CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Ava
A dreadful feeling clings to me when I leave the restaurant. I can’t get Rand Miller’s cold, dead stare out of my mind.
Bourne and I wait about five minutes for my Lexus to be brought around by an additional guard sent by Ares who doesn’t trust valets. Without looking back, I get into the SUV, but it feels like a shadow is following me.
Sure enough, a black car with tinted windows gets right on our ass.
But I can’t be one hundred percent sure of what I saw. What if I imagined that was Rand Miller? What if someone else is behind me? If I tell my guard we’re being followed, he might call a tag team to run the car down and kill the occupants.
There are only so many dead people I can have on my conscience. I’d been told Brandon’s mother had killed herself weeks before the hit team went to Mexico to end her life. I felt a small rush of relief that she didn’t leave this world because Griffin’s men killed her. Over me.
Shane is still hunting down whether or not the wedding killer is connected to Brandon’s mother. For all we know, he could have easily been some random Keller soldier on a suicide mission.
The car behind us doesn’t let up. My gut tells me Rand Miller is in that car. I can’t ask why, it’s obvious. He blames me for his head hitting those rocks and whatever the hell caused him to leave in an ambulance. He clearly survived the crash, though.
“Um, we can stop by my husband’s office?” I say to Bourne from the backseat.
This will also give me an idea if that car is truly following us. We’re headed in the opposite direction. Bourne will have to hook a left and go back south on First Avenue.
Bourne twists around. “Ma’am?”
“I’d like to see my husband,” I repeat, not understanding the hesitation. “Is that a problem?”
“No, Ma’am. Let me call ahead that you’re coming.”
Bourne was hired by Griffin’s cousins. I never asked how they know Bourne or how long he’s worked for the Quinlans.
“Absolutely not,” I bark, strangled with shame that my guard has been told I can’t just show up at Griffin’s office. “If you call him, I will have you fired.”
I hate making such a threat, but I will not be made a fool of.
“Yes, Ma’am.” He adjusts his tie and keeps driving.
If I find out Bourne is breaking some strict instruction that will make Griffin or anyone else in his family hurt my guard, I’ll get Atlas involved.
The unexpected drama interrupted my meltdown about Miller following us. But the weaving around side streets lost the car following us. Or maybe that was on purpose, too.
God, I’m rattled.
A few minutes later, the Lexus double parks, and Bourne turns around from the driver’s seat, red in the face. “Ma’am, if I can please—”
“My name is Mrs . Quinlan.” I think since I never actually saw the marriage license I was forced to sign.
“Mrs. Quinlan, of course.” Bourne clears his throat. “The reason I want to call your husband is for him to send down Zeke or Ace to collect you. Can I please—”
“No. Unlock this door right now. The building entrance is right there. I am armed, you know.” I don’t lift my skirt to show him the knife I keep there. “I can take care of myself. Just drive around, and I’ll call you when I’m ready to go home.”
Or to Atlas’ apartment to pick up a few guns and more knives if I find out my husband is cheating on me.
Bourne purses his lips and unlocks my door. Then he gets out, too, leaving the Lexus in the street amongst honking cars and screaming drivers trapped behind him. With his hand on the small of my back, he brings me inside the building.
Passing through the lobby, my heels click on the marble-tiled floors and echo off the high ceilings. Bourne whispers Griffin’s name to a security guard and with just one look at me, I’m immediately brought to a private elevator that is programmed to go straight to Griffin’s floor.
“Here you go, Ma’am,” the security guard says when the door opens.
You go from being a princess at your wedding to being called ma’am. That part sucks about marriage.
I send Bourne away to park the car. Cursing under his breath, he hurries out of the lobby.
Alone in the elevator, I feel like I can breathe from this tiny bit of freedom. I feel like my old self when I lived under a different name. Being Hadleigh gave me liberties I took for granted.
The elevator rockets upward and opens to an enclosed lobby with a vault for a door.
Great.
I press a button next to it. “Hello?”
“Name?” a voice says through the intercom.
“It’s Mrs. Quinlan. I’d like to see my husband.”
“Hi, Shea! Trace isn’t here right now,” the woman says syrupy sweet.
