“So, how the hell did he get inside my office?”
“That’s where I come in.” My heart dropped, expecting Cill to admit to some underhand, backstabbing deceit. “I need to check the CCTV, talk to Dennis and the rest of the team. Someone here has breached our security. Whoever it was, I will find them. Trust me.”
I glanced back to Jackson and he nodded in agreement. Then he reached forward and pulled me into him, burying his face into my neck.
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
Cill got up off his stool and left to give us some privacy.
“When you first walked in I thought I’d lost you. I felt sick to my stomach.”
I ran my arms under his suit jacket to hold him as close as I could. “I told you, I trust you. I love you, and deep down I knew you’d never do something like this to me. I was just lashing out. I’m sorry. I felt so mortified I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me when I walked into that boardroom.” I leant back to look into his beautiful face and could see the storms brewing in his eyes. “You can trust me, Jax. I’m not gonna flake on you and bolt after the first hurdle. It’s not in my nature to quit. I won’t ever quit on you.”
“Thank God for that, because I have a feeling there might be a few more hurdles coming our way.” He brushed his lips over my forehead in a warm, gentle kiss that told me he’d got me; got my back. “I trust you too, baby. I mean it. I’ve never felt so connected to anyone like I am to you. It’s like you’re a part of me now. There is no me without you anymore.”
In that moment, I knew without a doubt that whatever hurdles were in our future, we’d get over them together. I also pitied Ed when Jackson finally got his hands on him. He was a dead man walking.
Cill wasted no time pulling up old CCTV footage and getting his head together with Dennis to find out anything that could help uncover what exactly had gone so wrong in the last few weeks. Jackson started to make calls to every contact he knew to find out Ed’s whereabouts. Word was, he’d gone underground pretty soon after severing ties with Jackson months ago. No one could stay underground forever though, not in the world Jackson had access to. I heard him say his greetings to Luca over the phone, and instantly thought of Chloe and how I hadn’t reached out to her after that fateful girls’ night out.
I grabbed my phone and saw numerous missed calls from Travis and my dad. I ignored them and sent a text to my mum telling her I couldn’t make her special lunch, but that I’d try to drop in later in the week and take her to her favourite restaurant for a proper catch up. I had to have some sweetener to keep her off my back. I was just about to send a text to Chloe when my phone started to buzz, indicating an incoming call from an unknown number. I wouldn’t normally answer an unknown number, but after today, I was fired up and ready for anything.
“Hello?”
I heard a deep sigh down the line, then a familiar voice. A voice that used to send prickles of a different kind down my spine, and I shivered involuntarily.
“Ryley, baby. How are you?”
Justin. After all this time, he chose today of all days to ring me? For what? A friendly chat?
“What do you want, Justin? I’m busy,” was the politest response I could give, and quite frankly he was lucky to get that.
“I need to see you.”
I cut him off right there. “Not a chance in hell. I don’t want to see you. Goodbye.”
“Wait!” he shouted down the line, making me hold the phone away from my ear. “Please, Ryley. It’s important. There’s some things I just need to say. Maybe it would be good for us both to meet. You know, a bit of closure or whatever.”
“I’ve had my closure. I don’t need to see you for that.”
He wasn’t giving up that easily though. “I found some of your things in the apartment. I thought I could give them to you.”
“Send them through the post. You don’t need to see me for that.”
He was grabbing at straws now, that was obvious. He was thinking up anything to get me to agree to see him.
“It’s not just about your stuff. I need to speak to you about something private. Something I can’t talk about over the phone. Please, Ryley. Just five minutes, then you never have to see me again. I promise.”
I don’t know why, maybe after the morning I’d had I didn’t mind seeing another fuck up, but I reluctantly agreed to meet him. I refused to go to the apartment though. Instead, I asked to meet him in a public place, somewhere neutral.
“I… I can’t do the coffee shop or the park,” he stuttered. “My anxiety is through the roof these days, baby. I’m struggling to leave the house. Could you meet me at Liam’s? I can manage Liam’s, just about.”
I knew he’d struggled with anxiety in high school, and ever the sucker for a sob story, I agreed to meet him later that afternoon at Liam’s. I couldn’t tell Jackson. He’d lose his shit if he knew I’d answered the phone, let alone agreed to meet him. No, I’d go to the meeting, get whatever he had to say over and done with, then move onto the next item on my shitty to-do list. I figured my day couldn’t get any worse. In fact, I decided I needed an injection of female sass into my day to help me cope. So I texted Chloe, asking if she was free for a catch up.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing outside a pair of huge steel gates. Every security camera known to man was pointing at me, and I waited anxiously for the intercom to buzz into life.
“Hey, come through,” Chloe’s voice sang through the crackling intercom system.
Then the gates creaked open to reveal a stunningly modern home. Well, more of a mansion really, with numerous performance cars parked across the drive.