Tempted

Alex

Life returned to normal quickly in the weeks after I left Hailee that letter.

I forced it to. The Fords were fined all of nine hundred grand for laundering and misreporting earnings nearly twenty-seven times that much. I would know. I did the math on my fucking phone calculator.

Summit Bank rolls on, their clients unperturbed by this minor hiccup. I’m not used to losing.

I’ve sworn off scotch for the time being and spent a week in Uzbekistan securing our bid for the uranium mine.

And I haven’t had contact with any woman after that disastrous night with Paige.

There is something about Paige I somehow…admire? I’m not finding the right word. But I was wondering how she got home naked that night, when a week later Pierre told me he was missing a pair of chef’s whites from the kitchen.

I had security review the footage from out front that night, and sure enough, there was Paige, chef’s hat and all, storming home at four in the morning. She truly plays her own tune. Even if it’s one of madness, I admire it. Not something to love, but I didn’t keep her around because she was some hopeless damaged damsel.

I’m getting a beer with James Callaway. Note, not scotch. He picks an unassuming bar in Midtown, and we slide into a green booth.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a friend. Lucas and I haven’t been talking as much. I haven’t even seen him since he got back from San Francisco, despite all his texts wanting to catch up.

I don’t think Hailee told him my lie, but I don’t want to see him. He reminds me of the Fords and Hailee. He reminds me of all my failures.

“You look troubled, .” James raises a brow and sips his beer. Some people say we look like brothers, but I think the truth is we’re just both good-looking. Our eyes couldn’t be more different, with his being bright green. But I’ll admit our hair is similar, and so is the cut of our sharp cheeks.

“Would you believe it if I told you it’s because of a girl?” I say.

“Hailee Barnes,” James says like this is obvious information.

“How the hell do you know?”

“I figured she was why you didn’t stick around at the casino opening long enough to see me. And you don’t buy the tabloids, do you?”

“Maybe to wipe my ass with if there’s pandemic.”

“The pictures of you two together… I regret to inform you, , that you two looked like love birds.”

I sigh. “Paige said something to that effect.”

“Paige Reed? I heard she almost took your head off with a scotch glass.”

“How does everyone know about my life all of a sudden?”

“She was bragging about it at some party in Lenox Hill. She was wearing a chef’s hat and smoking a cigarette. Apparently, it was your chef hat.”

“It was my chef’s hat. I don’t wear the thing. God, that girl.”

“Well, do me a favor and stay clear of that one. Your luck may run out one day when you like your women dangerous.”

“Like, but not love.”

“So, it was serious with Hailee?”

I smile and shake my head at James. We’re not about to talk about this. Our friendship is the smoky backroom kind. We are each other’s younger source to vent to in a world dominated by gray-haired men who still believe the world is theirs and forever will be. But my brain is such a mess from Hailee that I take James up on it. I have a gulp of beer. “That’s not exactly the right word. We dated for four weeks.”

“You were together pretty much every day, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you ever get sick of each other?”

“God, no. We were great.”

“So why’d it end so quickly?”

I pause for a moment and lean back in the booth. “I’m a liar.”

“Oh, come on. Did you cheat on her?”

“No.” I shake my head vigorously. “I kept some things from her that I shouldn’t have. Mistakes I made.”

“Unforgivable?”

I shrug. A gesture that says maybe. Maybe not. Depends on who you are.

“She’s not gone yet, is she?” James asks.

“I already tried to keep her here.”

“Yeah? Like holding a boombox above your head outside her apartment? Chasing her to her gate at the airport?”

“Essentially.”

“But did you ever tell her you want her to stay?”

I freeze for a moment. James has me there. “I don’t. That’s the problem. I don’t want her to stay and say no to her dreams and her life just to date me.”

“Long distance?”

I shake my head. “For a year? When the relationship is already on weak legs? I’m probably better off rolling the dice. Maybe she calls when she moves back next year.”

“I see,” James says. He opens his mouth and squints like he’s about to say something he’s not sure how to phrase, when a couple of blondes walk to the booth behind us.

The two drag out their steps as they pass and smile. Their eyes study both James and me equally. He’s one of the few men in this city who seems to rival my looks in female attention. I look away from the blondes while he meets their eyes.

