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Lana stared at me, and I could see fear written all over her face, and I went to her to provide comfort.
“Don’t worry. He can’t get into the building without my okay. The front desk will turn him away.”
“But we have to leave sometime. He’ll get us then.”
“Lana, what do you think he’s going to do?”
When I told her that my eyes traveled over her injuries, and I recalled what Graham had told me about Declan’s violent tendencies.
“You’ve seen what he can do. He doesn’t like to lose.”
I tried to make a joke, “Then we’ll stay here holed up like newlyweds. We’ll make love all day and order take out. I’m the boss; I don’t need to be in the office if I don’t want to.”
“But eventually, we have to leave.”
“Lana, it will be alright.”
My phone started to chime, and I checked to see Declan Blair’s name flash on the screen. My eyes flicked to Lana’s, and I made a snap decision, I swiped the screen and put the phone to my ear.
“What can I do for you, Declan?”
“Where the fuck is my wife?”
“I know she’s with you, the fucking whore.”
“You say one more nasty thing about her, and I hang up,” I growl. “Be glad she didn’t have you arrested you piece of shit. How could you put your hands on her?”
“She needed to learn a lesson which I guess she didn’t learn since she’s with you. That night she came home reeking of your cologne. Did you think I wouldn’t figure out she fucked you?”
I wanted to ask him why he thought it was alright for him to cheat on Lana but not for her to cheat on him? But I would keep that to myself until the appropriate moment when we would present him with the pictures the private investigator had taken.
“She doesn’t belong to you. She isn’t a toy or an image on your arm. Why did you ask her to be friends with me if you knew this would happen?”
“Simple, I like to test my partners to see how faithful they are. It looks like Lana failed the test. I knew eventually that she would give in to your charms, but the game was fun to watch you salivate over something you couldn’t have.”
“You’re rationale makes no sense. You’re a lunatic.”
“And you’re about to be right back where you started your life, living miserably as lower middle class. You might as well call your parents right now for them to reserve your childhood room. I’m going to take down your company, and if Lana wants that kind of life, she can have you. She’ll get nothing from me. We’ve only been married a month, and her prenup gives her nothing for that milestone.”
“Lana doesn’t need your money, and neither do I. You can revel in all your riches, but you have nothing as far as I’m concerned. As for my company, you’ll never succeed. You can take away my programmers and try to steal my accounts, but it won’t work. If you take me down, I’ll come back twice as hard. I’m a survivor, and because I started out on the bottom rungs, I know how to work my way back up. If you go down, you won’t have a clue how to get back up.”
“I’ll never go down. As for Lana, keep the whore. I want nothing to do with her. But know this, I’ll fight her for a divorce, anything to make her and you miserable. Enjoy your fucking lives.”
Declan hung the phone up, and as I listened to my phone disconnect, I realized my hands were shaking. Lana sat, holding her hand over her mouth.
“I heard what he said. He’s going to take your company away. I can’t be a part of this. I can’t be the cause of this.”
“Lana, stop thinking this is your fault. Declan will get what’s coming to him. I’m not worried about losing my company, losing you would be far more devastating. I know because I already dealt with it.”
She looked at me and burst into tears. I shouldn’t have said what I did, but I wanted her to know that overcoming the loss of my fortune would never compare to her loss. I took her in my arms and hugged her to my chest. I let her cry as long as she needed to. I knew that what she had been through the past few months was a weight that nobody should have to bear.
“Baby, it’s okay,” I soothed.
“It’s not. I have something to tell you about why I stayed away all those years. You don’t know everything.”
I gently pushed her away from my chest, “What are you talking about?”
“Some of it was guilt. I knew I could never tell you what I’d done, and I needed to leave before you found out. I prayed while I was gone; you would never hear about it. But now that we’re together again, I need to tell you. I can’t hide this from you any longer. Hear me out, and if you don’t want me after, I understand. I wouldn’t either. I don’t deserve you.”
