I returned to Max’s hotel the next afternoon.
Christian’s instructions were simple, if not easy, and there was no point dragging the inevitable out.
Either the plan would work, or it wouldn’t.
I knocked on Max’s hotel door, intensely aware of the man hidden in an alcove at the end of the hall. Christian had sent one of his men to accompany me. Kage would wait out of sight until I entered Max’s room, after which he could monitor what was happening through the nifty camera disguised as a necklace pendant. Apparently, he had some sort of device that could disable the door’s key card scanner in case the situation with Max turned nasty.
“Jules.” Max gave me a genial smile, but suspicion lurked in his eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you here again. Come back to collect on your…benefits?” His gaze dipped to my chest.
My skin crawled beneath his leering scrutiny, but I forced myself to remain semi-civil so I could get inside his room. “No, but I have something important to tell you about the painting.” I glanced around the hall like I was paranoid someone would hear us. “Let’s talk about it inside.”
Max narrowed his eyes. For a second, I was afraid he’d deny my request, but after several long, agonizing beats, he opened the door wider for me to enter.
I stepped inside and scanned the room, searching for his computer. If he packed it away…
Relief settled into my bones when I spotted the open laptop on his desk. Thank God. If I didn’t see it, Kage would’ve had to distract him so I could search for it, but this made my job much easier.
“So, what do you want to tell me?” Impatience threaded Max’s voice when I remained silent.
I turned to face him while I edged backward toward his desk. “I think the painting I gave you is a fraud.” I stuffed my hands in my sweatshirt pocket as casually as possible.
My fingers closed around the tiny gadget Christian gave me, and I let out a small cough to hide the soft beep it made when I pressed the power button.
The device was a wireless hacking tool Christian had developed himself. He’d explained how it worked, but the technical terms had gone way over my head. All I knew was, it had to be within five feet of the hacking target, and it couldn’t be turned on until it was or it would attach to a different network. Or something like that.
I trusted Christian knew what he was doing, so I followed his instructions to a tee despite understanding only half of what he said.
“The one you stole from your boyfriend’s place? It’s not.” Max smiled at my jerk of surprise. “You thought I didn’t know you were fucking your little doctor boy toy? I had to case his place after I tracked the painting down. I saw you going in and out of his house at all hours of the day. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what you two were doing.” His smile turned nasty. “Once a whore, always a whore.”
Blooms of outrage colored my cheeks. “Is that the best you can come up with? The name-calling is getting old, Max. Find a new insult or don’t use one at all, especially since I came here to help you.”
Come on, Christian.
He said it would take two minutes for the device to connect to the computer, then an additional five to ten minutes to find the video, depending on how many files Max had. In hindsight, I was lucky Max sent me screenshots to fuck with me the past few weeks—Christian could use them as a basis for his search. Otherwise, it would take his software far longer to scan every video if it didn’t know what it was looking for.
We agreed he would text me only after he found and destroyed all copies of the video. I’d personalized his alert tone, so I would know it was done without having to check my phone.
“Help me?” Max stared at me, his suspicion mounting. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I don’t want you to come back later and pin the blame on me. I want this”—I gestured between us—“to be over with as soon as possible.” I snuck a peek at the clock. Shit. It’d been less than five minutes. I needed to drag the conversation out longer. “How do you know for sure the painting’s not a fraud?”
“My friends confirmed it,” he said coldly. “Besides, everyone thinks it’s junk. No one would copy junk, Jules.” He walked toward me, his steps heavy against the paper-thin blue carpet.
I forced myself to hold my ground. Kage was right outside, but being trapped in a hotel room with Max made my heart lurch with panic.
“What’s so special about the painting anyway? It’s hideous.” I should’ve worn something other than a sweatshirt. It clung to my skin, suffocating me. The heat rose from my torso to my face, and I felt like I was burning alive in an incinerator of my own making.
