43. Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Three
Stephen
In bed back at the house, I lay out the bones of my plan to Ava. What I don’t lay out are all the ways my plan could backfire, the risks to my safety and security.
The only important thing to me is that Ava gets out of her marriage. Her freedom comes before mine. Always.
The next morning, I leave before Ava’s awake.
There’s just no way to be sure how today will turn out, and the thought of saying goodbye to her is too much.
What I’m about to set in motion will either save us or condemn us both.
Maybe at least save Ava. Hopefully Ava. But my fate is a complete unknown.
I know what damning information I have on Celia, but I can only guess what documents and misdeeds she’s kept on me.
I ring the bell to the Tucker mansion before I can lose my nerve.
When I worked for Celia, I can’t even count the number of times I showed up here at all hours of the day and night, ready to serve her.
As the first line of her offense and defense, I expect she wasn’t too happy when even she couldn’t locate me after I left the island.
Owen kept his word that I’d never be found.
“If you’re here about Ava,” Celia says, and I notice the doorbell is lit up, “you’re knocking on the wrong door.”
“Am I?” I ask, letting false confidence take over. “I’d think you’d want to be a little more careful when speaking to me, Celia. I did a lot of things for a lot of years, and I wasn’t stupid enough to destroy all the evidence—even if I said I did.”
The door clicks unlocked, and I make my way through the house to the sitting room that overlooks the pool. It’s her favorite one for difficult conversations. The ocean view and the landscaped grounds scream wealth, even without the huge pool that no one ever seems to swim in.
“No butler? No maid?” I ask as I enter to find Celia standing at the coffee station, mixing her own drink.
“The maid is upstairs. I’m between butlers. Jonathan is also upstairs. We have somewhere to be today.”
“He’s busy with the maid, is he?”
She shoots me a sharp look, and I can’t help an internal smile.
The blow landed. One of many things we both know and never say out loud—their one-sided open marriage that’s resulted in at least one illegitimate child that I know about.
Maybe more. Covering up Jonathan’s mistakes probably requires a full-time employee to manage those claims. Though I wonder if that’s how she manipulated the DNA results.
Perhaps she does it all the time. Ava and I weren’t the first victims.
“What do you want?” she snaps.
“I want whatever you’ve got on Raul Santos that’ll get Ava out of her marriage. But you’re smart enough to know that’s why I’ve come.”
She takes a sip of her coffee and eyes me without saying anything.
“The bullshit you fed Ava about staying out of her marriage? I’m not eating that.”
“If I wouldn’t help my own daughter, why would I help you?”
“Come on, Celia. Don’t play dumb. It’s not a good look on you.
” With Celia, success means flattery. Of all the conversations I witnessed, the people who came out the best laid the flattery on thick.
Not exactly the route I want to take, but you have to play to your audience.
And realistically, she is smart. But she’s also cruel and controlling.
“Tell me what you have,” she demands.
“Nothing on Raul.”
“What you have on me.”
I let out a little laugh, and I shove my hands into the pockets of my most expensive suit. An armor of a sort that I put on this morning. Our playing field wasn’t level when she first hired me all those years ago, but I refuse to let it be uneven today. “Everything?” I suggest.
“Don’t play coy,” she says with a huff. “It can’t be everything.”
“It didn’t take me long to realize the deal I’d made with you.
How badly it could go for me at some point.
So I squirreled away information—dates, times, places, copies of documents, duplicates of pictures.
Whatever I thought would convict you and leave me unscathed.
If you really want a preview.” I hold up my hand and start counting off, “Insider trading, fraud, tampering with evidence, criminal solicitation, conspiracy to commit assault, tax—”
“So we’re at an impasse, then,” she cuts me off with a smirk. “You kept information on me, and I kept the same on you.”
“Not an impasse.” I go to the oversized windows, and I stare out at the rolling ocean. “You give me what I want, and I won’t fuck you over.”
She snorts. “Really? I’m supposed to trust you after you just admitted you’re untrustworthy.”
“Here’s the thing, Celia. You know what’s stopped me from turning anything I have over to the authorities?”
“The fact that I control a lot of those branches of law in the first place.”
“No, your daughter. Hurting you would have hurt her. But when you become the agent of that hurt, when you’re the one causing Ava pain?
There are no lengths that I will not go to.
