He Will be My Ruin

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” he says easily. “I don’t want you to worry. I’ll take good care of you.”

I smile.

And believe him.

————

October 26, 2015

I throw the door open on the second knock.

“Hey.” Grady frowns when he sees my face, eyes puffy and skin splotchy from hours of crying. “Your text said that your toilet’s not working?”

“That’s right.” My voice is barely higher than a whisper. I step back to make room for him and his tool bag. As soon as the door shuts, he heads for my cramped bathroom without another word. It’s been radio silence between us for more than two weeks, since I told him our arrangement was over.

That was the day after Jace came here to pulverize my heart.

I should have said no when I ran into Raymond. He was my very first client, back when a date was just that—a friendly casual outing, with no hotel rooms involved. But he had a company function the next night and no date, and I had just found out that day that Dani and her fiancé can’t move in until February which meant I’d have to cover another month of rent, and my savings were almost gone. So I said yes.

I’m so stupid for saying yes.

I deserve what happened. I deserve that Jace found out and came here to confront me the night before we were supposed to fly to Chicago to meet his parents.

I deserve being treated like a whore.

But what I don’t deserve is what Grady is doing.

“What exactly is wrong with the toilet?” he calls from the bathroom. When I don’t answer, he finally emerges. That’s when I throw the computer camera at his head.

“You’re the one who’s blackmailing him, aren’t you!” Even in anger, I’m careful not to yell. This building is full of gossips.

He stares at me, cool and calm. “What are you talking about, Celine?”

I hate his accent when he’s like this. He sounds so goddamn condescending. “Someone has been spying on me, using this camera that you installed.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but those cameras aren’t completely hack-proof. So . . . I assume there’s nothing wrong with your toilet then?” He heads for the door.

I grab his arm to stop him. “It was you. Admit it. You’ve been watching me. You didn’t like that I was seeing someone else, did you?”

“Did he know that you were fucking me, too?” he asks without missing a beat, a flare of anger in his voice.

“He knows now.” I can no longer hold the tears in. And here, I thought I was done crying. “And he wants nothing to do with me.”

Grady sets his bag down on the coffee table and wraps his arms around my back, pulling me into his chest. His hand strokes my hair soothingly. “Maybe he wasn’t the right guy for you then.”

“He was! He’s the perfect man for me. He’s everything that I want, and now he thinks I’m blackmailing him. And that video . . .” I’m barely coherent through my sobs. “If that gets out and my mother finds out, I’ll kill myself.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s true!” I stopped taking my Xanax in August, even though I knew that I shouldn’t. My depression tends to creep in quietly, unnoticed, until it’s already taken up residence in my brain. But the pills cost me money and make my limbs swell, and I was feeling better. And I normally have eight or nine months before I have to restart. But with my mother’s illness, and now this devastating breakup, the depression is marching in behind a ticker tape parade, not even three months later.

“It’s not. Don’t be stupid. You were seeing him for, what . . . not even two months,” he mutters, his tone turning angry. “That’s not long enough to mean anything.”

“Time doesn’t matter when the connection is that strong.” I pause and frown. “So you knew I was dating someone?” He never said a thing. He kept crawling through my window once a week to screw me, sometimes staying in my bed until morning, only to leave a wad of money on my nightstand.

And how does he know how long I’ve been seeing Jace?

Has Grady been watching me all this time?

His body stiffens against me.

I push away to see the momentary panic flash before he veils it. And we’re back to where we started. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’m not doing anything to you.” His scruff-covered jaw tightens. “And I’d be very careful about accusing me of anything. Otherwise, who knows what’ll end up on the Internet.”

I’m left staring at the back of my door long after he’s gone, his threat heard loud and clear.

CHAPTER 43

Maggie

December 22, 2015

“I want you and Zac to keep looking for him, until you find him. Find out what hole he’s run scared to. He’s not getting away with this.” The doorman holds the heavy glass door open for Doug and me to pass through.

Inside, a low hum of voices mix with the solo pianist playing from the far corner. The exhibit hall in Hollingsworth—exquisite on its own, in soothing grays and warm wood and crystal chandeliers—is decked out for the holidays, with evergreen bows and bronzed urns overflowing with white poinsettias. They’ve dimmed the lights throughout, making each piece of Celine’s collection in its individual glass case truly shine under the spotlights.

“Having Childs onboard with getting this investigation reopened helps, but I have to warn you, Maggie, a guy like Grady knows how to disappear in the wind.”

He’s already been “in the wind” for seven days, four since the police invaded his apartment. It took NYPD’s technical experts thirty-six hours to break into Grady’s “Fort Knox” computer system. While they have enough secured and encrypted files to keep them busy for months, they were able to get into the video files—including the hidden ones.

Grady has been watching Celine in her apartment since August. The police won’t tell us exactly how much footage there is—they won’t tell us much of anything—but they did say that there was plenty of evidence to suggest they had an intimate relationship.

Translation: The sick fuck recorded them having sex and saved it to watch later.

But that wasn’t the biggest shocker.

Apparently, there have been others. Specifically, two women that Grady has, at minimum, spied on in the past. Police are trying to identify them, to confirm whether anything untoward happened.