30. Hit Me with Your Best Shot
ELOISE
“It”s me!” I raise my hands, meeting Tony’s eyes.
Tony glowers at me over his gun, his rumpled suit looking like he”s just got home from the office. “What the fuck are you wearing, Eloise? You”re lucky I didn”t shoot you.”
“Didn”t Ralph call up?”
He juts his chin toward me. “Yeah, he called. But he didn”t tell me you were dressed like a whore.”
Fucking bastard. I refuse to let his insults shake me. I need to have a level head for this. “I just want to talk.”
“How did you get in here anyway?”
I glance over my shoulder, but Damien isn”t there. “I still have a key.”
“I changed the locks.”
“Guess it still works.” Behind him, coils of darkness turn into a Damien-shaped cloud.
“Put the gun down, Tony. This will only take a second.”
“Unless you came to tell me you”re moving out of Harcourt Manor before our court date, we”ve got nothing to talk about.” He circles his finger in the air. “Turn around and get the fuck out of my house.”
“The hard way then,” I mutter. I lift my gaze over Tony”s shoulder and lock eyes with my monster. Damien forms in a flicker of darkness and pries the gun out of Tony”s twitching fingers. I don”t register how he does it. He moves so fast; he’s nothing but a smudge of black. But when he settles into existence behind Tony, his arm is around my ex”s neck like he means business.
“Settle in, Tony, and listen to what she has to say,” Damien grits out. “And know this —I will kill you without hesitation if you try to hurt her again.”
“You again? I”ll have you disbarred!” Tony struggles against Damien”s grip, and I realize he still thinks Damien is a lawyer from Maeve”s practice.
Damien lands one giant hand on his shoulder and ushers him into the living room where he presses him down into the couch with enough force to pale Tony”s face. “I”d like to see you try it from the grave.”
I take more than a little satisfaction in the spark of fear I see in Tony”s expression. Reaching into my bag, I pull out this month”s copy of Echo Mills Today. Tony scowls. “I see you recognize this.” I wave it a little in the air.
“So what?” he snarls. “It”s a free magazine available all over the city.”
“A magazine produced by Gold Weaver, Inc.”
He shrugs. “Wouldn”t know.”
I stand straighter, tapping my chin. “In the two years we were married, you hit me twice.”
He scoffs. “I never hit you. You”re remembering it wrong, Eloise. You always had your head up your ass or in the clouds. You probably imagined it.”
“Gaslighting,” I mumble, looking down at my toes. “I know it well, and I”m not buying it anymore. Here”s what really happened. The first time you hit me was when I saw you signing a check to pay an invoice issued to Gold Weaver, Inc. You were signing someone else”s name. I don”t remember a lot about that night because you almost broke my jaw?—”
Damien’s growl makes my arms break out in gooseflesh. His hand closes around Tony”s throat.
“Damien!”
His voice is pure monster as he says, “I won”t break his neck. Just hurt him, the same as he hurt you.”
“I need him to be able to talk.” I spread my hands, pleading with him to back off.
His grip eases, and Tony takes a deep breath.
“I tracked down Gold Weaver”s warehouse, Tony. And guess what we found there? Paper scraps and a man who said he worked for Gold Weaver printing this magazine.” I wave Echo Mills Today again.
Tony grits his teeth. “Whatever you think you saw, it”s got nothing to do with me.”
I have to hand it to him. He almost sounds sincere. “I questioned whether there could be another explanation when I found nothing in that warehouse and couldn”t link Gold Weaver back to you, until I recalled the second time you hit me. Do you remember?”
He shakes his head. “Never happened.”
“It was the last time I slept under this roof. You caught me rummaging in your office safe. You”d left it unlocked, a mistake I have a feeling you regret. I slipped in and took a stack of bills. You didn”t know that, though. I shoved them down my pants before you came back into the office. God knows you hadn”t been interested in anything in my pants in a long time. You were much more turned on by controlling me.”
“You took money from my safe?” His voice holds all the venom I expected.
“Oh yes. I stole thousands from you before I moved out. Had to provide for myself while I got back on my feet. Thanks for that.”
