Man of the House: A Dark Bad Boy Romance(35)

In a lot of ways, I was blinded by Emily. She was my central axis, the thing I kept spinning around, shifting from one pole of myself to the next. One moment I was selfless, trying to distance myself for her sake, and the next I was f*cking her in the pool-house, giving us what we both wanted.

There had to be balance. That was the only way we were going to survive this. It couldn’t be all of one thing or all of another, because nothing ever worked that way.

All of that was on my mind and more as I walked into my bedroom. I used the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and came back out into the main room, mind still elsewhere. It took me a minute before I noticed the now-familiar white envelope with my name written on it in blue ink.

Danger prickled down my spine, a tingling sensation. I hadn’t felt that before, not with the other notes, but this one was so f*cking different.

It was in my goddamn bedroom.

That meant someone with access. My room was always locked and was only supposed to open to my particular fingerprints unless in an emergency. Only a few people had access to this room aside from me. Evelyn was one of those people, but it couldn’t be her.

Then there was Cox . . .

I shook my head and slowly opened the piece of paper. Instead of a note, this time it was a picture. It was grainy, taken in a dark room, and probably taken by a security camera based on the timestamp in the lower right corner.

In the picture, Emily’s legs were wrapped around me, her breasts were exposed, and we were clearly having sex. Both of our faces were visible and there was no questioning what was going on.

There was no other information, no other note, nothing. The feeling of danger intensified until I felt like I was being watched. I quickly got out my phone and called the security desk.

“Yes?”

It was Cox’s second. “Marty,” I said. “Where is Cox?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was actually just getting concerned.”

Fuck. Shit. “Remove his access privileges.”

“What?”

“Do it right now. Remove his access privileges and any other access codes he may have been aware of. Lock down everything.”

“What’s going on?”

“Do you want a raise and a promotion?”

There was a slight pause. “I understand. We’ll find him.”

“Good. I need the security footage from my bedroom and the surrounding hallways. Send it to my phone as soon as possible.”

“Understood.”

“Get your best guys on this Cox thing, Marty. I want him found.”

“I will.”

I hung up my phone and collapsed onto the bed, staring at the picture.

It had to be Cox. It had to be him the whole time. Nobody else was close enough and knew the house enough. The person that taped the picture to the front door was never found leaving the grounds, which meant maybe he had never left. Maybe he taped the picture, ditched the clothes in the furnace, and went upstairs to the security room.

Fucking shit. Cox was a traitor.

I couldn’t think of anyone else that it could be. But I didn’t understand why Cox would do this. I paid him well and treated him very well, let him have essentially anything he wanted. He’d always been loyal.

Unless he got a better offer.

Cox wasn’t doing this on his own, that was for sure. He had nothing to gain by blackmailing me. He was smart enough to know that he had more to gain by sticking around and getting close to me than by trying to coerce some money out of me. He had to know that wouldn’t end well for him, not when I had the sort of resources that I did.

Unless someone with equal resources bought him off. That was the only thing that made any sense. Cox was a loyal man, but loyalty only got you so far. Maybe he got sick of seeing me act the way I did, or maybe he just really needed more money. I couldn’t imagine his reasoning, if it really was him that did all this.

I did know who was ultimately behind all of it, though.

Bruce had to be the mastermind. He wanted to destroy me, to get rid of me. Bruce hated me more than anything. What I didn’t get was why he didn’t go right to the media with the picture of me f*cking Emily and finish me off that way. Why all these veiled threats and underhanded tactics?

I couldn’t make sense of it all. There were games within games being played all around me, and I had to keep my wits sharp or else I’d stumble and lose. At least now I knew who my enemies were and could do something about it.

I stood up, groaning to myself. I had to talk to Evelyn and explain to her what was going on, and she was going to be f*cking pissed. She knew that Emily and I were interested in each other, but I doubted she knew how far it had gone already. I was not looking forward to that.

Most of all, I wasn’t looking forward to showing Emily. I knew that this was going to push her away from me again, and I should have been okay with that. Maybe I was, on some level, but most of me wanted to continue what we had.

It didn’t matter. I had to do the right thing and tell them what was happening.

Even if they were going to flip shit.





21





Emily





It was a gorgeous day in downtown San Francisco. I was walking along the bay, trying not to think about the events of the day before, trying to distract myself.

I loved the way the light played off the water. The graceful curve of the hills across the way complemented the flat, slightly rolling way the water moved along the land. I walked slowly at first then faster and faster as I began to realize that I couldn’t outrun my memory.