It’s Just Business

I strip off my shirt, just about ready to step into the shower for a well-deserved soak after a day where I accomplished more than I’d planned. I had to be out of the office for most of it, which means I’ve missed Raven all day.

Damned City Hall.

A meeting with the mayor and influential members of the city council ran longer than I expected. Two investments I’m making in town were being held up for purely political reasons, and negotiations on the required offset to clear the path took longer than I expected. But it was a productive day, all in all.

In the end, I gained approval for a five hundred million-dollar acquisition with the financially acceptable investment of only fifty million dollars. The offset? My agreement to renovate and expand half a dozen youth parks in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city, something I would’ve happily done regardless of their rubber stamp on my proposal. I already give over a million dollars a year to programs there. I do it quietly, not trying to make a splash and gain attention for it, but those at the mayor’s level know where their funds come from.

As the steam fills the room, I rub the back of my neck, replaying the conversations. It took a lot of dancing around the solution, but in the end, I was able to walk out with what I wanted. A rare use of a Monday afternoon and evening at home, where I’ll be later joined by Raven for our usual nightly session. A grin pulls at my lips.

I’m eager to share the news with her. She’ll understand more than most.

I drop my shirt to the floor, but before I can undo my pants, my phone’s alarm goes off. My hand freezes, and I pull it out to see that the personal alarm I’ve got in my office has been triggered. It’s not one that building security has, because anyone who’s gotten that far clearly is someone who belongs in the building.

It’s an inside threat.

But anyone who’s breaking into my office is on a fool’s errand. My desk contains nothing sensitive, and my computer has security that would make even professional hackers reconsider their options.

Who the fuck is in my office?

It only takes a glance at security outside the door a moment before to see. Raven.

My brow furrows, and a deep crease settles in my forehead. What the hell is she doing? She knows I’m not there. I wait a moment and then one more for her to remember my schedule and that I’m not there. But she doesn’t leave.

It takes great effort to shut down every thought that comes to mind. I quickly change into some casual clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, before heading back to the office. The security staff give me a double-take. They’ve seen me after hours. It’s just the clothes that seem out of place. I give them a wave and stride with purpose to the elevator.

Raven Hill. What are you doing? Anxiousness has my hands clamming up. I clench and unclench them, waiting for the floor to ping.

The office is dark, but it’s the in-between time after everyone leaves for the day and before the cleaning crew makes their rounds. There shouldn’t be anyone here. In fact, it’s usually the precious pocket where Raven and I would be having our ‘review’ of the day.

That thought makes the blood in my veins run cold.

I walk silently, listening, and I don’t hear anything. I wait a moment, waiting to hear the clacking of a keyboard or a drawer opening. Something, anything. But there’s nothing.

I push my door open, hoping not to startle her but to see what the hell she’s doing. She shouldn’t be in my office and she damn well knows it.

What the hell is she thinking?

As I turn the lights on, she looks up, and I can see that her eyes appear haunted, like she’s being torn apart by something.

“You know we were meeting at my place later, so what are you doing?” I ask quietly, shutting the door behind me.

A million thoughts bombard me at once. Betrayal, confusion, denial, and even a tiny bit of hope that I’m wrong because I trust her that much despite the current scene before me.

“I always come here after work. My feet just kinda brought me upstairs,” she says, her voice monotone. She blinks, and a silent tear rolls down her cheek.

My heart races. She’s lying. What the hell is going on?

“What’s wrong?” I cross the room slowly, my footsteps on the soft carpet louder than they should be. Coming around my desk, I perch on the edge just to her side and force myself to assume a position of relaxation, crossing one ankle over the other and clasping my hands in my lap so I don’t touch her. Not until I know what the fuck is going on.

Because something sure as hell is happening right now.

You don’t know what it is, I try to remind myself, but the acid in my stomach is rising. Although I’ve been in this situation before.

She looks up at me, her eyes glassy, and for a moment, I think she’s going to lie again. It takes everything in me to sit still and wait. To have patience.

Then she does it.

Raven looks up at me and swallows thickly. “I went grocery shopping this weekend. Afterward, I always go to Goldman’s Café for cheesecake. I had just sat down when…”

She pauses, her chin dropping, but I can tell that her eyes go distant, like she’s reliving the moment she’s telling me about. “When what?” I ask gently.

She drags her eyes back to mine and says three words I never expected to hear from her. “Evan sat down.” She swallows thickly, and anger simmers inside me.

My fists clench on the edge of my desk, and I can feel the material creak underneath my grip. “What did he have to say?”

I imagine the worst—that she’s going back to him. I imagine the best—that she ripped him to shreds right there in the café.

“He told me that you have an email, one that you’ve been using to blackmail him,” Raven says. “He says you did the same thing to Olivia.”

“And you believed him?” I ask and then correct myself. “You believe him?”

