Between Commitment and Betrayal (Hardy Billionaire Brothers, #1)(69)

And not two minutes later, Declan was standing at his bedroom door, his blue jersey in hand. But it dropped to the floor as he read what was on his phone. My HEAT watch beeped from the nightstand, and I didn’t have to glance at it to know what he was reading.

The press had done their job.

The look on his face said it all.

“Is this true?” He held up his phone. My face was all over it.

And the headline read, “Everly Belafonte: One Scam After Another.”





26




EVERLY





“I’M NOT sure what the article says, Declan.” I tried to keep my voice steady and hold back the tremor in it. “So, I can’t say. I haven’t read it yet.”

He stormed across the room as I started to type in the headline, ready to read it myself, but he snatched the phone from my hands.

“No.” His voice echoed through the room, so powerful in his anger I knew he felt blindsided and furious. Then, he strode away to put our phones down on a dresser and turned back to me. The fury ricocheted off the walls around us. “You tell me what happened. Who is Andrew Baldeck?”

My ex’s name in his mouth sounded wrong, vile. So revolting my stomach churned. “He’s a man from my past. We’re not talking about—”

“Everly, the rules have changed. The past is now in the fucking present. Let’s be honest, it always has been.”

“I … I don’t know what the newspaper wrote, but I can guess they painted me as a liar, as someone who made up a story because I was a jilted lover.”

“Is. It. True?” he asked again, and my heart cracked because I didn’t know what he meant.

“Me being a jilted lover?” I looked up at him and felt my throat closing as tears filled my eyes. My emotions were finally bubbling out after I’d held them in for so long. “Or the part where they say my account of being cuffed to a bed by my ex who assaulted my best friend and then me is a lie?”

Declan didn’t wince. The fire in his eyes though, it licked through the room at my words. “You know what part I’m asking about. Is. It. True?”

“The sad part is, Declan, I really don’t know.” I wanted to disappear, wanted to not even ask, but everyone who I’d thought would stand by me, who were supposed to be my friends, turned their backs on me. I’d put on a show for so long, I just swallowed down the hurt and the pain again as I gulped, and said softly, “The story was twisted so much over the last year that I really don’t know. I can say, the only part of these stories that are normally true about me are the ones they say are false. I don’t know what they wrote today, but it doesn’t matter. I got as much justice as the system allowed me to get, and the rest is whatever you want to believe for whatever suits your reputation and narrative now. You’re more of a public figure than I am. So, if the news is tainting your name, I can make a statement—”

“Stop.” He shook his head, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just fucking stop.”

He grabbed the phone, taking a deep breath and walked over to me with purpose. Leaning behind me to grab the comforter on either side of me, he folded it around me, wrapped me into a cocoon of sheets and pulled me into his lap, curling around me like he could encase me and protect me with his own body. Then he held the phone in front of me. “You’re going to see it, but I only want you looking once. Then, I’m having Piper go after every tabloid she can.”

“Declan, we don’t have to—”

“I’m taking care of you now, Everly.” He said with a controlled tone. “Please just listen.”

I took a deep breath and read.


“Everly Belafonte: One Scam After Another”



The mastermind strikes again. Everly Belafonte was a graduate student at Edgewood University more than a year ago when she claims she was assaulted. According to her statement:



“Andrew Baldeck invited my friend and I to a frat party at Beta Zeta Delta. We had three mixed drinks each before he invited us upstairs. We walked into his bedroom and he locked the door. He was my boyfriend, so I trusted that he wasn’t doing anything cruel, but when he opened his nightstand to pull out a gun, he wasn’t the man I trusted anymore.



He told us to take off our clothes. I kept telling him to think about what he was doing, but he grabbed handcuffs from the drawer too and directed me to put my wrists next to the bed post. When I hesitated, he pointed at my friend who was crying. He then grabbed her by the hair and threw her on the ground. He assaulted her and threatened to do more to her if I didn’t cooperate. I promised I would and begged him to let her go. He unlocked the door and told her to be quiet. I told him I didn’t want to do more, yet he assaulted me against the bedpost for what seemed an eternity. I was compliant until he stopped, and then I asked him to uncuff me. I told him I was enjoying it, and so he did. I fought him for the gun as soon as I was free and called 911 once it was in my possession.”



Belafonte’s story is just that: a story, according to sources who have claimed Belafonte’s friend, who was later name as Tonya Lakeland, doesn’t talk to her anymore and that no one at the frat party would corroborate her story. Andrew Baldeck was a D1 football player, straight-A student, and has no record. He claims she “wanted the fame and was mad I’d kissed her friend once. So she twisted this story. Her friend knows it too. We still talk, actually. We were all just having a good time that night.”