Chapter 23
Ash
Six Years Ago
Iuse my hand to shield my eyes from the low sun as I squint at the old red barn in the distance. Belle is nearby, leaning against a fence post on the wrong side of the property line because it’s no longer her property.
“I’m so damn sorry,” I say, my words as hollow as the feeling in my chest.
My shoulders ache and my eyes are gritty. I haven’t slept for forty-eight hours, and the only thing I’ve eaten is the indigestible airplane food.
“It’s not your fault,” Belle says, keeping her red and swollen eyes on the truck being loaded with contents from the barn. The stills were taken away this morning. “It was always going to be a long shot trying to save it.”
“But if I’d come back when I said, I could have stopped this.”
I hear the distant whine of a forklift’s tongs being raised. They’re bringing the barrels out, sloshing around that precious liquid that holds a piece of Belle’s soul. And mine. Perhaps, the only piece of mine that’s left.
Belle remains silent. There’s only so long she can keep insisting that losing the distillery was inevitable. There’s a part of her that blames me.
I wait it out.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she whispers.
“I’m here now.”
There are fresh tears rolling down her cheeks as she turns towards me. Those tears are all my doing, and I drop my gaze before her accusation leaves her lips. “Are you, Ash?”
I’d gone straight from the airport to the guesthouse in Eastham Grove where Belle’s been staying until she finds a new place to live.
Her only warning that I was on my way was the call I’d made once my plane touched down.
I’ve been away for four weeks, and for the last two, I hadn’t been able to contact her.
No. That’s not entirely true. I could have picked up the phone at any time.
I could have made the call, but I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself to speak to her.
I couldn’t tell Belle what I was doing, but I’d been a fool to think I could just come back and we’d pick up where we left off.
Too much has happened, and not only because she’s lost the distillery.
That first hug was meant to cleanse me, but instead, I’d felt like I was tainting her.
“The work I had to do was messier than expected,” I say, running a thumb over my swollen knuckles. The bruising isn’t noticeable, but I feel it.
“And what does that mean?” Belle asks. “Complicated as in you were glued to your laptop trying to problem-solve? Or were you glued to someone’s lap?”
My head shoots up. “What the hell? You think I’ve been with another woman? You think that’s what kept me away?” Anger she doesn’t deserve, rises up through me. What I’d been doing was far worse. “Jesus, I wish it had been!”
Belle flinches at that. “You’re admitting you were looking for someone else?”
“That’s not what I meant!”
I rake a hand through my hair, staring at a point in the middle distance. I’m neither here, nor there. Sweat pricks my brow. Belle was meant to be my refuge. I was meant to be her savior. But our paths are diverging, and I don’t know what to do to correct our course. Or if I should.
“Then what do you mean, Ash?”
“It was bad. OK? I did things I’m not proud of,” I admit. “But it didn’t involve other women. How could you even ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because I have personal experience of how you assess a potential investment opportunity.
Maybe I thought what happened between us was how you prefer to do business these days.
” she says. Her lip wobbles but she refuses to back down.
“And maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can’t even look at me. ”
Of all the things she might come to think of me, cheating on her can’t be one of them.
I clench my jaw as I step into her space.
When I cup her face, I’m aware that my hands were dripping in another man’s blood a matter of days ago.
I can’t stop the tremors running through me, but I force myself to meet her glare.
“I love you, Belle. I could search the whole world over, but I’m never going to find another you. I wouldn’t even try to look for anyone else. You’re all I could ever want.”
Her hands cover mine. “And you’re the only man I could want.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. I don’t want to say it, but I love her too much not to. “What if I’m not good enough for you?”
She strokes her fingers over my knuckles. Her brow furrows as if she can feel the invisible scars. “How could you possibly think you weren’t? What’s wrong, Ash? What happened in Las Vegas?”
I rest my forehead against hers. “You’ve just lost the distillery. I’m supposed to be here to comfort you. Not the other way around.”
Belle swallows hard. “The day the bank served notice was one of the worst days of my life,” she says.
“I needed you, and you weren’t here. I deserve to know why, Ash.
You disconnected your phone, and I was worried something awful had happened to you.