“Yes and no,” she says with a shrug as if that answer doesn’t stab me directly in the heart. “I don’t think you would blackmail your ex. What you feel for her is too deep still.” Her voice cracks. “When you told me about her, it was pain and hurt in your voice, not hate. Evan? Yeah, I think you would.” Her eyes meet mine, and her lips tilt up ever so slightly at the corners. “But I don’t think I care. I think I’d blackmail him too if I had anything on him that mattered.” She licks her lips, like the ugly truth of the admission is bitter-tasting.

“You wouldn’t,” I say with certainty. “You think you could, imagine you’d get satisfaction from it, but when push came to shove, you wouldn’t do it.”

Her smile falls because she knows I’m right. She’s strong, capable, and brilliant, but she’s not cold-hearted enough to do what she’s imagining. That’s why fucking with Evan in the first place was my idea, not hers.

“Would you? Did you? Have you ever blackmailed anyone?” she asks.

She knows better than to think I would back away from the option if the situation called for it.

But she needs all the information for us to move forward on level ground, so I add, “I’ve never outright blackmailed someone the way you mean, like a movie villain demanding money and threatening exposure, but if a tidbit of information is useful, letting me apply pressure to accomplish a goal, then yeah, I would… I have… and I’ll do it again.” I pin her with a gaze, making sure she hears that truth.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“You didn’t blackmail him, then?” she questions.

“No,” I answer honestly.

‘So Evan’s full of shit,” she states with a scoff. “I knew it.”

“Yet, here you are,” I remind her.

She sighs, looking around my office before her eyes land heavily on my computer, making me wonder exactly what Evan told her.

“I thought being here would help me find clarity to figure out Evan’s play, because I knew he was up to something, so I’ve been sitting here, trying to work it out in my mind and examine it from every angle. And I knew you’d come, so I was waiting on you.”

I raise a brow, frowning. “You could’ve called me. We could’ve talked at my place tonight.”

Her smile is wry. “I didn’t want to warn you, and I was afraid I’d get distracted if I showed up at your house tonight. And…”

“And what?” I question as I watch her pick at a nonexistent thread on her blouse.

“I want you to show me,” she says tightly before swallowing and then looking up at me.

“Show you what?”

She can barely look me in the eyes.

“What did Evan tell you, exactly?”

“He said you were mentally abusive to Olivia, which ran her to his arms for some sort of sanctuary, and in your fury, you blackmailed her, forcing her to flee the city. And then you’re lording some email over him, which I’m supposed to delete.”

That motherfucker! I jump from the desk, unable to stay seated and attempt to control my rising anger. He’s a fucking prick through and through.

Raven flinches at my sudden movement and volume, but there is no fear in her eyes. She’s looking back at me boldly. She says, “I want to see the email,” and it’s nearly my undoing.

“You don’t believe that, do you?” I demand, feeling sick to my stomach. “That I’m abusive and she ran to him because of me?”

She shakes her head. “Of course not. But after Evan and Elise, I’m a ‘trust, but verify’ girl, especially on matters of the heart, and I… I am in deep with you, and I….”

She clears her throat but doesn’t finish.

“You what?” I push, feeling a touch of hope from the way she’s talking. “You what?”

“I just want to see the email, Dylan.”

My pulse rages, and I stare at her, vulnerable, and I know it’s an ultimatum.

What she’s saying sounds reasonable, but what she’s asking is too much. She wants me to rip through scars that I’ve long buried and hold my heart up to the light of her judgment, trusting that she won’t see the worst of me and simply walk away, leaving me in shambles.

It’s then I notice the tear stains on the sleeve of her blouse and the way she can barely look at me.

“Is there something else I don’t know?” I ask her.

She shakes her head no.

“All of this because of Evan?” I press, and her eyes whip up to mine. Red-rimmed.

“I just want to make sure you’re the person I think you are.”

“Says the woman who broke into my office to give me an ultimatum,” I counter in a low tone.

Her expression flinches, as if my words struck her.

A heavy sigh leaves me. “If there’s no other choice…”

I have to pace, needing an outlet for the anger and fear coursing through me, so that I can force myself to go back to a time that I’ve blocked out for damn good reasons.

“When I found out,” I tell her, “it tore me apart. I went to a very dark place for a long time, and I’ll admit, I spent a lot of personal time and money digging into Olivia and Evan. I kept asking myself how I could’ve missed the signs. Signs that Olivia was unhappy, that Evan was a monster, that they were fucking right behind my back.” I shake my head, remembering.

“What happened to Olivia?” Raven asks me. “Evan said she left town after you ruined her.”

I bark out a laugh, which sounds more bitter than I would have thought considering how old the wound is. “Honestly, I don’t know,” I say. “When Olivia betrayed me, I had one last meeting with her in my apartment at the time. She tried to apologize, said it ‘just happened’, but I was cold and blunt, told her it didn’t matter anymore. I gave her a file box with the things she’d been keeping at my place and took back my key. Other than that, I never kept up with her. I didn’t even ask for the engagement ring back or the wedding rings I left on her doorknob. None of it meant anything anymore.” It dawns on me as I tell her that the pain I prepared to feel isn’t there. When I look back to Raven, though, staring at me like she’s hoping I say all the right things to ease her worries, the agony I felt returns.