“Value doesn’t always equate to beauty.” Max looked me over from head to toe, his implication clear. “The painting is one of a limited number that belonged to a famous European collector. It’s worth a lot of money in certain circles, but it was sold at an estate sale by mistake and switched from owner to owner until we tracked it down to your boyfriend’s house. Took a lot of paperwork tracing and bribes to get to that point, but we did it.” His eyes glinted with malicious amusement. “Imagine my delight when I learned about your connection to the current owner. It was like fate dropped you into my lap.”
Yeah, no kidding. Fate liked to fuck me over as a hobby.
“Did you tell him about the painting?” Max asked. “Or did you suck his cock so good he handed it over without complaint?”
“At least he knows what to do with his cock, unlike some other people I know.” My voice dripped with poisonous honey. “Sucking it is no hardship at all.”
Max’s words still poked at old insecurities, but I refused to let him shame me for enjoying sex, dammit.
Guys slept with multiple partners and were lauded for being players; girls did the same and were decried as whores. It was a double standard as old as time, and I was fucking sick of it.
Satisfaction flared in my stomach when his face turned a mottled red. One universal truth about men: nothing dented their ego and pissed them off more than questioning their manhood.
“Careful, Jules.” Icy rage flowed beneath Max’s words, but his mask was slipping. I could see it in his eye twitch and the vein pulsing in his forehead. Beneath all that fake “niceness” was a fragile little shit who was one insult away from exploding.
I swallowed a ball of trepidation. It’s fine. Kage is right outside.
“One press of the button. That’s all it’ll take before everyone knows what a whore you are. I wonder what your boyfriend will say when he sees another guy fucking you in the ass and coming all over your face. Or what Silver & Klein will say when they see what their potential employee likes to do in her spare time.” He cocked his head, his eyes glittering with malice. “Maybe I’ll upload it to a porn site. Get paid. It’s hard for prior felons to get a job these days. Gotta do what I gotta do to put food on the table.”
The metal gadget dug into my palms. Oxygen ran thin at the prospect of the video being uploaded online for the world to see. Of strange men jerking off to one of the worst moments of my life.
I shouldn’t have provoked Max so early. What if Christian couldn’t erase the video? What if he missed a copy? What if—
The soft notes of Christian’s personalized alert tone burst from my phone.
The one we set so I would know once the job was done.
My heart rattled harder against my ribcage. Now that the moment was here, I couldn’t untie my tongue. How much did I really trust Christian to get the job done? It would be so easy to miss a file. Nothing truly died in cyberspace. And what if Max made a physical copy?
The walls pressed in, caging me in yellowing floral wallpaper and the scent of mildew.
Can’t breathe can’t breathe cantbreathecantbreathe…
Another, more impatient burst of music sliced through the silence. Christian was probably monitoring the situation via the camera and wondering why I hadn’t made my next move yet.
I sucked in a shallow lungful of air.
I’d come this far. There was no backing out now.
“Actually,” I said. “You might want to check your phone. See if that video is still there. Things disappear in cyberspace all the time.”
Beads of sweat dotted my forehead as Max stared at me. I could practically see him piecing the puzzle together—my unannounced arrival, the way I’d stretched out our conversation, why I was suddenly so willing to talk back.
Once it clicked, he jabbed at his phone, his eyes moving back and forth over the screen with frenzied speed.
Air flowed to my lungs again when he snarled.
It was gone. From his phone, at least.
Max didn’t say a word as he pushed past me toward his laptop. Each frantic tap on the keyboard sounded like a gunshot in the silence.
I inched toward the door but kept my eye on him. His reaction would tell me everything—whether Christian had destroyed every copy, or whether he had another copy of the video stashed somewhere.
When Max finally looked up, his features contorted into a mask of rage, my knees weakened with relief.
After years of the tape hanging over my head, it was finally gone.
I was home free.
“What did you do?” he hissed.
“I took back what belonged to me. Control over my body.” A thick pressure inside me eased, so suddenly and completely I would’ve floated off the ground had I not been terrified any movement would shatter this delicate dream. The pressure had been a part of me for so long I hadn’t realized it was there until it was gone. “I also want the painting back. It doesn’t belong to you or your friends.”
Max moved so fast I didn’t get a chance to blink before his hand closed around my wrist in a crushing grip. A small cry fell out at the pain lancing up my arm.
