Chapter 14
Bronte
Idon’t bug her.
I only study her from across the room, neck-deep in receipts, photos, and text message threads from my phone as Meirna puts the pieces together of her bullshit relationship with Bobby.
She hasn’t said a word to me or moved from the couch since I offered her everything.
The tracking app of all Bobby’s bullshit.
His rendezvous with Jolene and random hookups from all the cities he’s visited, and still fucks when he goes back.
The bank statements with arbitrarily large cash deposits into his bank account correlate with the days he was out of town.
Currently, the living space of our honeymoon suite is full of two years of detective work and plenty of felonies of my own—from breaking into all his shit unlawfully—but she has a system going on the coffee table and both sides of the couch.
Her right side is Jolene and Bobby’s liaison.
On the left are all the bank statements, mob connections, and the financial trouble Harding Holdings is having.
Then you have the coffee table.
And that’s all of me.
Where I was sent to boarding school. When I was adopted by Eleni and Basil Vasiliou in Greece at the age of seventeen.
My sister, Chloe, and her accomplishments as an artist. What my parents did—Basil owned a shipping company in Athens and made millions a year, and Eleni is still a third-year school teacher.
But it’s a small pile compared to the others, and it’s the one she’s been looking through the longest.
I’d almost say she was curious about me, but the longer she looks at it, the more I’m starting to conjure up ideas that she’s looking for ways to take me down.
Not that there’s anything there that could do that.
However, Meirna has a vivid imagination. I’ve heard the things knocking around in her head from the limited time I’ve been able to spend with her.
I’d love to know how that would play out if only I’d let her get rid of me.
I’m surprised she didn’t try to bludgeon me to death while I slept on the couch last night.
A curt knock on the door forces me to move and not eye-fuck the only thing in this world that can pull me out of my own.
The hotel staff waits on the other side of the door and promptly brings in the lunch I ordered for us. Since I don’t see her moving off that couch anytime soon to visit Prague’s sights, I wanted to make sure she ate.
Plus, I don’t mind being locked up in a suite with her while she Nancy Drews her way through the truth.
When I remove the lids from the plates and get Meirna’s things together, my heart falls to my ass when I see that she has her cell phone out, furiously hitting the keys.
Still trying to escape.
“Who are you trying to obtain to come get you to rescue you now?”
Meirna doesn’t look up at me, still thumbing away at her screen. “Nettie.”
Her best friend?
That girl couldn’t afford a plane ticket, let alone get her ass here with her womanly wiles, with the way she talks too much and is way too aggressive.
“Do I need to send her money?” I ask, prompting Meirna to finally glance up at me. “She couldn’t afford it.”
Her light brown eyes don’t narrow or widen from my commentary.
Instead, she replies, “Did you need my phone to see what I said? Or do you have it in your tracking app?”
“I didn’t bug your phone.”
“Didn’t you?
“You tell me. You have it in front of you.”
Meirna doesn’t make a move to check; she probably already has and thought I have a separate one just to keep hers singled out.
I don’t.
Just Bobby’s, Alan’s, and Catherine’s.
If Meirna went through their text threads, I have no idea.
But they’re there if she wants them. It’s black and white, no honeyed responses, just candid bullshit of how Catherine and Alan wanted her for Bobby’s image.
That she was a pawn in a game of chess where checkmate was already called because she’d never know another way until it was too late.
That Catherine thinks she’s too lowly for her son.
“What did you go to school for?”
At first, I don’t register the question as one for me, but when she doesn’t continue, it clicks.
“Business,” I deadpan.
“Boring.”
“Sorry to disappoint, Daydream.” I hand her over her plate of mixed leaf salad with grilled sea bass. “You need to eat.”
“You need to sit.” I expect her to leave me hanging with the plate, but she takes it from my hands and settles it in her lap. “I have questions.”
I bow my head and take the seat across from her, curious as hell against my better judgment to fall for this shit.
I know she wants to go home.
I’m fully aware this is a shock to her.
And I’m too enamored to play along with this game because I can sit in front of her, as myself, for the first time.
If she were smart, she might negotiate her way out of this.
Or at least try.
Instead, she asks, “How long did you stay with me?”
I furrow my brows. “Excuse me?”
“You said you were with me several times. How long did you stay?”
“Two days, at the max. I couldn’t risk Catherine or Alan showing up.”
“How many times did we sleep together?”
This time, my brows raise to the ceiling. However, I don’t miss a beat when I say, “Six.”
