Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Henry
The Atlantic stretched endlessly beyond the wall of glass surrounding me, all blue and gold now that the sun had climbed past the horizon.
It was still surreal that Ariana was upstairs.
In my bed.
In the house I’d bought for the sole purpose of getting revenge on her husband.
Her ex-husband.
When I first planned to make Victor pay for what he’d done, I never imagined I’d come to have feelings for Ariana.
That I’d fall in love with her.
But that wasn’t what kept me up all night.
Instead, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Blake’s face… The flicker in his expression when I’d said Sarah was “chosen”. It was subtle, almost imperceptible.
But I’d built a career on noticing things other people missed.
Despite Ariana’s insistence I was simply looking for someone else to hate now that Victor was gone, the unease in my gut wouldn’t let it go.
So I’d given up on sleep and came downstairs to do some digging.
I started with Blake, even though I knew I wouldn’t find anything.
I didn’t when I brought him on to help with the more difficult situations I’d often faced in my line of work.
And his background was still just as pristine.
In the beginning, I saw it as an advantage. The last thing I wanted or needed was someone who might become a liability. In my mind, if he was this proficient at covering his own tracks, he’d be good at covering my clients’ tracks, as well.
Now I couldn’t help but think I should have pressed for more information. Because after several hours of looking through every corner of the web, I couldn’t find a single thing on Blake Ford, other than what he wanted me to find. As if his digital presence had been carefully curated.
I had a feeling it was.
Staring blankly at my screen, I mentally reviewed everything I knew about him. Everything he’d shared with me.
It wasn’t much. For as long as I’d known him, he’d been notoriously tight-lipped. He never spoke of his childhood or family. Never shared stories about old friends or his college days.
There was only one thing I knew with any sort of certainty.
Every once in a while, he’d run a search for someone named Chandler Meadows.
I’d always been curious about who she was, but I never crossed that line.
Never invaded his privacy.
Until now.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a beat, a twinge of guilt settling low in my stomach.
But I needed answers, so I typed her name into my company’s interface.
I’d expected to find the same useless information most searches returned. Social media profiles. Employment history. College records.
But there was almost nothing recent. Nothing since roughly thirty years ago.
I wasn’t all that surprised not to find much, considering Blake had been looking for her as long as I’d known him.
What did surprise me was the court record I found for child neglect proceedings against someone named Shelby Meadows, who I assumed to be Chandler’s mother. Since Chandler was a minor, they were sealed, but that didn’t stop me from being able to access them.
According to the court records, Chandler and her brother, Pierson, had been taken from their mother and placed in a foster home due to their mother’s battle with addiction.
She eventually cleaned up her habit and got her kids back.
The record even showed the judge commending Shelby for all the effort she put into getting her act together.
After a year of constant home visits and meetings with social workers, she eventually had her full parental rights restored.
This was about when Chandler was in third grade.
I searched through the court file to see if there was any indication of what school she may have attended and learned Shelby had agreed to keep sending Chandler and Pierson to the same school their foster parents had sent them to — The Chosen Path Academy in a middle-class suburb of Fort Myers.
Unfortunately, the school ceased operations approximately twenty-five years ago. Regardless, I was able to find digital scans of the school yearbooks filed in the local library. Including one from Chandler’s third-grade year.
She looked like any other eight- or nine-year-old. A few missing teeth. Bright smile. Dark hair.
But there was something familiar about her eyes. I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen them before.
Then I flipped forward to the fifth-grade class and found her brother’s photo.
Unlike Chandler, he seemed a bit more hardened. Haunted. As if he hadn’t forgotten what their mother had done. And he stayed that way over the next several years.
But Chandler didn’t stay the same.
Over the next few years, her smile began to fade, her eyes lost their life, and her clothes became baggy.
I got the feeling things at home had taken a turn.
But after scouring through child services reports, I couldn’t find anything where they’d gotten involved.
Which might be why, when Chandler was in sixth grade and Pierson was in eighth grade, they seemed to disappear. No school records.
