Chapter 22 #2
Taking my hand, he leads me into the barrel room, although drag might be a better description because it’s not the barrel room anymore.
The racks are still there, and the old sampling table, but there are no barrels, no desk, no chairs.
There isn’t even a hint of whiskey in the air from the angel share that escaped the casks as they aged.
We reach the table and when Ash puts his hands on my hips, I have to stop him.
“I’m fine standing,” I insist.
There’s only ever been one reason for him to hoist me onto that table, and as much as I’d entertained the idea of being fucked by Ash Griffin today, there’s something else I need more. I have to know to what extent I was fucked over by Barrett Emerson.
Ash steps away, giving me space. He leans against an empty rack some twenty feet away. “You left town without saying a word to anyone. Including Barrett?”
“I didn’t want you tracking me down, but Barrett and I stayed in touch via email. He’d very kindly negotiated a deal with the bank – the one he apparently owned – to make a settlement, giving me enough money to live on until I got back on my feet.”
As Ash folds his arms, his stern expression gives way to something closer to a smirk. “I heard you had a bit of a windfall selling the final Simmons batch. The one we aged together.”
“Are you going to tell me you were the one who bought up all the casks?” I ask, praying he says yes.
“It went up for auction, and I had to do something with all that money I made in Vegas. I’m glad it helped you in some small way.”
It helped me start my new life away from him. It takes everything I have to hold back the sob. I really did get it wrong about who was the good man.
“When I moved in with Ethan, I was just renting his spare room, but he was kind at a time when I needed a little kindness. The only reason we decided to marry was so I’d be covered by his health insurance, but I did grow to love him.
We were both damaged in our own way, and I was lucky to find someone willing to take on another…
” My words dissolve in my mouth, leaving a bitter taste.
“Another man’s child.” I can see how Ash grinds his teeth, but his next question is soft. Desperate. “Was he a good father?”
“He loved Piper with all his heart. He couldn’t have kids of his own and she was the daughter he thought he’d never have,” I say. I can’t imagine how difficult all of this is for Ash to hear, but I don’t want to keep anything from him. Not now. “And she loved him.”
His head dips. “Good.”
My throat constricts. “Ash, I’m so… I’m so sorry.”
“Barrett did this to us, don’t lose sight of that,” he says. He waits a moment for me to regain some composure. “It’s OK, Belle. You can do this.”
I nod, gesturing for him to continue.
“Barrett was always in the background, trying to disrupt your life. I don’t think you ever fooled him into believing the baby was Ethan’s, but I guess he was happy enough to have removed me from the equation.
He knew me well enough to know that if I hadn’t tracked you down already, I was letting you go. ”
“I know I don’t deserve an answer, but why didn’t you come after me?”
Ash stretches his neck. “I did, just not hard enough. Maybe it was pride, or self-loathing, but once I found out you were married, I didn’t question the speed at which you started a family. I walked away and accepted my misery as the price for your happiness.”
I hold myself tense, but the tears come anyway. I can’t stop them.
Ash’s eyes shimmer, but with a blink, he forces the conversation on. We’re not done yet. “With me out of the way, Barrett just had to deal with Ethan.”
Fresh dread weighs against my chest. “You found something in Ethan’s emails.”
“Barrett liked using money as a weapon. Once he found out that Ethan was a gambler, he set a trap, and Ethan fell right into it. Barrett drained his bank account as quickly as he’d drained the distillery’s.”
“But Ethan had gambling debts before we met, it’s why he was looking for a lodger. He’d bet on all kinds of sports, and he liked online poker. It just spiraled from there.” I don’t know why I’m arguing. It’s like holding back the tide.
“True, but it spiraled because Barrett had identified a weakness he could exploit. From what we’ve pieced together in email threads, Barrett posed as someone else so he could join Ethan in his online poker games.
Once he moved the conversation offline, he tipped Ethan off about some good investments, investments that paid off initially. ”
“Ethan took me to dinner one time to celebrate a windfall. He bought Piper a little bike. A few months later, he was trying to sell it.”
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the problem with gambling is that you keep chasing the wins. And when you lose, you throw more money at it to claw back your losses. And he never did.”
It had been terrifying to watch Ethan become more and more withdrawn.