“You want to forget about Hailee by reliving some old times?”

“You take ’em both tonight, James.”

“Wow, this girl really has your heart.”

“I’m thirty-six. A little old to prowl the bars.”

“Since when? I’m only a year behind you. Don’t tell me my heart is going to grow three times its size when I get closer to forty than thirty.”

“You? I doubt it.”

“But seriously, this whole Hailee thing didn’t do you much good. I’d tell you to chase her, but she’s made up her mind, right?”

“Right.”

“You don’t think you could change it?”

“I do. But I don’t find anything romantic about manipulating a woman out of her dream job just so she’ll stay in New York and date me.”

“Huh. Turns out you are a good man, . You had me fooled.”

I shake my head, indicating that life is harder when being good .

“By the way, I saw in the tabloids that you met with my contact.”

He’s talking about my coffee with a Bolivian journalist that the papers mistook for a date. But I’m confused. I didn’t know James knew her. “That’s your contact?”

“I was the one who told her to reach out to you.”

Suddenly it makes sense why such a golden egg landed in my lap. It was connections after all, not just my billionaire status. But it was a waste of time.

“Look, it was an interesting story, and I believe it. But what use is it to me without proof?” James’s Bolivian contact had reached out to me because the lithium mine won by Summit Bank had a fatal accident. Accidents , rather.

Four miners died when the new air filtration system misfired and reversed. Instead of bringing fresh oxygen into the mine, it sucked the air out. They suffocated to death. The journalist was telling me that executives at Summit and Millenium had been aware of the filtration system’s fault almost immediately after installation when it did the same thing.

She said there were emails showing that Chester Ford Senior and Junior both were aware of the problem but didn’t think the high price and time delay of replacing were worth it.

The first time it malfunctioned, it fixed itself after two minutes, not nearly enough time to leave the mine without breathable oxygen levels.

“Camila has the emails now,” James says and sips his drink. That’s the name of our journalist.

“Have you seen them?” I ask him.

“Oh yes.”

“Are they bad?”

“Worse than bad. The Fords will be crucified on Twitter, but probably not the courts.”

“Send them to me.”

James pulls out a folder and sets it on the table. “I don’t want an email chain of this. I don’t care if your address is encrypted. Keep it paper until we go to the press if you want to go that route.”

“And why isn’t Camila publishing herself?”

“She wants it in big American papers first. She reached out to the Times , and my buddy there tipped me off. That’s how I found out. He knows I have friends in mining and wanted a little cash in return for the heads-up. So, you owe me.”

“How big of a story are we talking?”

“Just read the emails when you get home. There’s a lot.”

I take the folder and set it on the bench on my side of the booth.

“But I’d rather not talk business, . It’s a Friday. When was the last time that meant anything to you?”

I keep my mouth shut. But the answer is before my niece, Mila, died. After that, it felt weird to flirt with a drink in my hand while loud music played. To pretend that my world just kept spinning. I don’t let myself think of her for any longer.

James and I talk about some mining advancements in the tech space, and the conversation steers back to business.

The way it always does.

I find myself thinking of Hailee. These last few weeks, I’ve eaten every single meal out—breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a few coffees between, all in hopes of running into her. Of course, she’s low on money and budgeting. I haven’t seen her. I want to text her a final goodbye. Or maybe even something stronger. When James goes to the bathroom, I pull my phone out and text.

Me: I want to see you before you leave.

But I don’t hit Send . I hit backspace a dozen times until the textbox is blank. That text seems a little ominous. Hailee may still be afraid of me in a way. The hitman-hiring CEO.

The liar.

I don’t attempt to draft anything else. If she changed her mind about me, she’d text me herself.

James sits back in the booth with a sigh. “So?” His eyes narrow past mine. He’s looking at the blondes. “How about it?”

Our waitress is about to speed walk past our booth without a glance our way. I stick my hand out gently. “Excuse me,” I say, my fingers delicately catching her by the waist.

Her big brown eyes flicker with hate until they find mine and soften. She’s twenty-five. Pretty. With elfish little ears and hair so brown it’s just shy of black.

I watch her shoulders lower as she relaxes. “Yes?”

“One scotch, please. Johnny Walker Blue.”

“Make it two,” James says behind me.

