19. Alistair
ALISTAIR
My head was buzzing.
No, not my head. My head was on a downy soft pillow. Something was buzzing near my head. And this wasn’t my room or my bed or…Where the bloody hell was I? I rolled over in a fog of sleep, trying to get my bearings, and my arm immediately encountered a warm, naked body.
Madison. I automatically reached out to wrap my arm around her, tugging her closer. I inhaled her fruity shampoo, the lingering perfume against her neck, and the scent of sex. What round did we land on before we’d passed out in her room—three? Four?
Buzz. Buzz.
I grimaced. My phone must have gotten jammed beneath one of the pillows at some point. But why would someone be calling me at this time of night?
I wanted to ignore it, but what if it was to do with Kenna? As comfortable as she was with Weston and Lena, she wasn’t used to spending the night away from me.
I stuffed my hand under the pillow, chasing that infernal buzzing.
“What is that?” Madison groaned.
“Sorry,” I whispered, locking my hand around my phone. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Just a phone call. Go back to sleep.”
She mumbled unintelligibly, throwing the sheet over her head. I took a beat to admire how bloody adorable she was, not to mention sexy, as I crawled out of bed, naked, darting into the hall to press the phone to my ear. “Hello,” I whispered, voice a little rough.
But instead of Weston, a different voice responded. One I hadn’t heard for months. One I didn’t want to hear.
“Alistair?”
Leo fucking Cartwright. What the hell did my solicitor want at—I pulled the phone away from my ear—two thirty in the bloody morning?
“I know it’s late,” he said.
“You didn’t even bother me in the middle of the night during the trial.”
“Because I needed you to look like a human being on the stand, not a zombie.”
“What do you want?” I groaned. I wanted to be back in bed, wrapped around Madison, drifting off to the sound of her breathing.
“I just got a call from a friend at the police department.”
“What kind of friend?”
“The kind that does me favors from time to time.”
I hummed. “What did they say?”
“Jessica has just been arrested.”
I almost dropped my phone, Leo’s voice fading to static as my pulse rushed in my ears like a torrent of water. “They found her?”
“They found her.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, massaging my eyes, trying to gather my senses enough to process what the man was saying. I was standing naked in the hallway, and my embezzling ex had just been arrested. I needed some goddamn trousers and then maybe a stiff drink. “Where was she?”
“Apparently, she never left the country.”
She’d been here this whole time? I clenched my hand around the phone so hard it ached.
“She’s on her way to the Charing Cross police station to be processed.”
For a beat, I struggled to catch my breath. “And then what?”
“She’ll be brought against the Westminster Magistrate’s Court for her initial hearing.”
“Okay.”
“Look, Alistair, the reason I wanted to call right away instead of leaving this for the morning is so you’d be prepared.
The news hasn’t gotten a hold of this yet, but they will soon.
They’re going to have questions for you, and you’ll need to have answers prepared.
Not to mention, you’ll likely be asked by the courts to testify when this goes to trial, so you need to be ready for that call. ”
I sucked in a sharp breath. It was happening all over again. The media storm. The frenzy. It was about to crash down on my head twice as hard as last time because this time Jessica would be here to kick off the criminal trial the world had been waiting for all along.
Camera flashes exploded in my mind. All I could see when I closed my eyes was Kenna’s little face surrounded by journalists, drowning under the weight of other people’s questions and comments and assumptions. I couldn’t drag her into this mess again.
“We’ll prepare you like we did before,” Leo was saying. “Run through your story. Make sure you’re prepared for their questions.”
My story, I thought. Jessica was the biggest regret of my fucking life. Except she’d given me Kenna. And I could never regret that.
“Do you remember what we rehearsed?”
“It was an office romance,” I said, rhyming off the phrasing we’d landed on.
Jessica had been a low-level clerk in the accounting department of Voyages when we first met.
I hadn’t even known of her existence until she spilled a cocktail on me at an office holiday party.
There were a couple sparks after that, some mild flirtation that led into a fling.
“I was attracted to her,” I said. “I believed she was attracted to me. We had fun together, nothing serious. But then…we got pregnant, and I knew I needed to step up.”
“Good,” Leo said. “We frame you as the devoted partner and father that you are.”
I had been devoted—not so much to Jessica herself as to the idea of what we were building together.
I’d thought we’d be a family. I’d wanted to provide for her and our daughter.
