Chapter 39 Scarlett
SCARLETT
I stared up at the sky, the warmth of the setting sun caressing my face, and I couldn’t help but smile with the surge of relief that washed over me. I’d survived that conference-room showdown without revealing Marcus’s identity to Jace.
At first, I’d been furious that Jace staged that meeting, but you know what?
Maybe I needed it. It proved I could keep this secret.
This was within my control. The first semblance of control I’d felt since the harassment happened.
Now, I was confident I could get through this without destroying my career.
Without failing to pay Mom’s rent. Without giving Dad the chance to get his hands on her.
All I needed to do was keep my head down, do my job, and this nightmare would fade to black.
Another thing that had me smiling was the outcome of my father’s bail hearing.
I’d learned my father would not be released from jail while awaiting his day in court.
Instead, he’d be detained, and he was facing felony-level charges rather than misdemeanors, which carried significant jail time.
It seemed the tides had turned on the dark storm of my father, and for the foreseeable future, the threat he posed to us was gone.
I walked along the sidewalk, my high heels click-clacking against concrete as I headed up the staircase to the “L” train that would take me home.
For a fleeting moment, I caught movement in my peripheral vision that made me turn, but no one was there.
And, hello, even if there was, this was the busy “L” platform.
People came and went all day, so why had that flash of movement put me on edge?
Why was my body still firing off warning shots?
Unsure, I rode the public transportation to my usual stop, then quickened my pace, crossing the last intersection before reaching my apartment building.
Practically diving inside. It wasn’t until I stepped off the elevator into the safety of my hallway that I exhaled the breath I’d been holding hostage.
Walking toward my apartment door, I heard the ding of the second elevator signal its opening. Then heavy, deliberate footsteps behind me.
I spun around, ready to face whatever random neighbor was innocently heading to their—
Holy shit.
The man standing before me was none other than Grabby Hands himself: Marcus.
“Did I frighten you, Scarlett?” His tone was creepy AF, like he was hoping the answer was yes. But even though my heart jammed itself into my throat, I refused to give him the satisfaction.
“Stalking is a crime, you know.” I crossed my arms, channeling my best impression of you don’t scare me.
“Stalking.” He smirked, shoving his hands into his pockets so casually, the movement itself was disturbing. “If you think this constitutes stalking, you clearly are unfamiliar with the term.”
A veiled threat. Lovely.
“So, by the sound of it, you must be an expert.” I cocked my head. “What’s your specialty? Workplace harassment with a side of home invasion?”
He took a step forward, broadening his shoulders to block the light behind him.
Which was when I suddenly realized just how alone we were.
I mean, in theory, one of those elevators could open at any moment, or a neighbor could emerge from their apartment, but I knew the patterns in my building.
My immediate neighbors didn’t typically get home until late, so they wouldn’t be here to interrupt … well, whatever the hell this was.
Breathe, Scarlett. He has nothing to gain by attacking you. This is just intimidation tactics 101.
“Why are you here?” I demanded.
“After that dog and pony show, it seems you and I have something to discuss,” he answered.
“You think that was a dog and pony show? Wow.” I cocked my head, trying to look more annoyed than terrified. “What exactly do you and I need to discuss that couldn’t happen at the office?”
“You told Jace someone sexually harassed you,” he accused.
My heart expanded in my throat.
“And,” Marcus continued, “there’s something else I learned from that meeting.”
“Well, I can’t wait to hear this.” I raised my chin, trying to pretend I wasn’t mentally scrolling through self-defense YouTube tutorials I’d watched at two a.m. “Is it that your cologne makes you smell like you bathe in discount aftershave?”
“Jace likes you.”
“I’m a very competent employee. Most leaders I work with appreciate my competence. And they respect me,” I added, hoping the insult landed like a slap.
“You know I’m Jace’s best friend.”
“Strange. Because I thought Blake was one of his best friends, and I’ve never heard him mention you.” I scrunched my nose. “Like, ever.”
Marcus raised his eyebrows. “You know his other friends?”
“I want to give you one last opportunity to tell me what the hell you want before I start screaming loud enough that all my neighbors will call 911. Oh, and Johnny over there?” I nodded to a door. “Keeps a baseball bat behind his front door.” Lies. There was no Johnny, no bat.
“You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you?” He smirked, taking yet another step closer. The way his filthy eyes raked over my body made me want to power-wash my skin.
“So, you’re here to, what, intimidate me into silence? By threatening to assault me again? Because that worked out so well the first time.”
“Who’s threatening?”
“Get to the point. What. Do. You. Want?”
He cocked his head, studying me as he licked his lower lip in what I assumed he thought was seductive but actually resembled a lizard with food stuck in its teeth.
“Jace is obviously trying to figure out who ‘harassed’ you,” Marcus said, using air quotes around the word harassed like sexual assault was some made-up concept, right up there with unicorns and men who put the toilet seat down.
“Is that so? What, pray tell, makes you think that?”
“He didn’t ask anyone else in the company to present to him today, so I knew it meant something.
And when all of your male superiors were in the room, but not the female one, I suspected what he was up to.
” His voice dripped with smug satisfaction.
“I know him. Any last shred of doubt evaporated when you walked in and Jace’s entire demeanor changed.
He was like a shark circling for blood, trying to figure out who it was.
” He leaned closer. “But here’s the very interesting part: I did some due diligence, and as it turns out, there’s no complaint on file.
So, how is it that the owner of the company is aware of some supposed sexual harassment that was never even reported? ”
His eyes flickered to the mark on my cheek, the one that looked similar to Jace’s injury.
“That’s a whole hell of a lot of hypothesizing,” I said.
