, I had no choice but to sit and wait. If I got up and tried to run, I suspected I’d be shot. And it was clear this guy wasn’t the one in charge, so he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—offer me any explanation or answers.
So, I waited.
I had no sense of time. I had no idea how long I’d been knocked out. The only thing I knew was that it couldn’t have been too late, considering there was still daylight peeking in through the windows. My best guess is that it was close to the time when Ace would’ve gotten home from work.
At that thought, an ache formed in the center of my chest.
He probably went home, realized I wasn’t there, and assumed I was so angry with him that I decided not to be there when he arrived.
The entire morning replayed in my mind. I couldn’t forget the way Ace had looked at me with such disgust. And even though he’d been shouting at me then, when I thought about it now, I realized it was agony I’d heard in his voice.
I closed my eyes and let out a sigh as my head dropped forward. I couldn’t imagine what Ace must’ve thought about me. And there was no telling now if I’d ever get the chance to work things out with him. To let him know how much he meant to me.
When another knock came at the door, my head snapped up. The man with the gun stood and said, “You’d be wise to stay put, or this is going to get messy very fast.”
I wasn’t some skilled escape artist, I had no weapon, and there was about to be another person here. Only a fool or someone with nothing to lose would consider trying to make a run for it with their hands bound behind their back.
So, as much as it pained me to do nothing, I sat there and waited. And a moment later, I wanted to throw up.
Because even though I’d already had the thought that he was responsible for this, I guess there was some small part of me that wanted to believe he wasn’t entirely evil.
Ryan walked into the room, and his eyes locked on mine.
“I hate you,” I spat, not giving him a chance to speak. “If there was ever any chance of me being civil with you, that chance no longer exists.”
“Tessa, I didn’t have any—”
“Oh, shut up. I don’t want to hear you tell me you didn’t have any other choice, Ryan,” I shouted. “You had another choice. You could’ve left me alone. You could’ve taken some accountability, realized how badly you fucked up, and walked away from me.”
“Tessa, please listen to me,” he begged.
I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t want to listen to a thing you have to say. Wasn’t it enough that you broke my heart?”
His expression turned pained as he moved closer to me, his footsteps cautious.
“Why couldn’t you just leave me with that? After what you did, I deserved the decency of you respecting my choice to get over you and move on.”
Nodding, voice downtrodden, he said, “I know that now.”
Ryan’s response took me by surprise. Ever since things ended between us, he hadn’t once admitted to being wrong. Hearing that now, I could only wonder if he was saying that as a way to cover himself for all the legal trouble that might be coming his way as a result of having me kidnapped.
“Oh, good. Since we’re all here now, we can get started.”
At the sound of the new feminine voice coming from the opposite direction, my eyes shot to the side. My lips parted in shock at who I saw there, as I wondered how I hadn’t known someone else was in my home this entire time.
“Georgia?” I murmured.
She didn’t look at me as Ryan said, “Georgia, this is crazy. You’ve taken things too far.”
My brow furrowed as she smiled at him and moved in his direction. “I’m doing what’s necessary to keep what’s mine.”
“Okay. I understand. But hurting Tessa isn’t going to make me want to be with you again,” he returned.
My stomach dropped, and my eyes rounded. Georgia was Ryan’s ex. She was the woman he’d been cheating on me with for the last six months of our relationship. And the moment I learned the truth, the moment I decided to end things between us, he scraped her off.
Now, she was a woman scorned. A woman who’d scheduled appointments at my salon—ultimately using that manicure to rake her nails down Ryan’s face recently.
Perhaps I could appeal to her sensibilities.
“Georgia?” I called. When she looked in my direction, I said, “This isn’t necessary. I don’t want to be with Ryan.”
“But he wants to be with you,” she explained.
“What does that matter? I’ve moved on. I’m with someone else who loves me, and I’m happy. I’m never going to get back together with Ryan.”
She shot me a sinister smile. “Maybe you feel that way, Tessa. Ryan does not. Ryan hasn’t accepted that it’s over between the two of you.
Ever since you found out that he was cheating on you with me, that he never really got over me, he decided he no longer wanted me.
I have to do what’s necessary to make it so he can stop pining for you. ”
This woman was crazy. “So, you’ve been trying to kill me because a lying, cheating man wants nothing to do with you?
” I jerked my head toward the man with the gun.
“You had that man try to run me off the road two days before you had someone come into my home and turn on the gas in an effort to end my life in a fiery blast?”
“What?” Ryan seethed. “Georgia, please tell me you didn’t do that.”
There wasn’t an ounce of remorse on her face. “Tessa’s in the way. She’s got to go. And that’s why I asked you to come here. I figured you’d want your chance to say goodbye, so you can get whatever closure you need. Then we can finally be happy when she’s no longer in the picture.”