The waitress’s eyes linger on mine as she speaks. She doesn’t glance at James. “Coming right up.”

She turns slowly, and my fingers leave her hip one at a time. Hailee Barnes is one woman in a city of millions. Surely she is something I can forget.

But the oil paintings that hang around the bar won’t let me. They’re quirky takes on medieval times. There’s a court jester in a dungeon. A dragon perched on a cliff. And then, hanging above the booth on the other side of the room, is a rabbit in a suit of armor. Posing like a knight. A silly little painting, yet somehow it breaks my heart.

But I force myself to turn and look at the waitress’s ass sway as she walks, while I wait for my scotch.

***

It was either grief or sanity that finally took me home at a quarter to midnight. I ended up having just the one scotch and not waiting for the waitress to get off work.

Good .

I still haven’t moved back to the penthouse, even though the mansion feels extra lonely without Hailee here now.

My footfalls clack down the hall on my way to the study.

I sit at my desk, lean back, and read the folder James had given me. It takes me twenty minutes to get through it all, and when I’m finished, I stare ahead into space.

Even for their piggish standards, the emails the Fords exchanged were vile. It’s enough to tank them with some clients. Gross negligence. Possibly manslaughter. It would take an international court to convict them. Legally, I wouldn’t even know where to begin building a prosecution case.

Surely they won’t ever be extradited to Bolivia to face charges.

I made the mistake once of thinking the courts would deliver justice. I’m not making it again, but I will use these emails to destroy them.

Reading them raised my heart rate, but only for a moment. If anything, they only made me angry.

I’m shocked at how little I feel at the fact that I finally have it. I finally hold the card in my hands to destroy these men’s reputations and not just their lives.

I toss the folder across the desk. So what? I can put some devils away and maybe win back the lithium mine contract for myself.

But why? This victory doesn’t come with a fraction of the feeling that came with simply having Hailee in my arms. I put my hands in my hair and stare at the desk. I’m picturing her packing her bags right now.

Is she excited? She should be. The last thing I want is to ruin this adventure for her. I’m sure she’s looking forward to the next few months.

If she wasn’t, she would’ve followed me that afternoon when I left her little apartment.

I’m listening to the clock tick on the wall, thinking of what the next year holds for me. Victory over the Fords. An increase in contracts and my net worth. It sounds as ridiculous as it has been all along.

I was after power, but I had no one to protect.

Money but no one to spend it on.

Respect, but from people who I don’t give a shit what they think about me anyway.

I’d been living life wrong, and the moment I found something priceless, I was just going to let it fly away.

Let her fly away.

I jump to my feet and jog down the stairs. I don’t wait to call a car around. I head towards the underground garage and grab my keys off the peg on the way there.

I take the Aston. While speed doesn’t matter, I can’t help the urge to get to Hailee’s apartment as fast as I can. I’m picturing her buzzing me in and then taking the stairs two at a time until she opens her apartment door right as I get there.

I’ll kiss her and push her back and close the door, and it will be an hour before a word is even spoken.

The streets aren’t as barren as I’d like them to be for one in the morning, but there’s a few one-block stretches where I’m able to accelerate the car to the same roaring speed as my heart.

I park in front of her apartment and race to the door. I hit the buzzer for her apartment number. One time. Long and drawn out. I release the button and stand straight. I look back at 4a on the apartment’s directory. The name Hailee Barnes is not there anymore.

The spot is blank.

I hit the button again and back up to the street so I can see her window. There’s no light on. I can’t believe it. My mouth is stupidly agape.

James got the date wrong.

She’s already gone.

I still stare up and wait for the light to come on. I try to fucking will it.

Come on. This is the only time in my life I have ever chased something that didn’t just fill a void. The only time I’ve ever loved someone who was not dying of cancer in a twin-sized bed. But the windowpane stays dark.

What did Hailee say the other week about her job lining up? Fate. I didn’t want to accept such a ludicrous notion that my life was decided by things outside of my control, but here I am, just one day late. Maybe just hours.

My breath is slow and unsteady. The sidewalk spins under my feet like I’m drunk. Maybe if she comes back to New York, we’ll try things again. But I will not… I cannot call her back to New York.

I get back in my car and keep staring at the dark window for another few minutes before I finally drive away.