“He was borrowing money from his colleagues at the fire station, and I took a job as a waitress to make ends meet, but it was never enough. He got accused of stealing money from houses during calls. He always denied it, but when he was asked to resign, he didn’t argue. ”
“And then what?” Ash asks gently.
I cover my eyes with the heels of my hands. I can’t stand it. “Ethan was barely functioning. He was so ashamed of letting me and Piper down. He blamed himself, and I did too. I did too,” I repeat as a painful sob tears from my throat.
Ash goes to step towards me, but I ward him off. I don’t deserve to be held. Ethan had been a loving but vulnerable man who was battling with PTSD after a call that had gone tragically wrong. He saw me as his savior, but I was his final downfall.
“I begged Barrett for help when the house was about to be repossessed. And he came through for me, like a knight in shining fucking armor. He told Ethan to declare bankruptcy, then found him the security job in Poulton Springs. We rented a house, and I thought we’d turned a corner.”
“Until Ethan was on duty one night and a fire broke out at the food processing factory – on the very land that Barrett wanted to build his luxury mansion.”
My eyes widen. “Barrett started the fire?”
“Difficult to prove, but I’m as sure as I can be.”
My legs almost buckle, and I grab the edges of the table behind me. “No, please no,” I moan as fresh horror slams into me. “You said Barrett wanted to get rid of Ethan. Did he start the fire just to kill him?”
“Barrett had other reasons to start the fire,” Ash says, moving towards me.
He stops when he sees me flinch. Muscles in his jaw feather in frustration as I shake my head. I won’t accept his comfort, and he stays where he is.
“My guess is he’d originally targeted Ethan in the hope that you’d divorce him, and when you didn’t, Barrett started looking elsewhere,” he continues.
“He set his sights on Maddie, and continued to pursue her even after she’d married Hunter.
It was around that time that you became a widow, so it seems unlikely that Ethan’s death was deliberate.
And as much as I tend to think the worst of him, Barrett’s not a born killer.
I wouldn’t be letting you and Piper stay at the mansion if I thought that. ”
In the silence that follows, I strain my ears to hear the creak of aging oak barrels, but there are no barrels. I’ve lost everything. Everything except the man who’s standing in front of me – the man I demonized while the true demon was playing the victim, begging me to take pity on him.
“Please say there’s nothing else,” I beg.
“It’s as much as I know,” Ash says, not quite giving me the reassurance I need. “But I can’t promise we won’t find more.”
“Can I hold you now?” Ash asks, not moving until I agree.
His kindness is crushing. “Why would you want to be anywhere near me?” I demand. “How can you still want me?”
Confusion creasing his brow. “Because I love you,” he says as if it were that simple. “Because none of this is your fault.”
“But I didn’t just vanish out of your life, Ash.
I was running away from you,” I remind him, my voice rising.
“I didn’t give you an explanation, or a chance for you to give your truth.
” I wring my hands as I grapple with the argument I need to make.
“I claimed to love you, but I wasn’t waiting to comfort you after your dad died.
I abandoned you when you needed me most. Why shouldn’t I suffer now? ”
His expression grows grave. “You don’t need to punish yourself for what happened. And I’m certainly not going to do that.”
“I destroyed Ethan’s life, and I destroyed yours,” I say, my fractured voice rising. “I broke your fucking heart, dammit! You should want to make me suffer!”
“It’s Barrett who needs to pay for what he did to us. And he will,” Ash growls. “I’ll make sure of it.”
His eyes blaze with fury, but it’s not directed at me. And it damn well should be. “But I was the one who cut you off, and not just from me, but our baby too.”
“The baby I put inside you,” Ash points out. “It was totally irresponsible of me to make you have unprotected sex.”
“We both–”
“No,” Ash insists. “That one’s on me. I wanted to make this big show of claiming you, but you were the one who had to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. I shouldn’t have let that happen.”
I throw my hands in the air. “Fine, but I take the blame for everything else, Ash. I married someone else within months, if not weeks. I let someone else raise your daughter.”
He flinches, and that spurs me on.
My mouth twists into a snarl. “You weren’t there when she was born. You had no say in choosing her name. You didn’t get to hear her first words. And when she did speak…” I hesitate for only a fraction of a second. I will get him to hate me. “She called another man–”