“I gotta go,” I choke. I rake a hand through my hair as I turn away and make for the door. When Ember calls after me, I stop at the threshold.
“I’ll call one of the other Lords to take my shift,” I say, my back to her. I can’t look at her right now. I can’t face any of this right now. “You’ll be safe.”
And then, before she can say anything else, I close the door behind me.
31
Ember
The only thing that stops me from running after Striker when he storms out is that I’m mad as hell at him for basically accusing me of not caring about Wren.
I spend the rest of the evening fuming at him. I lie awake in bed that night remembering what he told me about his brother Richie, and how he basically lost him to the system he railed at during our fight. By the next morning, I’m running on next to no sleep, and I’m still careening back and forth between self-righteous anger and guilty uncertainty. I know what I told Striker is realistic. But I also know it’s not morally right.
I get ready for work in a haze. I give Bert his pain pill, make sure he’s gone out in the backyard to do his business, and settle him back in on his downstairs doggy bed. I’m relieved to see he seems to be doing better and getting around okay, despite his broken leg and the dreaded cone of shame he has to wear. Still, he’s whining a lot this morning, and keeps peering up at me with reproachful eyes.
“What is it, B?” I ask him sadly. “Do you miss Striker?”
At the name, he immediately starts panting hopefully and thumping his tail.
“Me, too, buddy,” I sigh, pulling him into a hug. “Me, too.”
Glancing out living room window before I leave, I don’t notice anyone guarding the house. But when I pull my car out of the driveway, sure enough, a Lord on a Harley pulls out behind me. I recognize him as Bullet, whom I met at the poker run. He must see me glancing at him in my rearview mirror, because he gives me a wave of acknowledgment. I wave back. After my house being broken into the other night, it’s reassuring to have the MC guarding me. Even though it’s not the Lord I wish it was.
At work, I have trouble concentrating. Besides the fact that Striker’s mad at me, I’m still ruminating about the uncertainty of Tank’s custody case. Not to mention I’m a little unnerved at the idea of working on Cady’s divorce case, since my house was just ransacked and my dog injured. I decide to take a deep breath, put that whole damn mess to the side for a while, and work on other projects today.
One of my other cases involves drawing up a prenup for a woman who’s getting married for the second time. She just came into a rather sizable inheritance after the death of her last living parent. The inheritance includes the family property, which is a house on several acres. The woman plans to divide the land up into several parcels to sell, and the particulars of her case remind me of the plot of land that Mark plans to sell from his uncle’s estate.
Idly, I wonder whether he has paid the property taxes yet, and whether he’ll be updating me soon. Maybe I should nudge him about that, since we didn’t part on the best of terms at the gala.
Out of curiosity, I decide to log into our joint investment account to check whether he’s taken the five-thousand dollars out yet. I pull up the website and enter the user name and password. The account loads.
I blink in confusion at the screen.
That can’t be right.
The balance says… thirty-four cents.
Thirty-four cents.
I click on the link for the transaction history.
Oh…
Oh my God.
Mark took the entire thing. Close to fifty thousand dollars.
Poised above the keyboard, my hands start to tremble. I pull them into my lap, feeling dizzy. Blood starts to rush in my ears as I stand, shakily cross the room, and open the door.
“Margot,” I hear myself say. “Do you and Mark have a family member — a great uncle — who recently passed away? Harold? Henry?”
“Uncle Harold?” Margot returns my gaze quizzically. “We did have a great uncle with that name, yeah, but he’s been dead for a while. God, over ten years ago, at least. His funeral was when I was in college.”
Her words reach me as though through gauze. “Okay. Thanks,” I mumble, shutting the door again. I make it to a chair, fall into it, and try to calm my racing heart.
Fletcher Hadley called Mark a miracle worker at the gala. Said he couldn’t believe how much money Mark was making for him.
Maybe miracle isn’t the word for it.
Mark can’t be making as much as Fletcher said if he’s stealing from our joint account.
My fingers are still icy as I reach for my cell phone — so much so that I have trouble hitting the button for Mark’s number.
“What have you done?” I demand as soon as his voice mail picks up. “Mark, if you are avoiding me, I swear to God… You told me you needed five-thousand dollars! How dare you drain our account without asking me!” Mustering my most threatening self, I take a deep breath. “Mark, I know you’re doing something shady. I don’t know what it is, but I am not going to let you drag me down with you. Fletcher Hadley told me you’ve been making him money hand over fist, and that you’ve been doing the same for all his friends. You need to call me ASAP and tell me exactly what is going on, and come clean to him about anything less than one-hundred percent above-board that you’re doing. Or I’ll go to him myself.”
I press the button to end the call, then drop the phone on the desk and cover my face in my hands.
Is it possible I’m making too much of this? Is it possible there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for what Mark has done?
No. There’s no explanation. Mark said five-thousand. Not fifty. There’s no way I would have agreed to that, and he knows it.
And then, I remember what I said to Cady the day she came to my office with Wren.
Divorce is a process of telling yourself that whatever your spouse’s faults are, there are some things they would never stoop to.
And then finding out they would.
32
Striker
Three days.
Three days of a bender that has me waking up in places I’ve never seen before.
Three days of my phone blowing up with messages from Tank, demanding to know where the fuck I am.
Three days without a single message from Ember.
Not that she should be calling me. I’m the one who walked out on her.
She’s still got round the clock surveillance on her. She’s safe. I made sure of that.
I haven’t called her either. I wouldn’t know what to say if I did.
It ain’t that I don’t wanna talk to her. God knows I do. Somehow it took walking away from her to realize that I’d gotten used to being around her twenty-four seven. More than used to her. Dependent on her presence. Addicted.
When guarding her was my job, I could tell myself that’s all I was doing there. My job.
Now I know better.
I’m done being pissed at her for being part of the system that took my brother away from me. Hell, even that night I realized I was being an ass, blaming her for shit that had nothing to do with her.