31. June
31
JUNE
“ S o why meet here?” I ask between nose blows. Thankfully, he keeps quality tissues in his fancy car. I'm still reeling from what he said. Those questions. How fucking dare he. But I also know the hold that Elliot has on him. It's hard not to stay angry right now, and for the moment, I am. But he's also the man that I love. So, for the moment, I don't know what to do other than ask inane questions.
“In case you were a spy, I wanted to come back to the scene of the crime. The first crime, I mean. Me buying a night with you. It's a strange thing that this building holds a special place in my heart. It brought you back to me.”
I laugh at the craziness of that. “Guess that's true.”
Anderson looks like he's aged five years today. He's paler than he should be. And my poor baby has bags under his eyes. I don't know how I can think of him as my poor baby when he's pissed me off so much tonight. Maybe that's the trick about love. It fools you into thinking things that you shouldn't. I don't know where we stand right now.
How could he have thought those things about me?
But I know how. It's his father, Elliot. That man has put Anderson in harm's way countless times. He's betrayed his trust. He's lied. He's nearly gotten killed. And yet, Anderson keeps going back for more. It's a textbook abusive relationship with a bit of mob flavoring. And he doesn't know how to get out of it. And at this point, I don't know how to get him out of it.
I don't know how much of a future we can have together with Elliot in our lives. But I'm not willing to give up Anderson just because of him. I won't let that bastard win.
“I'm not … we're not okay right now. But I'm also not going anywhere just yet. Okay?”
He nods. “You're sure you don't hate me?”
“I'm not sure of a lot of things, but I am sure of that. I don't hate you, Anderson. I'm angry. And hurt. But more than anything, I feel bad for you. Your father is a monster. If I hate anyone, it's him. I know that he did this to you.”
But he shakes his head. “I made my own choice about coming here and saying those things to you.”
It's almost like he's trying to get me to hate him. Like he thinks that's what he deserves. “Yes, you're an adult who made his own choices. You fucked up. But that doesn't change the fact that your father is the one who laid the groundwork for this. And I don't mean just today. I mean your entire life.”
Anderson looks at me with awe in his eyes. “I don't deserve your pity, June. Whatever kindness you think that you should bestow on me, I don't deserve it.”
“If we got what we deserved, we'd be fucked.”
He laughs, and it warms my heart. “I imagine you're right about that.”
“So what now?”
“I'm not sure. Dad has really put his foot down about this. He firmly believes you're a traitor. And to prove my loyalty to him, myself, and the family, he wants me to ghost you.”
The thought sends my jaw clenching. “And what do you want to do?”
“I want to prove him wrong and make him eat crow. The problem is, I don't know how to do that. He thinks he has solid, incontrovertible evidence against you. And it is hard to convince Elliott West of anything that he doesn't want to believe.”
I shrug. “That makes this easy then.”
“What's that?”
“All we have to do is break into the office and steal evidence that I didn't know what was going on.”
He laughs for a moment. But then he sees my serious face. “Please tell me you're joking.”
“I am not in a joking mood.”
“June, we have somehow managed to get over on the law a lot. We have broken … at this point, I've lost track of how many laws. Breaking into your office is not going to be easy, and there's going to be a lot of evidence that we broke in. Key logs, witnesses and that’s to say nothing of video footage. I'm not sure how you plan to get around that. But I don't really want to go to jail over something that mundane, do you?”
“Obviously not. But after working for Andre for a few months, there are certain things that I know. For one, he doesn't have cameras on his floors in the building. He prefers to be able to come and go as he wants and not let anybody know. So that's not really much of an issue. Key logs could be a problem. But I can also lie and say that I forgot something that I needed to grab. So shouldn't be that much of an issue. Witnesses? At this time of night, we're probably talking about cleaning staff and only the most dedicated lawyers and paralegals who might still be in the building?—"
“Wait, you're talking about going there now?”
I nod. “What better time to clear my name with your father than now?”
His eyes go wide, and his mouth opens and closes a few times, like a fish. “You're serious?”
