“Christ, Gerry, I was there when all of this happened. Get to the juicy part. My time is precious.” I looked around, wondering if he had any good coffee.
He straightened his spine.
“Aisling made me do it. She told her mother and me what to do, that way we could know for sure.”
“Made you do what?” I spat out, losing patience.
The mention of her name made me nauseous. This was outrageous. I couldn’t be nauseous. I wasn’t a fucking damsel in distress.
“Plant a bug. A mole. A trap. See, Aisling said that the only way to outsmart you is to beat you at your own game. Together, we found a woman from my past—Barbara McAllister, in this case—and had her assist us. We knew if you contacted her, that would mean that you were after my throat and not those who harmed me.”
I stared at him, speechless.
Aisling played me.
And she fucking won, too.
She loved me, yes, but not so much that she was blinded by my actions.
Even more than her affections for me, she was loyal to her family, and hell if it didn’t make me miss her even more.
“The newspaper—” I started.
Gerald shook his head, walking over to the coffee table, picking up what looked to be today’s newspaper, tossing it into my hands. I picked it up and glanced at the headline.
Keaton Hints at Firing Clayborn After Elections: What’s Next for the White House?
Motherfucker.
“The headline was fake.” I let the words churn in my mouth, deciding I fucking hated how they tasted.
Gerald plopped down next to me, rubbing at his face tiredly as he reached for a whiskey with two tumblers at the center of the table, pouring us drinks. I took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up, making myself comfortable. This bullshit wasn’t going to be over anytime soon.
“Quite.” He nudged my drink in my direction, his fingers still trembling. “I didn’t believe Aisling when she said you were probably a double agent, so I came to see you a few times at Badlands. Each time, I turned around, losing my nerve. But I noticed the same newspaper was rolled and left at the entrance each time, so I figured that was your media outlet of choice. From there, faking a headline wasn’t too hard.”
Then Troy picked it up at the entrance to my club, on his way in, and showed it to me.
Goddammit, Nix, you’re a clever one.
“Now, Barbara McAllister is a college friend. She is not at all what you believed her to be. But for the purposes of helping me, she put on a show. Her sister has an address in a shithole part of the city. I added her name in the lease, knowing you would find her, see the poverty she so-called lives in, and decide to press her because she is easy prey,” Gerald continued.
“Aisling said that if I gave you information that didn’t match what you’d find on your own, it’d raise a red flag and you’d take the bait. She was right.”
“Did you decide to do all this or did Ash?” It seemed like a sophisticated operation, and Gerald was only good for managing a company that’d been handed to him by his own father. Even that, he half-assed. Cillian was a much better CEO than Gerald ever was, something Gerald secretly resented his son for.
“Well, Aisling did, bless her heart. She is my child through and through, that one. So delicately cunning. So smart.”
So hot.
Though I doubted he’d appreciate that specific input.
Gerald took a sip of his drink, his shoulders rolling as he visibly relaxed.
“Aisling knew Barbara would stand out with her zip code. We wanted to ensure you’d approach her, so we made certain her address led to a trailer park. You took the bait. When you called Barbara, Aisling and I instructed her beforehand. What to say. How to act. We couldn’t chance her blowing her cover. She did a remarkable job, didn’t she? And by the end of the day, you were already on the phone with publishing houses and literary agents, hooking her up with people who wanted to hear her story about the sordid Gerald Fitzpatrick. The new Jeffrey Epstein, right? The fall from grace of the tycoon who wanted too much from too many.”
This was pretty much spot-on, so I couldn’t dispute it. I played into Ash’s hands, and even when we’d met, even when I’d been balls deep inside her, when she cried my name, when she told me she loved me, when she offered me herself on a silver platter, she still plotted against me.
Tried to uncover the truth.
Was an active participant in our mental chess game.
“We got three offers from three different publishing houses,” I said tersely, trying to understand how they managed to cover the last part of their plan.