Stepbrother Claims (His Twisted Game, Book Four) (2 page)

“Is that
him
?”
Jeffrey asked.
 

I picked up my phone and turned it off
before sliding it into my purse. Ignoring Cole filled me with a delicious
feeling of rebelliousness.
 
He
thought he could do whatever he wanted, like the way he came into my bedroom
last night and then just up and left after having his way with me.
 
Well, he wasn’t the only one who could
leave someone waiting.

“Yes,” I said to Jeffrey.

“You know, Avery,” Jeffrey
said,
taking another long, slow pull of his beer.
 
“You need to be careful working for
Cole.”

“What do you mean?”

Jeffrey looked around, like he was
worried about people hearing us.
 
The restaurant was about half full, but the only other people back in
our section were two guys dressed in khakis and button-downs who were sitting
at the booth next to us.
 
They
seemed to be in a heated debate about something having to do with their
bill.
 
One guy was trying to tell
the other guy he owed ten dollars more.

I tried not to roll my eyes.
 
Those guys knew nothing about what it
was really like to be worried about money, knew nothing about what it was like
to scrounge through the couch cushions on a Sunday morning just so you might be
able to find enough to buy a box of cereal.

They didn’t know what it was like to look
forward to going to school because you might be able to get a hot lunch and
duck out of the lunch line before you got to the cashier.
 
They didn’t know the shame of being so
hungry you’d wait until the baked goods at the market three miles away switched
over to being half price, then walk there in the cold with a quarter in your
pocket, just so you could buy one doughnut, forcing yourself not to wolf it
down because your stomach was so empty it felt like it was eating itself.

“I mean that Cole is… “ Jeffrey broke
into my thoughts, leaning across the table toward me.
 
“Avery, has Cole ever told you anything about where he got
his money?”

“What money?” I asked, frowning.
 
“His money is from whatever profits his
company makes.”

Jeffrey shook his head and pulled at the
label on his beer bottle.
 
“No, I
mean, where he got the money to start his company in the first place.”

“I assumed he got it from
investors.”
 
Isn’t that how it
worked?
 
You had an idea for a
business, so you got some rich investors to give you money, and then they owned
part of your company?

“Well, yes,” Jeffrey said.
 
“But do you know who the investors were?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Jeffrey asked, leaning in
even closer to me and looking me right in the eye.
 
Everything in me recoiled, my instincts screaming at me to
get away from him.
 
Scenes from
that warm summer day flashed into my mind.
 
Don’t worry, Avery,
he’d said.
 
Girls like you do this, just accept it.
 
His warm
breath
on my face.
 
The way he held me down.
 
The flash of the
camera.

I bit the inside of my cheek and forced
myself to keep my eyes on his.
 
“Yes,
I’m sure.”
 
I was sick of this
double speak.
 
I took a sip of my
water and tried to calm my heart.
 
“Are you saying Cole’s company is in trouble?”

“No.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“I’m saying that Cole… Avery, have you ever heard of a girl named Lucy
Caro?”

“No.”

“You’ve never heard Cole mention her?” he
asked.
 

“I don’t think so.”
 
I filed the name away in my memory.
 
Lucy Caro.
 
Was this Lucy Caro someone who had information about whatever
Cole was hiding?

I wanted to ask Jeffrey more, but he was
looking down at his menu, and so I did the same.
 
I couldn’t seem like I was pushing him.
 
I needed it to seem like he was in control
of the conversation.

I slid my eyes over the food choices -- almond
risotto and
parmesan
crab cakes and salmon with
truffle oil.
 
It all seemed so
fancy.
 
I didn’t know what to
order, and
I was distracted by the men at the table next to
us, who were still arguing over their bill
.

“That’s bullshit,” one of them said.
 
He was tall, with blonde hair and a
broad build.

The other man was slight, with a beaky
nose and pale skin.
 
He stood up
from the table and threw his napkin down.
 
“I’m out of here,” he declared.

“No fucking way,” the other man said, and
before I knew it, he’d jumped out of his seat and grabbed the beak-nosed man by
his collar.
 
Beak Nose tried to
push him off, but the blonde man pushed him hard into our table.

I shrieked as our table upended itself
onto the floor, my water spilling as Jeffrey’s beer bottle shattered into
shards of glass.
 
The two men began
fighting, the blonde man pummeling the other one with his fists.

Other patrons of the restaurant rushed
over to see what was happening, and Jeffrey grabbed me and pulled me away from
the melee.

A second later, a manager rushed over,
and with the help of another customer, pulled the two men apart.

I was panting, my breathing heavy and
adrenaline coursing through my body.
 
I had that same panicky feeling I always got whenever I was exposed to
violence, my stomach turning and my
head light
.

“Are you okay?” Jeffrey asked once the
men had been thrown out of the restaurant.
 
“Are you hurt?”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“I’m okay.”

“Fucking idiots.”
 
He reached down and stood our stools
back up.

My heart was still pounding, my pulse
racing,
my
face flush.
 
Suddenly, all I wanted was to get back to the office.
 
