THIRTY-SEVEN
Aubrey was sure this was very definitely hell. Sitting in a corporate meeting room, surrounded by lawyers, with his broken heart leaking all over the floor, corroding the last shreds of his self-control.
He wanted to break things. He wanted to crawl into a corner and die. He wanted to laugh, hysterical and weeping, and demand of them all if they’d ever seen a bigger fool?
Why bother with this whole charade? Coming here had seemed better than sitting alone in his flat. But it didn’t seem to matter now. He was exhausted. Let them take his money, let them sue and smear and accuse him of what they wanted. They could lock him up. He didn’t care.
“One person of interest,” said a smart young lawyer who looked about sixteen, “is Evelyn Blackton. We’ve found some online references that seem to link her to FTP. Is it possible they could be behind the leak?”
“No.”
“The profile we have suggests Evelyn Blackton—”
“No.”
“But we do need to explore every avenue. Let’s talk about your relationship—”
The pen in Aubrey’s hand gave a warning crack, its plastic casing bending, starting to split.
“OK,” Andrew interrupted smoothly from where he sat on a windowsill, observing the room. His subtle glance took in the tortured pen, the look on his brother’s face. “Let’s take five,” he said calmly. And with nothing more than the slight inclination of his head towards the door, all six of the other people in the room silently stood and filed out.
Both Aubrey and Andrew stayed where they were. Neither spoke for a moment, until Andrew said, “I know it’s unpleasant.”
“Understated, as always.”
Aubrey was much closer to his younger brother, Charlie. Andrew was cold, reserved, always had been, even as children. The type to sit in the study revising French verbs or practising arpeggios while Charlie and Aubrey played football on the lawn beyond the patio.
“But it has to be done,” Andrew continued, as though Aubrey hadn’t spoken.
“I won’t discuss her.”
“Fine. Then we go with your word against theirs. We’ll compile a list of character witnesses. Let me know any names we should—”
He broke off at a commotion outside. Raised voices. A man, and a woman. Evie.
Both men stood. Andrew walked over to the door and looked through the glass into the corridor. “Ah.”
Aubrey seemed unable to move.
Andrew glanced at him. “Shall I deal with this?”
“—as I keep explaining, I just need to see him,” Evie’s voice, forceful, determined, an edge of anger to it, and something else, a hundred layered emotions. “This isn’t a police state,” she said, irate now. “I’m not breaking the law.”
“This is a private building, ma’am. And you do not have permission to—”
“One word, that’s all I want, for the love of God!”
Aubrey, despite everything, almost laughed. It was the imperious Blackton voice. The cut-glass vowels. All the generations of privilege that she so rightly despised flaming to the surface of her blue blood.
He went over to the door, saw her in the corridor with a lurch of his heart, pain and pleasure both.
“Ma’am.” A flustered looking security guard was blocking her path. “I must insist that you leave.”
Evie tried to walk past him. The security guard grabbed her arm. And Aubrey wrenched open the door.
“Get your hands off her.”
The security guard whirled round, letting go of Evie. Evie herself was utterly still, staring at him, eyes as wide as he’d ever seen them. She looked pale, drawn, fragile despite her determined rage, hair plastered to her head, coat drenched. What the fuck was wrong with him that he wanted to go to her, wrap her in his arms, make sure she never turned up anywhere again looking so pathetically wet and cold?
He felt Andrew give him a quick, assessing glance. “It’s OK,” Andrew instructed the security guard. “Evelyn Blackton can stay.”
The security guard hurried away with a quick backwards glance, relieved to be escaping, and Evie took a step down the corridor. She stopped, maybe quelled by the way he was looking at her. Maybe by Andrew’s presence at his side.
“I… I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Why?”
“To…to explain.”
“Should I stay?” Andrew asked him quietly.
Should he? Was it wise to be alone in a room with Evie? He was frightened of the things she might say. That he might be desperate enough to believe them. It would be Liv all over again.
“Please, Aubrey,” Evie begged.
There. That was the decision made. Evie asked, looked at him with that face, and he told his brother to go, held the door open for her, closed it behind them and stood there, waiting to see which way the blade fell.
