Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“I had my guy retrieve the video surveillance at the restaurant that day I saw you and Manda. Your so-called stalker wasn’t a stalker. It was my friend. Nate.”
She gives a sharp shake of her head in denial. As if that’ll convince me.
“It was Nate,” I growl. “Question is, why was my friend, my best friend, meeting up with my ex and her bestie? Clearly, I intercepted a lunch between the three of you. Something I wasn’t supposed to know about.” I pause, quirking a brow. “To discuss Paris.”
The color drains from her face. “Winny…”
“He’s on the company phone plan you know. Nate. Funny how a little digging pulled up a number he talked to and often. Your number. Tell me. Are you his baby?”
“What? No,” she chokes out.
When Ash revealed Nate seeing someone, I was surprised. He’d never mentioned it. Now I know why. His baby was Meredith. The phone records proved they communicated a lot. There’s a ton of video footage—footage I easily obtained because Nate lives in the building I own—of her showing up at Nate’s apartment. Sometimes she stayed the night. There were many pictures of them seen coming and going together, wrapped in each other’s arms like lovers. So fucking bold.
Today—well, this whole week for that matter—has been a busy and eye-opening one.
“Your lies are getting old, Meredith. You’re a conniving bitch. End of fucking story.”
She gapes at me. “N-no. You don’t understand. I was only seeing him to get close to you! He meant nothing to me!”
“You fucked him for no reason because your plan didn’t work. Who else did you spread your legs for, Mer? Besides the Morellis? We know it wasn’t for your pathetic husband.”
“Winny…”
Defeat shines in her eyes which has her doing what every diva would do when she doesn’t get her way. She throws a tantrum. Tears and all.
“Winny! I did this for us! All of this was for us!” Fat tears fall from her lids, streaking down her rosy cheeks. Unlike Ash, Meredith wears waterproof mascara. Even as she has a fit, she still remains put together. “Why do you think I called you tonight?”
This gets my attention. I arch a brow at her to continue.
“Nate’s not who you think he is,” she murmurs. “He’s…”
“What? Embezzling behind my back? Fucking up my foreign deals like in Paris?”
Money was being funneled right under my nose, opened up under international Halcyon accounts with my forged signature. Specifically, in France. I’d come across something strange months ago and pulled the contracts to look at with Harold eventually. But then Ash showed up, distracting me for the time being. I’d planned to get back to it eventually, even going as far as to change the accessibility on the accounts that now require a series of passwords, different for each one and all locked away in my home safe in my closet. When Perry and I had to make our Paris trip, it was clear I’d needed to move things along, and I got Harold working on it.
She stands from the desk and walks over to the bookshelf to grab a tissue. After she dabs at her cheeks, she frowns at me. “You knew?”
“It took me a minute, but yes, I came to this conclusion.”
It also must have been what Nate was searching for when he showed up at my house and somehow conned Ash into letting him in. He wanted access to the money he’d carefully funneled away for himself. If Ash was in on it with him, he’d have obtained what he needed because I gave her the access to it. But she wasn’t his accomplice.
“You’re not mad?”
“Are you insane? Of course I’m pissed.” I also rise to my feet. “Thanks for this wonderful waste of my time where you told me everything I already knew. It’d be in your best interest to vacate the premises and never contact me again.”
She rushes up to me, her face scrunching as more tears fall, her head shaking back and forth. “No, Winny. That’s not all. He’s…He’s been losing it. Paranoid that you’re going to find out. Ever since the Paris accounts he’d set up suddenly required passwords, he panicked. Worried that you knew and were playing some sort of game with him. Even went as far as to sneak into your house and look around for them but he couldn’t ever get inside the safe. He was mad because he thought Ash was messing everything up.”
Messing everything up?
Dread coils in the pit of my stomach and I don’t like it.
“Start talking, Meredith, and fast.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ash
I’m antsy without my phone. I don’t know how the meeting went with the Morellis and it’s driving me crazy. The second I hear Perry’s voice, I bolt out of my chair on a hunt for him. I find him in a hallway but Winston is nowhere to be found.