2. Blair
TWO
blair
PRESENT - NEW YORK
I knew he’d do this.
Sean had swiftly put me on temporary house arrest to await his impending arrival.
I shook my head and called for the elevator; it opened into my apartment and inside were two guards that hadn’t been there before. That made five, including the three in the lobby, pretending like they worked in the building I owned.
“Am I allowed to move freely within this building?” I asked, looking between the two stoic faces staring back at me.
They glanced at one another and I fought hard not to roll my eyes.
“Never mind.”
I let the doors slide close and went in search of my phone to text Esmeralda back.
Don’t worry about me. Handle your business as scheduled.
She replied immediately.
Already on it. Sit tight.
Now with my laptop tucked beneath my arm and power pad in hand, I cut any remaining lights in my place off and settled on the living room floor in front of the thick wall to wall reinforced window.
Through an encrypted portal I’d created, I logged into the hidden camera feed in my father’s office. He sat behind his desk with my brother sitting on the other side.
“The allegations are what they are,” our father stated, flicking his fingers dismissively.
I pushed my headphones in and listened closely, just as I’d been doing since hiding the tiny camera in there years ago. Though, I clearly missed part of the conversation, I knew exactly what they were discussing.
“There’s a lawyer involved now that can’t be scared off like the others and yours is off doing—”
Doing what? I wondered.
“His lawyer is right here…” Caden entered, looking disheveled and like he hadn’t showered in a week. “Make sure to talk about me when I’m present…” he dropped down in the chair beside Blake. “Everyone can be scared, doesn’t matter who she is.”
Who she was mattered more than he wanted to admit.
“You’re never present when it counts, and there’s nothing you can do about her that’ll end well for either of you,” Blake informed them, bringing a smile to my face. “She’s an ex-prosecutor turned defense attorney. Her brothers are NYPD and DEA. Both her father and grandfather were police commissioners before retiring.”
I watched with glee as my father’s shoulders dropped the more Blake revealed about Jaslyn Edwards-Black, my lawyer and friend.
There were so many women who came to my father’s church for guidance and left with nothing but a broken spirit. I wanted to give them a sense of justice before getting some of my own. But the former had proven difficult until Jaslyn stepped in.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Caden said after a moment of silence, seeming uninterested in the entire process when he was my father’s lawyer for goodness sake. “We have connections. Let’s use them to our advantage.”
Blake huffed, showing his frustration with our cousin.
“She’s married to Ashton Black,” he revealed slowly. “Do I really need to explain who he is? Who his brother and sister-in-law are? There is no wiggle room here, which means you two need to figure out a way to make this go away without upsetting half of New York’s criminal underworld.”
I pulled my headphones off and closed my laptop.
Bait set and taken.
My father and cousin weren’t the smartest duo and I had the upper hand in this fight already. Blake… I wasn’t sure about. All I’d ever known was his silence when speaking up would’ve mattered so much to me.
As for my fight with Sean, it was only beginning and I wasn’t sure how to make this process seamless for the both of us—how to get him to forgive and then include me in his work.
With a sigh, I laid back and stretched out on the floor, phone clutched in my right hand as I stared at his contact.
I bit my lip and rolled to my side, placing the phone next to my head and on speaker after initiating the call. Hearing myself talk while he listened was a start and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The line rang for so long but I never once thought he wouldn’t answer.
Sean O’Sullivan kept his promises. If I called he wouldn’t ignore me, at least not the call itself.
Eventually everything went silent and then a deep sigh from the man on the other side could be heard.
It settled my spirit.
“You’re upset with me, I know,” I whispered, closing my eyes when met with his silence. “I just… I hope you know I didn’t do it maliciously. I was… protecting you and myself.”
Telling him directly what Landell had been up to wouldn’t solve the bigger issue at play here. My father wasn’t just hurting me anymore, but the man I loved, too. The man I’d walk through fire to keep safe, same as he’d do for me even in this crumpled state we found ourselves in.
Sean wasn’t upset because I hacked his cousin’s code. He was upset because I ruined everything we’d been working toward by involving his family, by hurting his family. But they’d involved themselves first, at least by default.
I sighed.
“I can’t apologize because then I’d be a promise breaker and a liar, but I am sorry for breaking said promise. I’ll make it up to you, mo ghrá.” my love.