The Private Serials Box Set(55)

“I don’t want to look at your filth, Lena. You can have it all.” He pushed the paper toward me again, along with the pen. I picked the pen up in my hand and took in a deep breath. This was exactly the ending I was trying to avoid; the ending I didn’t think I deserved. The only comfort in all of this was knowing even though I’d lost a lot, I still had Preston.

I exhaled, and my hand swiped the pen along the line, and I signed the name I hated. Lena Bellows. I didn’t want to be her anymore. The very first chance I got I would change my name. I didn’t want to be connected to Derrek in any way.

As soon as I signed the paper, he slid another one my way, which he had signed, and I signed that one, then folded it up and squeezed it tightly in my hands.

“Here,” Derrek said as he slid an SD card across the desk. “All the pictures are on that card. There was no other evidence, no videos or anything like that.” Derrek smirked, placing his steepled fingers over his lips. “Truly, Lena, if you’d been even one tenth of the whore with me as you were with him, this might have played out differently. These pictures showed me a wanton woman I’ve never met.”

“Perhaps, if you were one tenth of the man Preston is, I would have been more receptive,” I said snidely.

“Oh, right!” he said, snapping his fingers, as if he’d just remembered something important. “That’s the other piece of this puzzle.”

“What are you talking about?” I was tired of listening to his voice and just wanted to leave and have this be over with.

“The other part – even more evidence you’re a stupid whore.” Derrek laughed out loud, his head falling back against his chair. “I’m sorry,” he said between chuckles. “It’s just too good.”

“Just spit it out, Derrek.”

“Preston, your lover, the man you’ve given everything up for, the man who you think you’re going to spend the rest of your life with?” Slowly, an evil and wicked smirk grew on his lips and his eyes began to sparkle with excitement. “He works for me.”

His words felt like a wrecking ball slamming into me. My breath stopped, my heart exploded, my veins ran dry because there was nothing pulsing through me except pain. Derrek was looking at me as if he’d just won the most important game he’d ever played.

“What?” I rasped, impressed I’d managed to say anything at all.

“I’ve had your phone bugged for years, darling. I was just waiting for the moment when you’d finally decided you’d had enough. When you called that firm for a consultation with a private investigator, I knew about it before you’d even told them your name.” He laughed again and my mouth closed, then opened again, like a guppy. I felt tears welling in my eyes, my throat stinging with the need to cry, my body aching for the release I knew sobbing would bring. “I called the firm right back and told them their services wouldn’t be needed, and I sent Preston in with one goal: to seduce you.”

“No,” I breathed.

“Yes, dear, and you took the bait just as I knew you would. You lasted, what? A week? You dug your own grave here, Lena.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Think about it,” he said, suddenly sounding angry. “In the beginning, that first week, what did Preston really do for you? Nothing. He brought you along for a stakeout, for Christ’s sake! What kind of private investigator would do that? He flirted with you, was inappropriate, and pursued you. He was on my payroll, doing a job for me.”

My mind went back to that first week with Preston, thought about all our encounters, and the pieces started to fall into place: him telling me not to call him at the agency, the fact he knew my last name before I’d ever given it to him, he knew where I lived. He tried to convince me it was because he was a P.I., but really it was because he worked for Derrek, knew everything about me already, and had been fooling me from the beginning.

I felt the bile in my stomach start to make its way upward and I stood, desperate to make it out of that house, frantically trying to escape what seemed to be the inescapable. I’d given myself to a man who was working against me from the beginning. I’d fallen in love with an imposter and ruined my chances at making something for myself.

I ran for the door, grabbing my purse and jacket as I left, ambling out of the house on a sob. I couldn’t see for the tears streaming down my face, couldn’t hear for the pulse thundering in my ears, and I had no idea what happened when I ran into something hard. It gripped me, and wrapped its arms around me, and it smelled familiar.

Preston.

Once my mind registered who was holding me, I wrenched myself from his arms and pushed him away with more force than I’d ever used on anyone.

“No!” I screamed. I sounded, even to my own ears, like pain. There was no other word. I was the embodiment of pain. “Don’t you touch me!”

“Lena, sweetheart,” he started.

“Fuck you! You don’t get to call me that!”

“Please, just listen to me.”

“I’m done letting men ruin my life. Done letting men control me. I trusted you, that’s the one thing you ever insisted on and I did it. I did exactly what you wanted. I trusted you and you f*cked me over. Fucked me in so many ways, I can’t even begin to list them all.”

“No,” he said, taking a step toward me. I stepped away from him and glared, making it clear he wasn’t to come near me again.