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This had to have been going on for longer than I’d had this secret.
With Michael’s help, I hired a private investigator. Michael handled the majority of the communication except when it came to the email specifically—I couldn’t stomach him seeing them, nor would I want another person violating our privacy like that. I didn’t even want to imagine how she felt knowing these had been sent to her father.
In the week that passed, I kept myself from reaching out to her and kept my head down at work. I managed to focus for once, only because I had to, only because I knew that if I didn’t, more questions would be raised sooner than later.
I spent more time with Lucas. I took him to the park, took him to the museum, took him anywhere he wanted to go. I let him skip school on the day I decided to work from home. I watched his basketball practice, I picked him up from school—and although it was likely far too hopeful on my end, I hadn’t expected him to ask about her.
He asked me why Ava hadn’t been around lately. He asked where she was and if she was okay. He asked if she could come over for dinner soon. He asked if we were still dating.
I didn’t know how to answer a single one of his questions.
Lying was against our code, and yet I found myself lying every way I knew how to get him to stop bringing her up. Every time, it hurt me twice over—once for having to speak about her, and once for breaking a promise I had with Lucas. I’d tried navigating the conversation away from her, but his curiosity about her was too intense, too headstrong.
It only made me miss her more.
But as I sat there with him on the sofa, his exhausted little frame leaned up against me with a blanket over him, half asleep as we watched our favorite show, my cell phone rang.
As quickly as I could without jostling Lucas, I slipped it from the pocket of my pajama bottoms. Lucas stirred slightly, but his little snore cut through a second later as I read the name on my screen.
The private investigator.
“Hey,” I said quietly into the phone. “Can you call me back in ten minutes? My son’s zonked out on my lap.”
“I know who sent the photos,” Shaun said.
“Fuck,” I breathed. “Okay.”
“Dad, that’s a bad word,” Lucas grumbled sleepily, turning over in my lap. “You’re not supposed to say that.”
“I’m sorry, give me one moment,” I said into the phone, being met with an exaggerated huff in response. I tucked the phone into my neck and spoke directly to Luc as I slowly slid out from under him. “I have to take a call, bud. I’ll be right back.”
“But our show,” he groaned, his half-lidded, sleepy eyes looking directly up at me. He wasn’t even watching it, but it broke my heart regardless.
“I know,” I sighed. Leaning down over him, I pressed a kiss to his forehead. “It’s really important. I’ll be back before you know it.”
I didn’t wait for his protest. I took the stairs two at a time as I sprinted up to the studio, my heart pounding far too quickly, far too erratically. I shut the door behind me, locking it for good measure, and stared down the piano as I raised the phone to my ear again.
“Okay, go.”
Shaun cleared his throat. “Right, as I was saying, Mr. Stone,” he started, attitude thick in his voice. “The PI who was hired to trail you and take these is fuckin’ sloppy. I won’t bore you with the details, but once I was able to get into his files, it was fairly obvious.”
“Is that…legal?” I asked.
I could hear the shrug in his voice. “His files weren’t protected.”
“That’s not an answer…”
“The man who hired him is someone named Andrew O’Shaughnessy. I looked him up and it seems he’s a member of the board at Stone & Co Global. I assume you know who he is.”
A chill ran down my spine as my breath caught.
Andrew.
Of fucking course it was Andrew.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” Shaun continued. “From what I could gather, it looks like he was trying to dig up some kind of scandal he could present to the rest of the board. That’s just from the emails he sent to this guy. I’ll forward it all on to you.”
Thank God I hadn’t stayed on the couch with Lucas.