I wanted to go to Cole, to have him
tell me it was going to be okay, that I was safe.

You
should have listened to him, Avery.
 
You should have never left the office.

I went to grab for my purse, so I could
get out of there, but the table was still sitting on its side.
 
The floor around it was a complete mess –
spilled water, glass, scattered silverware, and a torn tablecloth.
 

“Do you see my purse anywhere?” I asked
Jeffrey, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

“No.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“Are you sure you had it here?”
 
He picked up the table and flipped it over so that it was sitting right
side up.
 
But there was still no
sign of my purse anywhere.

“It’s gone,” I said.
 
“Someone stole my purse.”

“Are you sure?” Jeffrey asked.

“Yes!” I said.
 
I shook my head.
 
“I’m sorry, I have to go.”

I turned and ran out of the
restaurant.
 
When I was out on the
sidewalk, I took in deep breaths of fresh air in an effort to calm myself.
 
How was I going to explain this to
Cole?
 
Pretty much everything I
owned was in that purse.

A second later, Jeffrey appeared behind
me.
 
“Avery,” he said.
 
“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied.
 
“I have to get back to work.”
 

“Back to work?” Jeffrey asked, and I
thought I saw something flash over his face – panic?
 
But a second later, it was gone,
replaced by concern I could tell was fake.
 
  
“What
about your purse?
 
Don’t you think
you should call the police?”

“The police?”
 
The thought had never occurred to me.
 
Police were people you needed to stay
away from, not people you would call voluntarily.
 

“Yes, so you can get your bag back.”

“I’m not sure…” I said.
 

“Come on,” he said.
 
“I’ll take you to the police station.”

I hesitated.
 
I really did need to get back to work – but then
again, if there was even a small chance I could get my purse back, didn’t I
need to take it?
 
I still had more
than half an hour of my lunch.
 
Maybe
I could fill out a report and still make it back to the office before my break
was over.

Jeffrey reached his hand up to hail a
cab, and a second
later,
he was herding me into the
back of it.
 
But then Jeffrey’s
phone rang, and he answered the call, stepping away from the car for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Avery,” he said when he
returned, speaking to me through the window.
 
“I have to handle something back at my office.” He reached
into his wallet and pulled out a bunch of crinkled bills, then leaned down and
mumbled something to the cab driver.
 
“He’ll take you to the station to fill out a report,” Jeffrey said to
me.
 
“I’ll call you later.”

Don’t
bother,
I wanted to say, again marveling at how someone so successful and rich could be
such a complete ass.
 
It was just
another reminder of how unfair the world could be.

But before I could say anything, the cab
was pulling out onto the street, leaving me to watch Jeffrey getting smaller in
the rearview mirror as we left him standing in front of the restaurant.
 

***

An hour later, I’d filled out a police
report and given my statement to a detective, although the police didn’t seem
too confident I’d get my purse back.
 
They acted like this was a run-of-the-mill occurrence.
 
And when you added that to the fact that
I hardly had any money in my purse, they seemed completely unmotivated.

Cole, however, didn’t think it was a
common occurrence at all.

I’d asked the police to call him for me
as soon as I realized I wasn’t going to back to the office on time.
 
They’d let him know what happened, and
twenty minutes later, he came storming into the station.

I watched him as he stomped up to the reception
desk, but I’d been done for a few minutes and had been sitting in the lobby
waiting for him.

“Cole,” I called.

He turned, his eyes blazing with
fury.
 
He crossed the lobby and
looked me up and down, his eyes lingering over every inch of my body.
 
I felt that familiar heat course
through me, the same turned on feeling I got whenever he was close.

He took my hands and turned them over in
his, checking me for marks.
 
“Are
you okay?” he asked.
 
“Are you
hurt?”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“I’m not hurt.”

He continued inspecting me, pushing my
hair back from my face, running his finger over my cheekbone, like he wasn’t
going to believe I was okay until he saw it for himself.
 
But as soon as he was satisfied I
hadn’t been harmed, his whole demeanor instantly changed.

“I told you not to leave the office,
Avery,” he said.
 
“What the hell
were you doing?”

“I went to lunch at Ride.”

“You went to lunch?
 
What the hell were you doing at Ride by
yourself?”

I bit my bottom lip, wondering if I
should tell him I was with Jeffrey.
 
Talking to Jeffrey was yet another thing Cole had told me not to
do.
 
But he hadn’t told me
why.
 
And if he was expecting me to do what he said, then he
needed to at least tell me the reasons for his rules.
 
It was only fair.

“I wasn’t by myself.”
 
I jutted my chin into the air, daring
him to get mad.
 
“I was with
Jeffrey.”

He didn’t say anything, and his silence permeated
the room until it had somehow taken over – even the soft murmur of voices
coming from the back of the police station and the keystrokes of the receptionist
typing away on the computer seemed to have stopped.
 
It wasn’t that the sounds had actually come to a halt -- it
was that I was so strongly anticipating what Cole was going to say that
everything else had ceased to exist.