I offer more. “I imagine, Evan tossed her aside soon after. He didn’t care about her. She was a means to an end, a way to hurt me.” I release a shaky breath as I sit on the desk’s edge again. “It worked. But it was a long time ago. Years at this point.”

“Years ago or not, it’s still working,” she reminds me gently as she puts her hand on my thigh. “It’s still hurting you or I wouldn’t be sitting here as your means to an end to hurt him. That’s what it is between us, remember?”

The similarity is painfully uncomfortable, but Raven and I have moved well beyond the revenge scenario we began with. What I feel for her has nothing to do with Evan. However, my desire for justice remains.

“Wherever Olivia is, it’s her business and her life,” I tell Raven succinctly, covering her hand with my own as if I can hold her here with me. “I’m not going to waste my time on her any longer. Evan’s different. Hypocritical, I suppose.”

“And what about Evan? The email with the blackmail?” she questions.

“What email?”

She rattles off a date and time.

“What are you talking about?” I ask her, and she looks at me like I’m lying to her. Not that prick Evan.

I swap places with her, and though it takes me a few minutes, going into my email and searching up the email Evan wanted deleted, I eventually pull it up on the middle one of my screens, letting Raven read it all. “This… this is nothing,” Raven says, her brows knit together in confusion. “Why would he want me to do that? What does he have to gain from having me delete an email you probably haven’t looked at in six years?”

“This is why,” I reply, getting up and walking out of my office. Once I’m past the doorway’s threshold, I hold my phone up so she can see it. “Do it. Delete the message.”

Unsure, she sits back in my chair, her eyes bouncing from me to the screen as she moves the mouse. She clicks, and my phone buzzes. I walk up to my desk, showing her the notification I just received.

On my home screen is a security alert from my personal system… and a photo from my webcam, showing her looking at the monitor.

“How…?”

“He knew about the security systems I have in place,” I explain, dismissing the alert. Immediately, the email reappears in my inbox, and I go back to her side. “No computer can delete any of my personal files without three layers of security. One, you’ve got to be logged onto my system, which requires a biometric password. Two, my phone has to be near the computer, or else the security system is triggered.”

“What?” she says as she processes it all.

“If someone skips step two, you see what happens. My phone gets an alert, allowing me to confirm the deletion… or let the person who did it think it’s been deleted until I dismiss the alert.”

“That… but why would he tell me it was blackmail?”

“Evan knows, and he likely has it himself. My guess is he was trying to sabotage us. He knew if I saw that picture, I’d assume the worst of you. That you’d betrayed me like Olivia did.”

“And then I went and did it. I came here to confront you.”

“You didn’t log in and try to delete it. And I know you know my login at this point.” Her eyes meet mine, and she doesn’t deny it.

“I thought about it… But I couldn’t. I just wanted you to show me.”

Raven’s lip quivers, and I pull her into my arms.

“Dylan, I’m sorry. I knew he was up to something. I just… I needed to know what could be that bad and what you…”

“What I was capable of?” I finish for her, hating that he got to her and for a moment made her question who I am.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice is tight as she looks me in the eye.

“Nothing to be sorry for, Darling,” I whisper, holding her close. “We’ve both been fucked over, and I understand questioning things… especially when it’s not supposed to be anything…” I can’t finish the thought.

It was revenge. Then business.

“So, what now?” she asks, and I let go of her to hold her at arm’s length, looking into her eyes. They’re clear, focused… and sexy as fuck with the anger burning in their depths. She doesn’t like that Evan tried to use her any more than I do.

Neither of us has said it aloud, though. The part that really matters. The thread that kept me hanging on tonight.

“Now, we have a choice to make.” I force a smile, letting her know her feelings on the matter will be considered. “We can ignore what he tried to do and focus on us. You can be mine, I’ll be yours, and this will simply be a failed attack on his part to break us apart.”

“Or?” she hedges.

“Or we can make him pay like we intended when this whole thing started. We can destroy him once and for all.”

I keep my face neutral while she mulls it over. I’d like to say that if she chooses option one, I’ll go along with it, but the truth is, I’m not sure I can let go of the hatred I’ve felt toward Evan so easily. I would try for Raven, though, if it’s truly what she wants.

“I feel like if we let this go, he’ll only try again, and I don’t want to live our lives constantly worried about what shit he’s going to pull.” She looks up at me and takes a steadying breath. “Dylan?”

“Yes, Darling?” I say, praying she’s about to give the answer I’m hoping for.

“Destroy him.”

“Fucking hell,” I murmur.

“What?” she asks, truly not realizing.

“You’re even sexier when you want to burn the world down,” I tell her and steal her lips for a kiss before having her under me, moaning my name like she should have been doing an hour ago.