CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Desmond
She is distracted.
At first, I think of it as nothing, but with each day, I can tell that something is bothering Lorelei.
Whatever is on her mind is different from her usual coldness.
I hate that she is distracted when she is around me, as I enjoy being the center of her attention.
She might try to hide or deny stealing glances at me, but I have caught her many times, and I enjoy it.
Something about her looking at me makes me feel good, but whatever is bothering her seems to be stopping her from doing that.
“I really don’t understand what you mean by that,” Timothy clarifies, even after explaining to him for the third time.
She is distracted by something, and whenever I try to ask her about it, she skirts the issue, almost as if she doesn’t want me to find out about it.
I ask Timothy to ask around in case anyone might be bothering her at work, and he reports that apart from a few comments, everyone is staying abreast of her.
“Could that be bothering her?” I ask Timothy, who simply mentioned that being ostracized at work might make her feel down.
That is the reason I have been keeping a close eye on Lorelei, and apart from the heavy sighs and the distant looks on her face, I can’t really pinpoint if something else is bothering her.
My attempt to find out had been met with a cold reply, and I had even consulted Grandma Lillian to find out whether there might be something I was doing wrong.
Maybe I should seduce her. Get her in my bed and put her mind at rest.
It has been two weeks now since we’ve been intimate, and it is driving me crazy just how much I want her. However, the walls between Lorelei and me seem to be growing each day despite how much I have tried to get her to open up to me.
“When are we going to meet with Katherine?” I ask Lorelei as we eat our lunch.
“What? Why?” She asks, almost choking on her meal.
I pass her the handkerchief, wondering why my request to meet Katherine would suddenly take her by surprise.
I explain that I know how close she and Katherine are, and I’d love to be on good terms with her friends.
Lorelei stares at me as if I had just suggested something ridiculous.
She doesn’t know it yet, but I know quite a bit about Katherine Johnstone, Lorelei’s best friend.
Getting someone to do a full background check on her was quite easy, and I am a bit surprised to see how long they’ve been friends.
She is currently trying to apply to be a professional nanny, and I might be able to help her with that.
In fact, I intend to help her with that, but I have to bring it up naturally.
It won’t do me any good if Lorelei finds out I’m looking into her friends.
“Just want to meet with her,” I explain again.
“Yeah. Maybe later. She’s kind of busy.”
Her refusal catches me by surprise, and I wonder if there might be something I am missing.
Throughout the ride back to the office, Lorelei doesn’t look at me, and I am convinced that the only way to get to the bottom of whatever is going on is to talk to Katherine.
Lorelei might try to keep us away from each other, but I can easily find Katherine on my own, and then, I would be able to get to the bottom of this.
Without her finding out, of course.
However, I do not have to even bother because waiting for me when I arrive at the office is a brown manila envelope.
“What might this be?” I ask as I open it.
Photos of Lorelei spill out, and I take a look at them, my eyes glancing at the topmost picture. Lorelei is in a tan bikini, but this picture wasn’t taken on the beach. I quickly shove the pictures into the folder, which I then place in my drawer.
“Is something wrong?” Lorelei asks.
“No, everything’s fine,” I say with a dismissive wave, not wanting her to suspect anything.
Pictures of Lorelei. Not one, not two.
My mind begins to race with different possibilities.
Who could have sent those pictures? Is there someone spying on my woman?
Anger rises deep within me, but I quell it as I gather my thoughts.
No need to get angry until I am sure of what it is I am dealing with.
To do that, I need to be left alone, and I send Lorelei down to accounting to fetch me some documents.
My request must have surprised her, seeing how she stares at me for a few seconds before she leaves.
Once she is gone, I ask Timothy to step into my office as I bring out the envelope.
“You need something?” Timothy asks as he pokes his head through the door.
“Lock the door behind you. We need to deal with something right away.”
The pictures are not that many. Just twenty-eight, and they have Lorelei in rather interesting poses. Poses that I should be the only one seeing, and the mere idea that a man somewhere has feasted his greedy eyes on this makes me angry.
“Someone is trying to blackmail me, and we need to find them and deal with this.”
The Sinclair family’s stance on blackmail has always been simple.
Don’t respond.
However, this is different. Someone has pictures of my woman, and there is no way I’m going to let them be.
Timothy asks for an explanation, and I brief him.
He doesn’t request to see the pictures, for which I am grateful.
He makes a call to get the footage of the lobby, and a few minutes later, he is back in my office with the video of the lobby.
He already has the courier company, and we are going to be visiting them very soon.
“Good. We need to deal with this, but I have to distract Lorelei.”
Timothy had questioned why I was not discussing it with Lorelei.
I remind him of how moody she has been, and this definitely has to be what has been eating her up.
Whoever sent this had definitely tried to blackmail her, and the thought of putting her through that anguish makes me want to wrangle their neck.
I call Grandma Lillian, who is more than happy to keep Lorelei at her side for a few hours.
She asks me if I want to surprise Lorelei, and I lie to her that I have something romantic planned.
Once that is figured out, Timothy and I leave the office. I drop a text to Lorelei telling her I need to check up on a friend. Finding Dudler Courier didn’t take long, and for a hundred bucks, the dispatcher had called in the rider who brought the message to us.
“Hey, nice to meet you,” Timothy says as he shakes the hand of the red-haired teenager, who looks at both of us.
“Are you from my dad?” He asks, his big eyes clearly assessing both of us as if we’re some sort of danger.
“No. You delivered a package about two hours ago to Westward Logistics? Do you remember that? I need to know where you picked it up from.” I step in, not in the mood for games.
The boy begins to tell us it’s against policy, and I quickly bring out a wad of hundred-dollar bills, and I hand him four. “Spill what you know, and I have more where that came from.”