“It wasn’t me. Aubrey. It wasn’t, I swear.”
“I saw your emails.”
“My emails?”
“From you. To your friends at FTP. Planning it all.”
She managed to go paler still, a tremor running through her. He had to look away, couldn’t keep the edge of tears from his own voice. It was worse, facing her, reliving it all afresh with her eyes on him.
“I did.” It came out almost like a gasp. Then she steadied herself. He heard the breath she took. “I did plan it. It was why I came to Conyers. For you, not Domnall. I was supposed to…to befriend you”—he shuddered at the word—“and get access to your laptop. We didn’t know your password, so it had to be when you were using it. If you left the room, left it unlocked—”
“Then you’d sneak on? And steal my emails?”
She flinched as he turned on her. But she didn’t look away. “Yes. Any emails about Domnall, about his business, anything that might confirm illegal tax evasion or any other kind of wrongdoing.”
“And that was the whole weekend,” he said, unable to stop the rising anger in his voice. “That was the basis of everything that happened. Nothing to do with Liv. Nothing to do with anything that was real. But I suppose you failed. Had to follow me to London. Continue lying to me, pretending, fucking sleeping with me, Evie—did you really have to go that far? Tell me you loved me? What the fuck is wrong with you! You hate Domnall so much, you hate us all so much, that you don’t care that you’ve destroyed me?”
His anger rang in the silent room, Evie close to tears—no, crying now, wiping them hurriedly from her face. “I didn’t fail,” she said.
“I bloody well know. The whole world knows.”
“No, I mean at Conyers. I didn’t fail. I got into your laptop. I had it on my knee. All your emails. Everything. And I didn’t do it.” She took a pleading step towards him. “I didn’t do it, Aubrey. I swear on my life. Here—” She got her phone out. “Look. This is the message I sent Zig.”
She held out the phone. He could barely focus on the screen, caught a glimpse of the words I can’t… I quit.
“I’m meant to believe that, am I? Maybe you changed your mind.”
“I didn’t.”
“So it’s all a coincidence, is it? My emails get leaked weeks after you were tasked with doing that exact thing, and I’m supposed to believe you had nothing to do with it?”
“ Weeks afterwards, Aubrey. Don’t you see? I saw them online. They’re dated right up until you left BlacktonGold. How was I meant to get hold of them if we weren’t even speaking at that point? Unless you think I snuck into your office? Hid under your desk and happened to pop up the minute you left the building?”
Aubrey stared at her. Because there had been someone in his office the day—the very moment—that he quit. Liv.
He thought back furiously. She’d been sitting at his desk. When he went to his computer to download his contact details, his computer had been unlocked, his emails open, just how he had left them when he stormed from his room to confront George.
He’d been gone long enough that the screen ought to have locked. But if someone had seen him leave his office, had snuck in just after he went, gone straight to his computer…
“Fuck.”
He put a hand over his eyes, thinking. He’d been so angry that he’d walked out and left her there, too. She would have had all the time in the world to get what she wanted. But why…?
I’ll save you. Liv, angry and hurt in his flat. You’ll see which one of us you should have chosen.
“It was Liv.”
He looked up, found Evie looking at him, no surprise on her face. Somehow, she already knew.
“It was Liv,” he said again. “She was in my office the day I quit. And she knew about you and FTP. Her goons at HallardPuck had probably been monitoring FTP on Domnall’s behalf.”
Evie nodded. “They had. Got into their emails. Found out all the plans. Slapped a million legal threats on them.”
“That’s how she got the emails. Your emails.”
Evie nodded again, a small, unhappy nod. Because Liv might have betrayed him, but Evie had planned to. How the hell did they move on from that?
“Evie…” he said, because he knew himself. He was close to giving in, forgiving her, or thinking he had. And for the sake of his sanity, he knew he shouldn’t. Not so quickly.
“I know,” she said. “It’s going to take time. But it was real, Aubrey. It’s been real from the start. I just didn’t realise.”
And she left, with a smile so fragile it crushed him all over again.