Cursing under my breath, I answered the call without saying hello. “There’s nothing to follow up on. I postponed negotiations until their next quarter reports come in.”
“I heard. Toshiro’s assistant pinged me. They’re threatening to try to sell elsewhere.”
“Fuck.” The deal was a good one, not one I wanted to lose.
But the heated conversation that drifted from the front of the suite suggested it had not been turndown service.
“Do you want me to call them back?” Hagan pressed.
I tried to concentrate on the question. “They aren’t going to attract other buyers without the latest quarter reports,” I reasoned. “If they’re pushing so hard, especially. It looks like they’re hiding numbers.”
“I can arrange some sort of temporary agreement based on quarter finals,” Hagan suggested.
The tone of the voices in the background escalated.
“Do that,” I said, knowing the decision was rushed. “I have to go.” I had already started toward the door, pocketing my mobile as soon as I hung up.
I hadn’t expected the sight I came across when I turned the corner into the entry hall. Hudson Pierce holding back an angry brunette who was screaming at my wife and looking like she would tear out Celia’s throat if let to do so. “It was you!” she shouted. “You’re so fucking sick. Hudson said you’d changed, but you will never change. You have no heart. Manipulating and conniving. Does your husband know what…what a…dragon he married?”
Celia protested defiantly, and knowing her as I did, I was positive that whatever she’d been accused of, she was innocent.
False accusations thrown at my wife? In my hotel suite?
I was immediately livid.
“What the hell is going on here?” I roared, not so loudly that the baby would hear me in the next room, but forceful enough to be given notice.
The room went abruptly silent, all eyes turned to me. Hudson loosened his grip on the rabid woman who I could only assume was his wife.
And Celia, the woman who had been only strong and defiant in her interactions with me for more than a year now, went white, her eyes wide with fear.
It would have been one thing if it seemed that her fear was directed at our guests. It was quite a different thing realizing that her fear was directed at me.
“Edward,” she said, taking a cautious step toward me. “It's nothing. Hudson and Alayna are...old friends.”
“Old friends, my ass,” the woman blurted out.
I knew the relationship between these women was rocky at best. Pierce’s insistence that he needed insurance against Celia from going after his wife was proof that their past had been highly complicated.
But except for Celia’s apprehension toward me, it seemed more like she was the one needing protection. Mrs. Pierce had both her claws and teeth out.
I felt suddenly feral, ready to take her on. “Is there a problem?” I asked, coming farther into the space.
Of course, the other issue was that my wife very obviously wanted me calm. “I didn't realize that you and Hudson Pierce had been friends, darling,” I said, because why the fuck was she using that term to describe him now?
Celia’s shoulders sagged, her eyes lowering to the ground, an act of submission I hadn’t seen from her in months.
“Actually, there is a problem,” Hudson’s wife said defiantly.
“Alayna,” Hudson hissed, seeming to want her tempered. Cordially he addressed me. “Edward, you haven’t met my wife.”
“No, I haven’t. And I hear we are about to be family.” I studied her in a way meant to put her in her place. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alayna.”
“It’s really just a misunderstanding,” Celia said quickly, her eyes imploring.
I knew what she wanted from me. She wanted me to turn around, let it go, walk away, the same way she’d wanted me to do so at Randall’s earlier in the night.
I’d walked away then, against my better judgment. Because I loved her, and she’d begged, and I was trying to be the man she wanted me to be, one who listened and respected and yielded.
I couldn’t be that man now.
Not when it was clear that there was a battle that Celia was fighting alone. Not when I had every reason to doubt she was leaving me out of it for motives other than my own good.
“I'd like to hear what Alayna has to say, if you don't mind?” I stared at Celia intensely, willing her to defy me. As often as she’d fought me in our marriage, she’d always obeyed my demand to heed me in public. For half a second, I wondered if that would change now.
Then her eyes lowered, giving in, which was both a relief and emboldening. “Alayna?” I said, encouraging her to speak.
She lifted her chin like a star student proud to have been called. “Hudson and I are being terrorized. We have reason to suspect the threats may be coming from your wife.”
“That's not necessarily true," Hudson said immediately.
Simultaneously, Celia piled on. “I haven’t done anything to you. I didn’t send a single one of those threats.”
I put my hand up to silence her, noting her choice of words. Threats. She’d asked if I’d threatened Hudson. What the fuck was going on?
“If she didn’t do it,” Alayna continued, “She could prove it, and help us find out who is threatening us, at the same time. It would be easy, if she’d let us see the journals that she kept from the time that she and Hudson…” She trailed off, but she’d said enough to start the pieces coming together.
Celia’s journals documented the “games” she’d played on other people. With her partner. Did that mean her partner was—?
Alayna plowed ahead suddenly, answering my unspoken question. “Hudson and Celia had a working relationship in the past. I don't mean to butt into your marriage. It would be truly cruel and devious to interfere with your relationship.” She threw a glare toward Celia. “And so I apologize if this is the first you are hearing about their former partnership. But my family’s safety is on the line, and this is truly important.”
And there the picture locked in place, a second’s worth of time sharpening the image until it was crystal clear—Hudson Pierce was the man who taught her. Hudson Pierce was the man she’d been protecting. Hudson bloody Pierce.
My mind wanted to follow each of the threads this discovery highlighted all at once, wanted to try to analyze whether I felt victorious or validated or irate or goddamned relieved, but of course, I couldn’t react at all. I had to keep it together for the moment. Protect my family. Stand up for my wife.
“I see,” I said, careful to hide any trace of surprise. “I do know about Hudson and Celia’s working relationship, of course.”
“You do?” Alayna sagged with disappointment, as though she’d hoped the news would put a riff in my relationship with my wife.
She had no idea.
“I do. Celia tells me everything. Don't you, darling?” I sidled up to my wife, putting my arm around her. Protectively? Threateningly? “Well, almost everything.” Admittedly, my clutch around her waist might have been tighter than necessary.
Celia’s head lowered with guilt.