Chapter 19
Layne hated it, but now she had confirmation that Eric was watching her every move a lot closer than she anticipated. It left her feeling paranoid about how far he was willing to take things. Not to mention that Joey was going to have to be extraordinarily careful about his visits to her house.
Yesterday’s breakfast with Joey had left her feeling renewed and refreshed in so many ways. For a small amount of time, he had managed to melt all her worries away. However, there was still the unsolved complication of salvaging her family’s floundering business operations.
Feeling more optimistic than she had felt in some time, she was ready to take on this new day. She tossed on a pair of dark leggings with her knee-high boots and a cozy sweater knit with loose stitches so one got glimpses of the ivy tank top underneath. Her hand grabbed her coat and keys on her way out the front door.
As she stepped outside, she was greeted by two men dressed in boring black suits coming up the walkway to her door. Layne hadn’t been expecting company.
“Can I help you?” She hoped not. Layne was planning a pitstop at Rebecca’s to borrow a book, Warlock: A Strange Grove Novel, that had been recommended to her before meeting with the skeleton crew that still worked for the O’Reilly organization. Now was not the time to be asked about her satisfaction with her cable service by some salesmen.
Both men stopped, blocking her pathway. The taller man with a dark olive complexion nodded at her without so much as a smile. “Yes, Mr. Ellis has requested you join him for lunch.”
Layne tilted her head, unable to hold back the look of disbelief that he had actually sent his people for this. “You can tell him I already have plans.”
When she went to sidestep them, they stepped along with her, maintaining an obstruction. She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t have time for this. Get out of my way.”
The slightly shorter of the two men reached out for her arm. “We must insist you come with us, miss.”
Layne jerked her arm away before he could lay a finger on her. “This is fuckin’ ridiculous.” She pulled out her phone and dialed Eric’s number.
As if he had been expecting her, he answered immediately, sounding far too cheerful. “Hello, Layne.”
She glared at the two suits in front of her. “If you had called, I would have been more than happy to tell you I already have plans today.” Her tone did not hide any of her annoyance at the absurdity of the situation.
“If you had bothered to call me back yesterday, we could have discussed this. I’m afraid today’s lunch isn’t optional.”
Great, Eric was going to be pissy about not getting a phone call and Layne didn’t do well handling fragile feelings. She drew in a deep breath trying to weigh her options. “It better be a quick lunch.” She ended the call.
Again, the shorter one reached out to take her arm and she fired a glare at him. “Unless you want to part ways with your damn hand, I would keep it to yourself.”
He paused to consider if she was bluffing or not. It seemed he was a smart man when he extended his arm away from her to indicate for her to follow them both to a sleek black sedan. The engine was still running while being double-parked in front of her house.
After they escorted her to the vehicle, they let her into the back seat while they both took up seats in the front. The entire twenty-minute ride had been in complete silence. Not even the radio had been turned on.
When they parked the car in front of a tall office building and killed the engine, Layne pulled on the handle to let herself out. Nothing happened. The fuckers had the child door locks on, preventing her from getting out on her own accord. Bastards.
If she hadn’t been pissed off about this change in plans already, this was the needle on the bitter Irish girl’s back. The taller man opened the door for her and after she exited the car, they led her inside the building with large glass windows reflecting the damn near blinding sunlight.
After a stroll through the lobby and an elevator ride to the forty-eighth floor in awkward silence, they brought her to a corner office with a picturesque city view. An L-shaped desk on one side of the room, and a leather sofa on the other, with two chairs and a table opposite it.
She noticed a few silver carryout containers on the oval table in the seating area. At least he didn’t plan a six-course meal like she had expected from him.
Layne stepped inside and noticed that she was all alone. The door shut behind her, allowing privacy from any prying eyes of anyone else potentially passing by.
She tossed her coat over the back of one of the chairs and walked over to the massive windows, crossing her arms in front of her chest as her eyes took in the view. Layne didn’t want to admit how she could stare at the beauty of the city she had grown up in all day long.
The office door opened up again, prompting her to glance back over her shoulder to see Eric walking inside with a folder in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.
He was dressed in a grey suit with a black shirt and tie underneath the jacket. Eric offered her a polite smile seeing she had arrived as he set everything down on his desk. “Ah, there you are. Glad to see you came to your senses.”
He walked over to her like he had given her a choice to be here. When he placed his hands on her arms and leaned over to place a kiss on her mouth, Layne turned her head so he got her cheek instead. There was one mouth she wanted on her right now, and it wasn’t his.
Noticing her evasive turn, he seemed surprised. She stepped back from him, keeping her arms crossed in front of her. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you somehow had a temporary moment of insanity and thought I could be summoned like a pet.”
“Is that what you think that was?” He inquisitively looked at her before shaking his head and immediately moved on. “There are some business items that need to be handled. I thought we could have lunch together while we finalized a few minor items.”
Eric walked back to his desk and grabbed the folder he had walked in with. He brought it back to her and handed it over. “I need you to sign these.”
Opening the folder, she saw page after page of legal documents. Eric circled her until he stopped at her back and looked over her shoulder. He was close enough that she could feel the heat of his body hovering at her backside.
“What are these?” Her eyes skimmed each page looking for the keywords of what each page entailed.
He rubbed his hands over her upper arms while his mouth came up to her ear. “Those, my little harpy, are what is going to save your family’s business.”