“I don't want your father to have any excuses to hate me any more than he already does. He's back to giving you ultimatums about us, and I don't plan to let that stand, do you?”
Anderson takes a breath while staring at the ground. “No. But there has to be another way.”
“What other way? Either we find evidence and rub his nose in it. Or he makes life incredibly difficult for both of us. Those are the choices in front of us right now. Neither is good. But short of leaving the country, there is nothing else we can do.” I rest my hands on his chest and look up at him. “And to be honest, as much as I love the idea of leaving the country and never coming back, I also relish the idea of making Elliott West eat his words. If I go to prison, I would love to have that memory for the rest of my life.”
He smiles down at me. “That shouldn't be as hot as it sounds, but. It is.”
I giggle and pull him down for a kiss. Strange to think of how things started with us. In school, he had been the bane of my existence. Now, I can't get enough of the feel of his mouth on me. Our fleeting kiss turns into a full makeout session. His hand snakes into my trench coat, cupping my breast to elicit a moan out of me. Regretfully, I push him back.
“As much as I like where you're headed with that, we have things to do, and we are in a public place with, I'm sure, plenty of cameras.”
He grins with the devil in his eyes. “Are you sure you're not punishing me a little bit too?”
“How so?”
“Getting me going like that and then telling me to stop.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Come on, we have an office building to break into.”
As I start to walk around the car, he has my hand still. And he hasn't taken a step. “What evidence?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said you want to break into the office building and get evidence that you didn't know anything. But what evidence would that even be?”
I smile. “See, I'm more clever than you think. I've spent weeks on this project for Andre. Don't you think that if I had seen your father's name attached to any of the companies, it would have been a red flag for me?”
“So you truly had no idea.”
“None. I imagine a lot of your father's involvement has shell corporations between him and the actual companies.”
He huffs a laugh. “That's not possible. He's on their boards. Board members have to be listed publicly, right?”
It sucks, but he has a point. “Then the only reason that I haven't seen him on their board member listings is he's using a pseudonym.”
“Is that even possible? I don't do tax law.”
“Possible? Yes. Legal? No. But it is commonly done. It's a way for investors and whoever else to protect themselves. By keeping those pseudonyms in place, it prevents people from complaining about things like conflict of interest. Sort of one of those things that people do all the time but nobody talks about. If the IRS got wind of it, of course, he'd be screwed.”
“And you gathered dirt on a pseudonym?”
God, but he's innocent. “The best way to have a solid pseudonym in a corporation is to make sure that they have an online presence. And that's not difficult to fake. I just wish I knew which of the board members was his pseudonym. Hell, since I didn't see too many commonalities between the boards, it's probably more than one.”
Anderson's jaw grits tight. “Which means that he knew that you didn't know that he's on those boards.”
Slowly, I nod. “Whether or not he believes I'm a traitor is one thing. But setting you up to believe that I am? That was on purpose.”
“And the only way that we prove this is by breaking into Andre's office, isn't it?”
“Yep.”
“Shit. You have access?”
“I do. He gave me his spare key card to his office a while ago, and he never asked for it back.”
Anderson pauses. “Wait, so how did you figure out this was going on?”
“Over the hundreds of documents that I have procured for Andre for this project, there was one with your father's name on it. Some company where he's the majority shareholder, and he couldn't hide it. I knew from that point on that Andre was up to something terrible.”
“Why did you assume the worst over one company?”
“For one, he's been making big moves about buying a bunch of companies all together at the same time. So they had to have something in common. And two, it's Andre, the bastard who kidnapped me to upset your father. It wasn't that hard to put together. The man is a sociopath.”
“Yeah, on that. Why in the hell did you agree to go work for him?”
It's a valid question. “I thought he was in my corner. And I thought that maybe having a sociopath in my corner wasn't the worst thing. Not to mention the fact that your father got me blackballed from every other company in town. It was either switch to a new industry, or move. Or take the job with Andre. I knew that taking a job with Andre would piss your father off, and that was honestly a big bonus.”
He smirks at that. “Fair enough. Let’s go steal some documents.”