“Six?”
“Yes.”
I see her clutch her fork in her hand harder. “Is that before or after we got married? Are we even married—”
“Yes.”
“To which question?”
“Both. “
Meirna gapes at me as if I just told her I was the President of the United States next. “When? Why—”
“One question at a time, Meirna. I’ll answer them all.”
I watch her swallow before she steels her spine and says, “When…did you trap me into sleeping with you?”
Trap?
However, I ignore the choice of words when I reply, “The last two Christmases—”
“That’s impossible,” she cuts in. “Bobby and I would go to—”
“You must’ve not have made it very far in your text messages with Bobby. He was always out with his buddies at a strip club on Christmas Eve. You don’t remember him saying he wasn’t coming over?”
She nods. “I do, but—”
But I arrive.
Meirna’s nostrils flare, but she doesn’t clap at me for more details. “And the other four?”
“Our birthdays.”
She glowers at me. “You’re telling me that Bobby never spent the day with me on my—”
“He did. But where did you fuck, though, Meirna?”
Answers—the kitchen, the hallway, everywhere dark while Bobby was in her bed, past the fuck out from the sleeping pills I put in his imported beers.
I’d sneak in her place, fuck her until I had to leave, and he’d be still asleep, unable to answer any questions. She’d go clean up, and “I” would be back in bed, dead to the world.
“And yours?”
I can’t help the smirk that forms on my lips. “You tell me, Daydream. You were the one seducing me. I just came to see you.” I run my index finger along my jaw, remembering this one piece of pink lingerie she had on.
It had this opening in the back, easy access to her pussy and ass when she spread her thighs, leaving zero to the imagination.
Bobby was too busy fucking around.
I’d say I can’t blame her for not knowing it wasn’t him, but how the fuck did he manage to think she never had a problem with his staying out? She obviously never mentioned it once, since she was with me, but Bobby is the biggest dumbass to believe he got away with it.
Since he didn’t know I was there in the first place.
“That wasn’t for you.”
“I’d like to think it was,” I retort lightly. “The reason you’re here is because of me.”
Meirna drops her attention from me to her salad. “You must’ve been enjoying how conniving you’ve been. How you’ve gotten away with everything. How many times did you laugh about it?”
“Not once. Because it wasn’t funny, it was hard. It was hard leaving you behind and going back home.”
“Home?” she repeats. “Home where?”
“Boston. Like I said, I haven’t been in New York society since I was sixteen.”
She’s silent for a moment, but then blurts out, “I still think you’re a piece of shit.”
Geezus Christ.
She’s still the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t help but want to keep being verbally abused by this woman.
It’s wild.
Alan was a piece of shit. I could never win and get into his good graces, so I stopped trying at a young age. Catherine always babied Bobby, even though we were minutes apart, not years.
I came from a toxic family.
And, I wouldn’t call Meirna toxic, but she’s not being very nice to me.
However, I can’t say I’d be exactly thrilled with someone lying to me for two years either.
“A piece of shit, maybe,” I give her. “But one that is telling you everything with the odds of you never forgiving me.”
She scoffs then and places her plate to the side, stealing a glance at the large Christmas tree near the ceiling-to-floor windows. “Well, no need to keep you in suspense then, because I’m never going to forgive you.”
Oh, there are ways, Meirna.
So many fucking ways to get you to forget Bobby for good.
“You will. I’m good at what I do.”
Meirna gives me a look that says she thinks I forgot my crack pipe in the bedroom. “Can’t think of one.”
“You never questioned yourself about the different ways you were fucked, Daydream? Newsflash, the ones that put you right to sleep after several rounds were me.”
Her gold eyes slit, aggravated and pissed. “You really want me to talk to you about my sex life with your brother?”
“No. But I’m curious.”
“His office,” she says almost proudly. “Feet away from his receptionist.”
I bob my head. “Something you and Jolene share in common, then.”
It was a low blow. Even Meirna’s face shows how awful that shit was to say as she gapes at me like the asshole I am.
“Safe to say,” I continue like a dick. “Bobby and I don’t fuck the same.”
“No,” she agrees. “You don’t. He’s better.”
My self-control snaps in half off the last two syllables of her last word.
I’ve been nice.
I’ve given her everything she wanted for a wedding and honeymoon.
I saved her from ruin and potential murder when Bobby can’t pay back the mob.
I’m her savior in more ways than one.