“This isn’t Shea.” I look for a camera and wave. “This is Ava Quinlan. Griffin’s wife.”
“Oh,” the woman does a one-eighty and responds bitterly. “He’s busy.”
“Excuse me?” I knock on the door with one hand trying to call Griffin with the other but there’s no signal.
“What part of he’s busy didn’t click?” Her attitude floors me.
“Interrupt him. I’m his wife ,” I demand, but bite my lip, concerned he might be in an important meeting and my interruption will have consequences.
“Sorry,” she says with a snide tone, and the intercom goes silent.
Stunned, I stand there for a minute, and curse that I still don’t have a signal to call Griffin.
The elevator opens up, and I spin around, reaching for my knife. I exhale in relief, seeing Kai Powers.
“Ava?” he freely calls me by first name.
“Hi. I’m here to see Griffin, but his assistant told me he’s too busy and then cut me off.”
“What?” He takes out a white card and waves it in front of a reader.
The door pushes open and he steers me inside. It’s yet another enclosed waiting room. Talk about security. We walk through a reception area, and I follow Kai, passing other offices. A man comes out of one and asks Kai for help with something urgent. The lawyer stops and tells me that Griffin’s office is at the end of the hall.
“Thank you.” I proceed that way.
But when a sign for the ladies’ room catches my eye down a corridor in between, I make a detour.
Inside, I go into a stall and put my head on the back of the door, not caring about germs, although this place looks spotless. Rand Miller set me on edge. I certainly didn’t come here expecting I’d get into a catfight with my husband’s assistant, who will probably say I never even rang the bell or make up something else to make me look paranoid or rude.
I have to calm down before I face Griffin, or he’ll lose it.
The bathroom door opens, and by the sound of feet and my special ops experience, two people are hovering by the sinks.
“Do you believe her?” a voice says over a faucet loudly spouting water. “Spoiled cunt.”
One of my eyelids flutters, and I hold my breath.
“Did you tell Mr. Quinlan she’s waiting for him?” a second voice says.
Yep, they’re talking about me. And that first voice sounded like the assistant who didn’t let me in.
This should be good...
“No,” the assistant scoffs. “Griffin and I have our one-on-one in a few minutes.”
“You’re bad.”
“And he’s...good.”
She called my husband Griffin and good. I feel dizzy and knock into the metal toilet paper dispenser.
“What was that?” voice two chokes out.
Closing my eyes, I slip off my shoes and step onto the toilet. I’m not sure what would be more embarrassing, being found hiding in the stall, or perching on the john so they don’t see my feet. I ignore my twisting stomach. Gathering intel means hiding, lurking, and sometimes folding yourself into a ball.
A shadow passes my stall, moving down the row and then back again. “Nothing.”
“Well, I’m off,” the assistant says.
“You’re so lucky. He is unbelievably hot,” the bestie mewls.
Over my husband . Who may or may not be banging his assistant.
Another sink goes on then off, the paper towel dispenser dispenses, and two sets of footsteps leave with the closure of the door.
I bend down to see I’m once again alone and push out of the stall. Pacing, I consider what to do. If Griffin wants to be that disgusting guy who screws women behind his wife’s back, I won’t be made a fool of.
I push out of the bathroom and head to his office. I need to tell Griffin I saw Rand Miller, but now I’m frightened he’ll put me on lockdown if he thinks I’m spying on him. Maybe he’ll make his cousin the doctor juice me up on meds to keep me calm and stop acting irrationally.
I get to the last office that stretches out to the width of the entire floor. The walls are all glass with blinds. Closed blinds.
From the other side of the glass, I hear Griffin shout, “Get rid of her.”
Kai Powers’ voice rings out, surprising me, “Sir, I don’t think I should get rid of your wife.”
This can’t be happening. There’s mumbling I can’t make out until my hearing sharpens.
“If she steps foot inside this office, her family will be looking for a funeral home.”
I back away, my heart pounding. What the hell?
I hurry back down that row of offices, my soul dead from what people have been saying behind my back. What keeps screaming at me, is if Griffin is sleeping with his assistant, it’s sort of my fault. Griffin and I are still going our separate ways after six months, and I always remind him that the sex between us means nothing.
He means nothing.
And now... I mean nothing.