Tony lunges for me. But Damien catches him by the shoulder and lifts his feet off the floor. His hand swipes harmlessly six inches from my face. “You fucking bitch.”
I pull one of the hundreds from my bag and hold it up. “Weirdest thing. I always thought you kept a lot of cash around because you were sheltering it from the IRS. But then I tried to buy something with one of these hundreds, and the cashier had a strange reaction. I still didn”t get it until another store owner told me what to look for.” I brush my red curls from my eyes. “This bill is a very good, extremely sophisticated counterfeit, Tony. I bet that if I wasn”t an artist myself, I would have missed the slight variation in color and the smudge in the scrollwork in the upper right corner. But I am an artist, and this is a counterfeit. It only took a second for me to figure out that the pattern of red and blue fibers in the material this bill is printed on matches the pattern in the pages of Echo Mills Today magazine.”
Tony lowers his chin and bares his teeth but says nothing. I can almost hear the bones of his shoulder crunch under Damien’s grip.
“Now, from there, it took me a little longer to put it all together. I asked myself, what would Tony do? Why would a man who”d built his career focusing on the bottom line print a free magazine? I thought at least you were making money off the ads. But I checked, and you”re not. They”re all phony. But once I saw the paper matched the counterfeit bill, it all came together. You use Echo Mills Today as a cover to bring in reams of paper specially crafted for printing money. You print the magazine, but you also print cash. Gold Weaver claims to have earned the money on the ads, but of course, that”s all falsified. No one pays for the ads. But it justifies the income. Gold Weaver deposits the cash in a bank in the Cayman Islands, into an account owned by a second shell corporation called Genesis. Genesis wires it back to you in the form of business consulting fees, completely laundered. Oh, I”m not exactly sure how you get the printed cash to the Caymans, but I bet the FBI could figure it out.”
“What do you want, Eloise?” Tony grits out.
“What do I want to keep my mouth shut?”
He nods twice, slowly, and I’m relieved. Truth is, everything I”ve said has been theory and speculation. I don’t know for sure how he’s doing everything, only how I think he”s doing it. But I’m right. He just confirmed I’m right. I have him.
“I want Harcourt Manor,” I say. “Call off your lawyers. Sign an affidavit that you have no claim to my home, and everything here will remain our little secret.”
Tony sneers. “That”s it? You”re not going to try to get your hands on my fortune?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I take a step closer to him and look straight in his heartless, unfeeling eyes. “Because I never wanted the money or to hurt you. You came into my life during a painful time, and I”m not sure I would have survived those years without you.”
“And don”t you forget it,” he mumbles under his breath. His voice is as harsh as ever, but his expression softens a little.
“What you do with your money is your business. But Harcourt Manor is mine, and it”s going to stay that way.”
“I want the money you took from my safe. If your offer is in earnest, you”ll turn the bills over to me.”
I reach into my purse and pull out the stack of counterfeits, tossing it on the coffee table. Damien loosens his grip and Tony grabs the stack, starts to count it. While he’s occupied, I produce the affidavit I had Maeve draw up and a pen from my bag. “Sign this, and it”s yours.”
He slaps the cash against his palm. “Is this all of it?”
“I spent a hundred and kept one bill, for sentimental reasons.” I give him a smug look. “That bill will never see its way out of my scrapbook as long as you’re cooperative.”
“How do I know you”re not lying?”
Damien produces an atavistic rattle that sends a chill through me. It sounds like a diamondback snake, if the snake was as big as a T. rex. Tony grimaces, his lips drawing back as if he doesn’t know quite what to make of Damien.
“You don’t, Tony. You”ll have to trust me. I have no reason to lie to you. Anything I want, I could ask you for right now.”
He snorts, but with one last darted glance between Damien and me, he picks up the pen and signs the affidavit. I sweep it off the table and check that it’s his legal signature. “Thank you.”
With a huff of disgust, he stands, planting his hands on his hips. I don’t miss how Damien positions himself between us. “You”ve changed, Eloise.”
I start backing toward the door, and Damien follows. “No. This is exactly who I always was. I just forgot for a while.”
Nothing else is said. I leave the penthouse, and Tony, behind me.