When I called your office, no one would tell me where you were.
I wasn’t even allowed to speak to your brothers. ”
“That’s because they were with me,” I reply. “They weren’t supposed to be, but…”
“Things got messy.”
“Messier,” I correct her. “In some ways…” Fuck it, I need to be honest here. “In many ways, the work I do involves risk. It was a decision I made in the early days when I was starting up my company.”
I step away, taking Belle’s hand so we can walk side by side along a path that runs parallel to the highway. That way, I don’t have to look at her.
“Just like my dad, I wanted to help businesses grow, not exploit them and drain away the profits.”
“It’s what you wanted to do with the distillery.”
A pang of guilt hits my chest as we both cast a final look over our shoulders at the barrels being loaded onto the truck.
I’d made a call this morning to see if I could agree a last-minute settlement, offering to clear the loans instead of the bank repossessing the entire contents of Belle’s life.
But after several heated discussions, I’ve hit a brick wall.
Whoever’s running things at the bank takes a sick pleasure in destroying people’s livelihoods.
“Your distillery is a good example of why I need significant funds behind me to achieve some good in this fucked up world,” I tell her.
“But that means doing things that are fucked up occasionally. It’s either that or struggle to make any difference at all.
Dad took the option of struggling to survive on little to no return for his efforts, and it’s why his first marriage broke down.
When my birth mother abandoned us, I was four years old, but I still remember her parting words. She told me to be better than my dad.”
My boots crunch gravel as I silently measure myself against the man I admire most in this world.
“And in recent years, as my brothers and I built up our business, I foolishly thought I was better than him.”
“But?” Belle asks, pushing me to bare what’s left of my soul.
“You need cash to invest, and the quickest way to get it isn’t always the most legitimate. And I had the added pressure of needing to cover my stepmom’s medical bills. It gave her five extra years, and for a while, I convinced myself that the ends justified the means.”
“And the means would be?”
I let go of Belle’s hand and wipe my clammy palm on the side of my jeans. I’ve been wearing either tactical gear or my suit in the last month, and slipping back into jeans and a t-shirt was meant to help me readjust. It hasn’t.
“When I was getting established, I became friends with a guy called Killian McConkey. I helped him with a startup to produce electronic equipment. Security cameras, that sort of thing. He had a lot of money to invest, and I didn’t question where it came from.
He wouldn’t be the first person I’d come across who could access a family fortune beyond the means of us mere mortals. ”
“Yeah, I know people like that too.”
“Not like Killian, you don’t. His money didn’t come from daddy’s trust fund. It was delivered in bank rolls of $100 bills, and a lot of the initial outlay into his new business didn’t go through the books.”
“Money laundering?”
“Drug money,” I confirm. “Killian’s dad is the boss of the Irish mafia with territory that’s expanding beyond Las Vegas.
He’ll probably take over the whole of Nevada at the rate he’s going.
I made it clear that I didn’t want anything to do with that side of their business, but I continued to work with Killian over the years.
The money I make with him means Griffin Corps has the cash to invest in companies that would otherwise go under without our help. ”
Belle’s steps falter. “That’s how you were intending to help me? With drug money?”
There’s a sting of accusation in her words, and previously, I might have reiterated that I didn’t have anything to do with the McConkey’s drug dealings, but I can’t say that now.
And in truth, even Killian’s legitimate business dealings had roots in criminal activity.
I was fooling myself to think my hands were ever clean.
I turn to face Belle where she’s stopped. “My company is growing year on year, but right now, I don’t have funds that are easily accessible, and you needed a cash injection fast. Going to Vegas was the only option.”
“What did you do there, Ash?”
I look down at my hands. Can’t she see the blood? I know I can. “I was helping them improve their product.”
Her throat bobs up and down. “And what product would that be?”
“Exactly what you’re thinking,” I say, wishing I was the kind of guy that could spin a lie that we could both believe.
But that’s not who I am, and Belle deserves the truth.
“I spent the first two weeks analyzing the most efficient way to process and package cocaine shipments. The processing plant we took over had been adding dangerous cutting agents to their product.”