” I turn to face her, determined that she’ll see nothing but my rage.
“If you won’t help her, I’ll cause you an equal amount of pain.
Turn over all my information to the few police who aren’t in someone’s pocket.
Ensure the judge you’re forced to face is one that can’t be bought.
You aren’t the only one with pull, the only person others owe favors to.
All those tricky situations I got you or your family out of?
I’m just as skilled at getting people into them—or don’t you remember? Do not underestimate me.”
She raises her eyebrows, not showing a hint of unease, and then she sips her coffee before wandering over to the couch. Her thinking time. If she can determine a way to trap me instead, she will. We’re dancing through live wires, and there’s a chance one of us will be burnt to a crisp by the end.
“What makes you so sure I have anything that could help Ava?”
“You’d never have suggested him, never have put Ava in his path, if you didn’t have leverage to control him. That’s the smart play. That’s the Celia fucking Tucker playbook. Control. Control. Control.”
“Regardless of anything he’s done, he’s still a better match for her than you.
Surely you must know that. Ava’s always loved luxury.
Unlike my other children, she craves wealth and status.
Being poor with you will never satisfy her.
You are not the man she’ll spend forever with. She’s the most like me.”
“You’ve never understood any of your children particularly well—never bothered to get to know them in a real way—so I’ll forgive your ignorance here too.”
“Never understood my children?” She barks out a laugh. “And you understand everything as an outsider?” She shakes her head. “Let’s say I helped you with some leverage for Ava to get divorced. Raul is very connected on this island. How will you make up for that loss for the Tucker family?”
“Easy. Assuming you were smart enough to gather enough leverage, Ava will take him for all he’s got.
He’ll be forced to start over, financially, personally, on the island.
His power and control will go poof.” I turn back to stare out at the ocean again, ignoring her.
“He’ll be a shell of a man. Maybe you won’t have won against Ava, but you’ll have defeated him.
That’s really all that matters, isn’t it? Some sort of victory. A flex for you?”
“If I give you what I have,” she says slowly, “what’s the stop you from fucking me over next?”
“Only my own safety and security.” I spin to face her. “Isn’t that how you set this up? Mutually assured destruction. I go after you, and you come for me. The point of this isn’t to ruin you, and I certainly don’t want to ruin my own life—not now. All I want is to get Ava out of her marriage.”
“And into your bed?”
“To give her the freedom to choose what she wants,” I correct.
“No,” she says, standing up and taking her coffee cup back to where she first poured it.
“That’s not enough for me. I’m not having you hang my sins over my head every time one of my children wants something, and that’s where this will lead.
I will give you the information I have on Raul in exchange for everything you have on me. ”
From inside my jacket pocket, I remove a portable hard drive, and I wave it at her.
“How do I know you don’t have backups in a cloud somewhere?”
“I’m not that tech savvy.” I am, but I was always careful to pretend ignorance around her.
Pretended to have to call in other experts whenever she needed something on the internet hidden or surfaced.
A few times, I was able to see the chess board a little better than her. Thank god this was one of them.
She narrows her eyes, and she’s clearly trying to read if I’m lying. But my claim fits the narrative she knows.
“You show me what’s on there in my office, and I’ll get you the information on Raul.” She leaves the room in brisk strides. “Follow me.”
In her office, she plugs in the hard drive, and she does a search.
The names she enters are the ones that involved violence, where she had someone beat up or intimidated or orchestrated an injury.
Nothing extreme, but there’s a clear pattern of intimidation.
Combined, they’d give her the largest jail sentence.
I’m a little surprised she doesn’t search the insider trading cases too, but I guess knowing I have this particular information is enough.
Her face is red when she turns to me. “If you’re lying to me about this being the only copy, I will make sure you rot in jail right beside me.”
“What do you have on Raul?” I ask. “Is it enough?”
“Of course it’s enough,” she says with a huff, navigating on the computer to an area behind multiple password prompts.
She takes a USB key out of a top drawer, plugs it in, and she drops a file titled “Santos” onto it before removing it and gripping it in her hand for an extra beat.
“You don’t ever come ask me for another thing. We’re done.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I say, holding out my hand. “We’re dead to each other.”
“Tell Ava I did this all for her.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “I don’t know why you did it, but it wasn’t for her.” Then I snatch the USB out of her hand, and I head for the door.