In life, one thing I have learned is that everyone has a price, and for this young teenager, who is definitely still in high school, four hundred dollars is enough to make him sing like a bird.
He explains that he didn’t exactly see the person who dropped the message, but they had called him with a number.
He gives it to us, and I hand over four more bills to him before Timothy, and I walk towards the car.
“What now?” Timothy asks me when we get into the car.
“Dean. I need him to get me full information on whoever owns this number.”
My uncle’s contacts reach everywhere, and if there is anyone who can get me the identity of the person who sent those pictures to me, it would be him.
Dean sounds a bit surprised when I ask for his help over the phone.
I tell him I am currently playing a game with Lorelei, and I just need to know who the number is registered to to win.
Dean doesn’t sound entirely convinced, but he provides me with an identity and an address.
Paul Larson, and while he isn’t at the address he listed, Dean somehow helps get his location using his phone.
“I guess that’s him heading into that building. How do you want to do this?” Timothy asks as I step out of the car.
I haven’t really thought about that, but I simply follow after Paul. Lanky, looks like he just crawled out of a garbage truck, and he smells of stale cigarettes and spoiled beer. I watch as he stands right in front of a door, brings out the keys to open it.
So, he stays here.
Once he is inside, I am joined by Timothy. Pointing towards the door, I explain my plan to Timothy, who clearly doesn’t agree. I assure him that all I want with Paul is to just have a discussion, though Timothy keeps insisting that I’m probably going to rough him up.
You bet I will.
Knocking on Paul’s door, I hear rustling inside, then the door opens momentarily, and he looks at us. “Who the hell are you?”
“Desmond Sinclair, but I take it we don’t need introductions now, do we?”
He shuts the door quickly, and I almost think that I might have to force my way in, but surprisingly, I hear the latch and the door swings open.
Now, I’m going to make you regret opening the door.
“I didn’t think you’d bring your-” He begins as I step in and close the door right behind me, my punch connecting with his mouth, knocking him to the ground.
The next half hour swings by quite quickly, and it takes quite a little bit of convincing, but it turns out that Paul had stored Lorelei’s pictures from when they were dating. The fact that she had even dated a scum of the earth like this pissed me off, but that is all in the past now.
“So, what do you think will happen to you if I see you anywhere near her?” I ask.
“You’ll make me disappear,” Paul says as he holds the tissue close to his bleeding nose.
My knuckles hurt from where I punched him, and while I am never the type to get physical, beating up Paul had helped relieve the tension of the past few weeks.
“And if anyone else gets these pictures, you'd better run as far away as possible because not only would I come after you, but I’ll destroy everyone around you.”
It is safe to say that I might have driven the fear of God into him, and that makes it worthwhile. Leaving his apartment, I feel so happy to have resolved what has been bothering Lorelei, but first, I need to clean up since I can’t go home with a bloodied shirt.
I clean myself up and head home, where Lorelei and I have dinner.
Once again, she’s awfully quiet, and I wish to assure her that I have handled her situation, but seeing how she has gone to extreme lengths to hide it from me, I won’t let her know that I know about it.
Lorelei is my family, and I would go to the end of the Earth to protect her from anyone who might intend to hurt her in any way or form.
The next morning, Timothy draws me to the side as we head to the office, and he shows me an article on his phone.
“A journalist tried to publish an article on Lorelei and Paul. Luckily, we had one of our people deal with it.” I let out a sigh as I rub my face. “Do we know where he is?”
“Yes. He lives downtown. Do you want to visit him?”
Definitely. Anyone who wants to mess with my woman would have to deal with me.
Leaving early would definitely draw attention, so I decide to go after I close from work.
Since Lorelei would be visiting Grandma Lillian, that gives me enough time to track down this journalist, whose office isn’t difficult to find.
The journalist is quite surprised to see Timothy and me sitting in his small office.
I try not to look around the cramped office space as I realize that the man cowering before me is actually an e-journalist.
“I’ll bring down the article right away, sir. Anything you want,” he whimpers, looking at Timothy and me.
I hadn’t really said much about it, but I guess he somehow has a rough idea of what I’m willing to do. I have a couple of questions, starting with how exactly he was able to get a picture of them meeting.
“Paul reached out to me. We knew each other a while back, and he told me he could get me a story. He dated your wife a while back, and he told me he would be meeting with her. I just needed to get a few pictures, that’s all,” the man stammers, throwing his friend under the bus.
“We should have roughed him up a bit more last night,” I say to Timothy, who nods solemnly.
“Please, I’ll offer a retraction. Anything, just don’t hurt my family and me,” the man immediately goes on his knees to beg.
I lean closer towards him, and I grip him by the jaw. There would always be vermin like him, and making a good example of him would be a clear message to others out there, but I need to protect Lorelei. My desire to protect her means I won’t let the world know about this.
“Good, you'd better see to it that you convince the world that you made that story up,” I say carefully, measuring each of my words so that they drive home. “If you don’t do a good job, I’ll come back to find you, and trust me, my face would be the last one you see before your eyes close forever.”
A yelp escapes from his lips, and I am confident that I have gotten my message across.
“Scared the crap out of him,” Timothy comments as we leave his office.
“Yeah, but it’s necessary. We need to find that Paul bastard and teach him another round of lessons.”
That would be tomorrow, and I might just have one of Dean’s people deal with him permanently. Men like Paul would never stop until they have their revenge, and before he causes Lorelei and me more harm, it’s better to permanently deal with him.
As I step into the living room, I find Lorelei waiting patiently for me, and almost instantly, I know that she is aware of what I had done.
I really need to make that scum pay.