“Maybe I’m just the first victim of your harassment who didn’t go along with it, so you’re becoming completely paranoid, reading into everything.
Or, shocking thought, maybe you should keep your hands to yourself and your conspiracy theories in your pocket, right next to your apparently nonexistent moral compass. ”
“I know my friend.”
“Then talk to him about your theories. And get out of my apartment complex before I call the police and tell HR in the morning about your failed intimidation tactic. I’ll make sure to mention the stalking. Very professional touch, by the way.”
“It’s quite puzzling, isn’t it? That Jace Lockwood knows about the harassment, but HR doesn’t?”
“That he supposedly knows, according to you,” I clarified.
“And based on how angry he seemed in that meeting, he cares about you a lot.”
“Any owner would be displeased if he suspected sexual harassment in his company. It’s called being a decent human being. You might want to Google the concept.”
He shook his head. “I know my friend. Those weren’t business emotions.”
Crap. The no-fraternization policy flashed through my head. While Jace was the owner and CEO, he also had a board of directors to report to. The last thing I wanted was to get him in trouble. Not after what we’d experienced together and not after he’d protected me from my father.
“Jace and I are not dating, if that’s what you’re implying. But thanks for the fan fiction. Very creative.”
“He obviously has feelings for you. Which creates quite a complication.”
“A complication,” I repeated. “Is that what we’re calling your inability to keep your hands to yourself now?”
“How well do you know Jace?”
“You tell me. You seem to be the one with all the hypothetical answers to all the hypothetical questions.”
He smirked. “Well, let’s just say, if someone hurts someone Jace cares about, the man can be quite … unreasonable.”
Unreasonable. He said it like he was saying the word bullet, but meant nuclear weapon.
“Then assume all his employees are people he cares about. Or here’s a thought: don’t sexually harass anyone, ever, because you know … laws. Rules. Basic human decency. Stuff they usually teach in kindergarten right after don’t eat glue.”
“If you were to claim that what happened in your interview was harassment—”
“It was.”
“To Jace, that would create significant problems.”
“I see. And you thought stalking me and harassing me would make me LESS likely to rat you out? Wow, college really failed you, didn’t it?”
His face tightened. “You will not tell HR,” Marcus declared, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “And you will not tell Jace.”
“Is that so?” My eyebrow shot to my hairline. Now it was my turn to put my body language into full-on offensive mode.
See, here’s the problem with my control issues: Sometimes, when someone tries to back me into a corner, all the rational reasons I have for staying quiet evaporate.
The only thing that matters becomes reclaiming my power.
Because sometimes having a man tell me exactly what I was going to do?
That made me want to do the exact opposite, consequences be damned.
“Well, seeing as how you’ve followed me home and peppered me with implied threats, I think maybe it’s time I do tell everyone what you did. I’m thinking company-wide email. Maybe an Instagram post. How photogenic are you? I hear fluorescent lighting in police stations is particularly unflattering.”
His movement was so fast, I barely registered it. I pulled away at the last second, but it was too late. My arm was in his grasp. A painfully biting, vise-like grip that would leave finger-shaped souvenirs by morning.
“You think I’m such a bad guy? Well, Jace isn’t the clean-cut man you think he is.”
I jerked my body free. “Screw you. With a cactus. Sideways.”
Digging around in my purse, I pulled out my cell phone, unlocking the screen to call 911. But it exploded out of my hand with the force of his fist.
It took a couple of seconds to register what had happened, to evaluate the shadows crossing the planes of his face, the dark turn this encounter had taken. And to register that Marcus wasn’t just a creep.
He was dangerous.
“If you need more incentive to keep your mouth shut, allow me to give it to you.” He stepped closer, towering over me, and it was everything I could do to not step back, to give him the satisfaction of showing him I was afraid.
But, holy hell, I was afraid. Too afraid to scream, too afraid he’d choke me to death or something before I could alert anyone for help.
“I’m protecting Jace’s darkest secret,” he continued. “One that no one knows about except for me. Not even his other so-called friends.”
“You expect me to believe you? What’s next? You’re going to tell me you’re actually a Nigerian prince who needs my bank account details?”
His eyes darkened into a predatory glare reminiscent of my father before his violent episodes.
“If you expose me, I’ll expose him, and he’ll lose everything. His career, his reputation. His freedom. Hell, his safety would be on the line. That secret could dig up enemies that would also endanger people he cares about too. People like his buddies that you seem to know so well.”
I didn’t know them well. I mean, I knew Blake reasonably well, but that wasn’t the point here. The point was, I had no idea what to make of Marcus’s claims. But I trusted my intuition about Jace being a good person. Marcus, on the other hand, had already proven himself to be human garbage.
“Sexual harassment is just a symptom of who you really are,” I said. “And if you’re capable of sexual harassment, you’re capable of lying. So, forgive me if I don’t take your word as gospel.”
He smirked. “Then call my bluff, Scarlett West. But if you care about Jace at all, you’ll keep your mouth shut and watch your back.”
As he turned and walked away, I stood frozen, reeling from his words. The outright threats. The implied ones. The accusations about Jace and his supposed dark secrets.
I picked up my fallen phone, swiped it over, and hovered my thumb over the Emergency Call button.
But something stopped me from pressing it.
What if Marcus wasn’t bluffing? What if Jace did have secrets that could destroy him? And what if, by trying to protect myself, I ended up destroying the one man who had made me feel safe for the first time in forever?
The taste of fear filled my mouth as one terrifying thought solidified. I was caught between two dangerous men: one I feared and one I was falling for. And I had no idea which one would hurt me worse in the end.