“You fucking bitch—” He only got half his sentence out before tattooed hands yanked him off me and tossed him aside like he was nothing more than a rag doll.
Kage.
Somehow, he’d entered the room without either of us noticing.
“Hands off the lady,” Kage growled.
Max sputtered in shock as he took in the other man’s bulky, six-foot-two frame. “Who the fuck are you?”
Kage crossed his arms over his chest. He didn’t answer.
“The painting, Max.” My wrist still throbbed from where he’d grabbed me, but I ignored it. “Where is it?”
His jaw flexed with anger, but he wasn’t dumb enough to test Kage’s capability for violence. “The closet,” he ground out. “In the portfolio bag.”
I glanced at Kage, who nodded. He kept an eye on Max while I retrieved the bag from the closet and unzipped it. The painting was nestled inside the black material, safe and sound and hideous as ever.
Thank God.
“This isn’t over,” Max said as I walked to the door. He’d wrestled his outward fury under control, but his eyes shone with anger and panic. I assumed his “friends” wouldn’t be too happy about him losing the painting. “You think you solved all your problems just because you got rid of the tape and took back the painting? You’re still a liar and a whore. Eventually, your boyfriend will figure it out and toss you aside the way everyone does. The way I’d planned to do before you snuck off in the middle of the night like a coward.”
I stopped in the doorway. Max was pushing every button he could find. Some of it I brushed off; others peeled the scabs off healing wounds until they bled again.
Sweat dampened my palms at the prospect of Josh finding out what happened.
“Maybe I’ll nudge the process along. Give the good doctor a heads up on who, exactly, broke into his house. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the truth.” The poison from Max’s words dripped into my veins.
Kage’s low growl rumbled through the air. He stepped toward the other man, but I held out my arm to stop him.
This wasn’t his fight.
“Actually, Max it is over.” The bag strap slipped against my palms. “You don’t have the tape. You don’t have evidence of anything that happened in Ohio. If you did, you would’ve used it already. And you can try to tell Josh, but he’s not going to believe you over me. You have nothing.”
Max paled. He curled his hands into fists, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
Without the armor of blackmail, he looked small. Weak, like the Wizard of Oz after the curtain was pulled back.
A strange, unexpected seed of sympathy sprouted in my stomach. For all the terrible things he’d done, Max had saved me when my mom kicked me out. Granted, he’d pulled me into a life I was less than proud of, but without him, I might’ve ended up homeless.
I would still cut his balls off if I had the chance, but he was right. I did owe him. Not money or my body, but some acknowledgment of our shared history that would allow me to walk away for good with a clear conscience.
“I’m sorry you spent all those years in jail,” I said. “Seven years is a long time, and I understand why you’re angry. But you’re out now, and it’s a chance for a fresh start. Don’t get sucked into your old life any more than you already have.” I swallowed hard. “It’s easy to get caught up in old habits and hurts, but you’ll never be happy chasing things that no longer exist. It’s time to move on from the past. I did.”
I walked out, leaving Max red-faced and alone in his hotel room.
My mind tumbled with a thousand thoughts as Kage and I rode the elevator down to the lobby.
It’s time to move on from the past. I did.
Except I hadn’t, not really.
I’d planned to plant the stolen items back in Josh’s house and leave him to figure out why the burglar would do such a thing. But if I did that, my lies would always be an albatross around my neck. Even if Josh never found out what happened, I would know. Every time he kissed me, every time he smiled at me, I would know I was keeping something from him, and it would eat me, and eventually us, alive.
How could you build a relationship on a foundation of lies?
The answer: you couldn’t.
The elevator doors opened. I walked through the lobby, barely noticing the ugly orange carpet and threadbare sofas.
Moving on from the past didn’t mean burying it beneath a new foundation and hoping no one found it; it meant exposing the ugliness to the light and taking responsibility.
You couldn’t heal from something if you didn’t acknowledge it.
As Kage and I stepped out of the hotel, my thoughts crystallized into clarity.
I knew what I had to do.
I had to tell Josh the truth.