Hell, no records of anything.
I sat back in my chair, running a hand over my face as I tried to figure out what this meant. How it related to everything.
Maybe it didn’t.
Maybe it was exactly as Ariana suggested.
Maybe I was looking for a villain.
Maybe Blake simply reacted the way he did because the word “chosen” reminded him of the school this girl he’d been trying to find for years had attended.
If I were in his shoes and heard someone mention being “chosen”, I probably would have done a double take, too, especially with how infatuated he seemed to be with finding information on Chandler.
After all, if Blake were somehow involved, why would he have put his life at risk so I could get back to Ariana? Why would he have told me about all the women Schaffer sterilized? He wouldn’t have. He would have lied to me about all of that, too.
The sound of footsteps cut through, snapping me back to the present. I lifted my eyes toward the winding staircase, my lips lifting in the corner when I saw Ariana descending toward me, the sunlight streaming through the open space catching in her golden hair, making her look almost ethereal.
Like an angel coming down from heaven.
Or Persephone descending to the depths of Hades’ Underworld.
She wore one of my button-down shirts, only a few buttons fastened, revealing her long legs and ample cleavage.
I’d never been a fan of wearing formal attire. Despite owning one of the most successful cybersecurity firms in the country, I much preferred wearing t-shirts and jeans. I’d lost count of the number of investor and board meetings I’d attended wearing precisely that.
But seeing Ariana in my button-down shirt with nothing but skin beneath it made me reconsider my position on formal attire… Especially if having her wear it was my reward.
“How long have you been awake?” she asked as she approached, her voice husky with sleep.
“A while,” I said, gripping her hips as she leaned down to feather her mouth against mine.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“I had a lot on my mind.”
Her gaze flicked to my laptop that currently displayed Chandler Meadows’ sixth grade yearbook photo. “What’s that?”
She hopped onto the edge of the table and reached for a strawberry from the plate beside my laptop.
“The white rabbit that led me down a bit of a hole this morning.”
She arched a single brow. “And what did you find?”
I blew out a long breath. “That you were right. With Victor gone, I was just looking for another villain.”
She grabbed another strawberry and popped it into her mouth, her eyes gleaming. “Say it again.”
“I was looking for another villain,” I repeated.
“Not that.” She leaned closer. “The other thing.”
I blinked, trying to determine what she was referring to. Then understanding dawned, and I angled toward her, sliding my hands up her legs.
“You were right.”
Her eyes fluttered closed, and a tiny whimper fell from her throat. “God, yes. Say it again.”
I chuckled, warmth blooming in my chest.
I loved her playful side. It was something I hadn’t seen much of. I got the feeling this was who she was before Victor. A woman who found a reason to laugh and smile every day.
And maybe this was who she could finally be now that he was gone.
“You were right.”
She threw her head back and cried out, grasping onto the table, as if in the throes of ecstasy.
“Careful, Ariana. You keep doing that and I’ll give you something to scream about.”
“Promise?” she asked in a husky voice.
“You should know by now I’m a man of my word.”
She leaned toward me, her mouth a breath away. “Again.”
I didn’t have to ask to know what she wanted.
Hell, what we both wanted.
I curved toward the crook of her neck. “You,” I began, touching a featherlight kiss to the spot below her earlobe. Then I moved toward her other ear. “Were.” I pulled back, my lips scraping against hers. “Right.”
Her entire body shuddered as another whimper escaped. This time, I wasn’t sure if it was because of my words or because she was getting just as turned on as I was.
I had a feeling it was the latter.
“Ariana,” I murmured, threading my fingers through her hair. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
Her gaze dropped to my boxer briefs, mischief dancing within before her eyes met mine.
“I think I have a pretty good idea.” Straightening, she reached for the buttons on her shirt — my shirt — and slowly unfastened them, allowing the material to fall onto the table. Then she spread her legs. “But why don’t you show me?”
That was all it took for me to jump to my feet and push down my boxers, all thoughts of Blake and Chandler Meadows disappearing as I thrust into Ariana.