“I was all in with being a dad. I was so, so excited. And I thought she felt the same way. Jessica moved in with me, Kenna was born, and I was over the moon. I could see a real future for us together.” I’d even bought a bloody ring!
“Right. And you had no idea that Jessica was using you until the morning you woke up and found her gone along with tens of millions from the company accounts.”
I gritted my teeth.
“We need to make sure the jury understands that Jessica targeted you. Trapped you. This relationship was never real for her. You were the true victim in all of this.”
The words reopened a wound I’d spent so long working to close off. Jessica had never been the love of my life, but I had cared for her deeply. And she’d not only broken my heart but stomped on Kenna’s on her way out the door too.
“And this is everything?” Leo said. “This is the full story of what happened between you two?”
“Of course it is. You already know that.”
“I do, but I need to remind you that everything will be up for scrutiny. So I’m asking you again: Are you sure there’s absolutely nothing Jessica can say that will prove you had any idea what she was doing?”
“Nothing at all,” I growled, my pulse thumping.
“No evidence she can provide that you willingly gave her passwords to the corporate accounts?”
“No,” I muttered. She’d transferred the money using my home computer after figuring out my passwords. I’d never told her a damn thing.
“No angle she can spin about the two of you planning the whole thing together and you getting cold feet?”
“I have no fucking clue what Jessica might claim,” I snapped. “She’s already proven to be an accomplished liar. But the truth is exactly what I’ve been saying this entire time. I had no idea she was planning to betray me.”
It didn’t make any bloody sense anyway. Why would I have gotten involved in that mess? The amount she stole was a fraction of my net worth. It wasn’t money I needed, and it sure as hell was a scandal I would rather have done without.
“And that’s exactly what you tell the jury,” Leo said. “With that same passion. You were a man in love, and she totally blindsided you.”
By the time we hung up, I was practically hyperventilating.
I stormed through the house to my room, throwing on a pair of joggers.
Then I hurried down the hall toward my office.
I needed to message Alfie. I needed him to find me a publicist to deal with the disaster hurtling my way.
I’d never been fully happy with the one we’d used before—it was time to get someone new. I needed…
I slowed as I passed Kenna’s room, the room darker than usual since I hadn’t bothered to turn on her nightlight without her there.
The only illumination came from the moonlight.
It was enough for me to see Princess curled up on her bed, passed out across the sheets, taking full advantage of the space in Kenna’s absence.
I stared around at the drawings tacked to the wall and the beads scattered on her tiny play table, thinking about my bright, beautiful, cheerful daughter—about how happy and carefree she’d been in recent weeks.
We were finally getting back to some sense of normalcy.
And now here her mother came to destroy it all over again.
I shook my head, crossing the room and sinking down on the edge of Kenna’s bed.
Princess poked her head up, tongue lolling out of her mouth.
I gave the dog a gentle pat, and she licked my hand.
Part of me wanted to drive over to Weston’s right now and pick Kenna up.
I wanted to bundle her back to Dunhope and hold her, knowing she was safe behind these giant walls and gates, where people who might harm her couldn’t get to her.
But some small, rationally thinking part of me knew I couldn’t just show up at Weston’s place and force her to leave Lochbrae and Aisling in the middle of the night. It would only frighten her. Still, that old urge to hide her away from the press was gripping me hard.
I needed to protect her in every way that I could.
From the burden of another trial. From the weight of my worry.
From the stories the media would tell. From hearing my name on the TV or the radio.
From seeing her mother’s image plastered across newspapers.
Kenna didn’t deserve any of that. She didn’t deserve the harsh looks or the whispers or sneers.
She deserved to exist in a world where the most stressful part of her day was deciding what color tutu to put on over her leggings.
Christ. She was supposed to start primary school this year. Was I supposed to hold her back from that too? Hire private tutors? It might be the only way to shelter her from people’s misinformed opinions, to get ahead of lies.
Princess crawled into my lap, nudging my hand with her cold nose. I stroked her fur as I thought about Leo’s comment: You were a man in love, and she totally blindsided you.
I wasn’t just blindsided by Jessica. It was the wave of smaller betrayals that followed that really tipped everything over the edge for me—the Voyages board turning against me, family members selling me out for their fifteen minutes of fame, acquaintances leaking stories to the tabloids, people I called friends no longer taking my calls.
Leo’s words echoed in my head. You were the true victim.
Well, I wasn’t going to be a bloody victim this time. Those media hounds could descend all they wanted; I was going into defensive mode from the start. I wouldn’t let Jessica destroy my life again.