As she got to the final page in the batch of documents, Eric’s hands dropped down to her hips. “And that one there is where we make it all official.” Boldly printed across the top of the page was the certified heading for all New York State Government documents and underneath it were the cold black letters spelling out Marriage License.
Immediately, she shut the folder. “I need my attorney to look these over.”
He reached over her to ease the folder out of her hands. “With what money are you going to pay a lawyer? Not only that, but time is going to be of the essence. I’ve heard that Russell Spencer isn’t very happy after a little stunt you pulled. I’m not a miracle worker. These agreements are going to be the only thing that gives enough leverage to avoid a major catastrophe.”
Word got around quickly and she shouldn’t have been surprised that Eric already got wind of it. Coming back to stand in front of her, he traced a finger down her cheek and it dropped under her chin. “Sign the papers, Layne.” The blue of his eyes shone a little brighter from all the natural light pouring in from the windows.
Layne gritted her teeth. The very thing she had been against all her life was staring her in the face. She had never wanted to marry a man for strategic financial and business purposes. “This is happening really fast, I don’t feel comfortable with this.”
Eric pushed the matter without hesitation. “My little harpy, I can’t promise the second you leave here that someone won’t try to erase the O’Reilly name from the map. I don’t want to wake up to the front page running an article that the Upper East Side lost a young woman to a horrific random act of violence.” The strength of his hand shifted to latch onto her chin. “If you give a shit about yourself and your family, sign the papers.”
With her forehead wrinkled up in torment as he made the veiled threat that wasn’t too far off of reality, she understood the looming harshness of reality ready to descend upon her. Her hand pulled the folder back from his possession. “Get me a pen.”
After she had a pen in her hand, she began initialing some pages and signing others. Most of the documents were typical arrangements tied to assets and liabilities. When she arrived at the last page, she paused at the sensation of a heavy weight settling in her stomach.
All her personal information alongside Eric’s was already listed there. There was just one last remaining field for the signature of the bride. Even the alleged officiant and witnesses had signed. Layne forced the pen to glide across the paper:
Layne Nicole O’Reilly
She dropped the pen and stepped away from the desk she had been using. This was what was going to be what kept Liam and her from being swallowed up whole by the city’s criminal factions all waiting to pounce on them. Layne should have felt a sense of relief. Instead, all she could feel was intense suffocation.
Eric looked over all the papers, double-checking that she hadn’t missed anything. Afterward, he approached her with a delighted smile. His hands cupped her face and without any hesitation, lowered his lips onto hers. He clutched her face there in his hands while he deeply kissed her, drawing it out far longer than it should have lasted.
When their mouths parted, he grinned at her. “Congratulations, Mrs. Ellis.”
The post-nuptial lunch had been some sushi from a five-star restaurant that Eric had splurged on in celebration of the joyous event. While he had been in great spirits, Layne didn’t have much of an appetite and merely picked at the rice of her spicy salmon roll.
“Now that everything is official, the process of fixing all the fractured pieces of the O’Reilly organization can begin. I will personally reach out to the heads of all the major entities to make sure it is clear that no one is to make a move against you. If they do, they will have hell to pay and me to answer to.” Eric was making a lot of bold promises, and she only hoped that he could deliver on them and it wouldn’t eat away at her spirit from the inside out.
Layne finally gave up on her lunch and rose from her seat across from him. “I told you I didn’t have time for a long lunch.”
He put his chopsticks down on his plate and quickly wiped his mouth with a napkin before rising from his seat. “I thought you’d be a little more eager to celebrate.”
Eric came over to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Maybe even pick up where we left off at the concert before your security guard rudely interrupted us.” The words he spoke were eager to try and manifest his desires.
Before she could knock him off track from his train of thought, he drew her in so their bodies were flush with one another. Her hands braced against the front of his chest. She should have had no problem blinking an eye at a potential good time, but something in her was holding her back. That ‘something’ had many tattoos and a voice that sank into her soul.
A delicate smile lifted her lips as she looked up at him. “I haven’t been sleeping well and all of this caught me by surprise. Maybe we can celebrate some other time.”
There was tension in his hands that were resting on the top curvature of her ass, but it released quickly as he rebounded from his clear disappointment. “That sounds like a great idea. I would rather we have all the time in the world to enjoy the moment. We can make an evening out of it, or perhaps, an entire weekend.”
Layne prayed that her face masked her true feelings on the idea of turning this into a celebration with him.
His hand came up to the back of her head as he dropped his head down and made sure to savor sharing another kiss with her. When he released her, he grinned. “We’ll talk soon about all the fun we’re going to have together.”
Before she left his office there on the forty-eighth floor, he had offered his men to drive her to where she needed. Layne adamantly declined, citing that she preferred to walk given Rebecca’s condo wasn’t too far and she could use the fresh air and sunshine.
The elevator ride down to the ground floor felt like it had moved at a snail’s pace. When the doors opened up, the anxiety that had been building up during the descent of all forty-something floors was quickly coming to an insurmountable peak.
She hurried through the lobby in hopes that the outside air would provide relief. Instead, what should have been a refreshing late autumn day felt too warm and muggy. Or, maybe it was just her disgust with herself.
Her palms began to feel clammy while her face paled. The twisting and spasming of her stomach was the only warning she needed. Layne ran over to the nearest trash receptacle and wretched up the little amount of lunch she had consumed into it.
The very thing she had been fighting against most of her life just became her reality.