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He doesn’t finish that statement because I squeeze his throat so hard he stops breathing. Only for a second and he doesn’t lose consciousness. More’s the pity.
“And were the cameras installed before or aftershedid this?” I demand.
He pales. “W-what cameras?”
“Lie to me or play dumb again and I’ll break your fucking legs!” I bark.
“B-before! For her s-security.”
“I could buy that if the camera was on the entryway. But not the ones in the bedroom and bathroom you fucking sicko!”
“P-please. I’m s-s-sorry.”
“You’re going to give me the recordings.”
“I d-d—”
“What did I say about lying?” I kick his knee, and it crunches. The sound is disgusting but not as awful as the landlord’s screams.
“Okay! Okay! Please!”
“Where are they? At your place? Let’s go.”
I drag him out of the building and into my waiting car, him wailing about his knee the entire time, locking the doors so the little weasel can’t make a run for it at the red light.
“First things first. I replaced the oven and all the missing appliances, and had new carpets fitted. I painted the place and made it a damn sight nicer than it was. So you’re going to give her back every penny of her deposit.” The landlord opens his mouth to protest but I growl at him. “Did I say you could speak? I will pay the rent, in cash, with interest once I’ve seen those tapes, and you will give her a glowing reference when she calls for one. Do you understand?”
The greedy bastard nods hastily, pound signs in his eyes, obviously realising he’s getting a lucrative deal. She won’t be calling though. She won’t need a reference for another shitty flat. Because I’m never letting her go. She’s mine.
There’s no way in hell Candy trashed that flat herself and made off with the rent money, and if that fucker has the real culprit on camera two people will die today. Him, for trying to take advantage of my girl when she’s clearly a victim. And whoever actually stole all her shit and fucked her life up.
Though I may have to thank him first, because without his intervention I would never have met my soulmate.
CANDY
A perfect dinner ruined by my past. It’s probably time to stop running from it, but fuck if the resulting conversation with Wint wasn’t the hardest of my life.
I asked him how long he’d known it was me in the doorway. Was it right from the first time we met, or did it only hit him today when he saw me back there in the same place?
He said it was neither of those times. He’d been haunted by the memory of me from the moment we met, unable to place my face, but it had hit him when he found me crying in the bathroom at the club. It was the combination of curling my body up as small as I could and how bright my eyes looked full of tears that had triggered his memory.
So I’m guessing today was all a lie.
He didn’t want to spend time with me, getting to know me better. And it certainly wasn’t a date. It was a test. He dragged me all around town waiting for me to say something, and when we got back to the car and I hadn’t, he knew he needed to act. He dragged me past that old doorway, deliberately stopping to see how I’d react, and when I still didn’t confess, I suppose he only told his story to trigger mine.
I feel tricked. Hurt. Grateful.
Grateful that someone out there, besides Elle, gave a shit about me enough to keep looking for me.
I explained to Wint that that night in the doorway I vanished because Elle found me and took me home to her family, and they made me welcome and treated me like one of their own. He couldn’t comprehend how a girl on the streets was welcomed into a family as wealthy as Elle’s and still ended up destitute again at Christmas all those years later.
He asked me outright if I was an addict. And that fucking hurt. He knows damn well that I’m not on anything because a full drugs and sexual health screening was needed to work at the club.
So now he’s pissed. Or disappointed that I didn’t confide in him. But I’m pissed too because he made me feel like there was something between us, when all along he was using me to solve the mystery of who I was.
And now I have to go and work behind the bar at Candy Canes and smile and act like everything is fine when inside my heart is…not breaking, but it’s hurting. It hurts as much now as when Aiden and I split up. Maybe a little bit more. Because I put my trust in Wint and he threw it back in my face with his judgement.
I didn’t even get the chance to ask him if he told the others about me. I’m not sure why it even matters to me, but it does. Maybe because it’s my story to tell, my secret to keep. Or maybe it’s because in the short space of a few days I was made to feel like I belong, and I don’t want to lose that.
