Iknowthis narcissistic bitch. I lost my heart to her once, not even counting the other things she almost stole from my life. I’m not about to let her steal my happiness—times two, if you count both Susa and Owen, and Idocount them—no matter how low she appears to have fallen.
“What proof do they have?” I ask.
Now she looks nervous, a tell she always had when caught in a lie. “They…don’t. Just my word that I’m getting them money. I have two weeks.”
Ooooh, honey. You done fucked up.“Whydo you need the money?”
I can see her debating what version of the truth to tell me and spot the moment she realizes none of them make her look any better.
She opts for what’s probably as close to the actual truth as I’ll ever get. “I borrowed money from my employer. I needed to quickly repay it, so I…took out a loan.”
I can’t help the snort that escapes. “You stole money, then hit up a loan shark to replace it before your employer discovered what you did and had you arrested.”
She glares at me, but the fire quickly flickers out of her expression and she glances down. “Ja.”
“Fucking sloppy, Elsa. Why’d you steal the money in the first place?” I already know that. The answer is all over her arms.
“I borrowed it over a long period of time. Then they replaced their financial officer unexpectedly and he wanted to do a deep audit of their books when he took over. I was not expecting that.” She glares at me. “I hurt my back about ten years ago. The doctors won’t give me pain meds. You of all people should understand. I researched you before I contacted you. I know about your injuries. Thewar hero.” She manages a little half-hearted sarcasm for the last two words that makes me want to pistol-whip her.
I resist that urge—barely—because it would fuck up my plan.
And no, I don’t understand, honestly. I live with my pain. She always was a wuss. A hangnail was a dire emergency to her.
Ironic, considering her former past-time.
“Uh huh. So you thought you’d be out of there long before their previous financial officer left, and no one would be the wiser?”
She nods.
“And you were hoping my father-in-law was going to open a dialogue with you for you to, what, fill in some nearly thirty-year-old blanks and give you cash without any proof?”
“I was going to record a video and send to him. I have that picture of us in Berlin together. That’s the only one.”
There’s only one that I know of, because pictures were the exception, not the norm. “From the World Cup game?”
She nods.
“We’re dressed. In public.” And she now looks nothing like that young woman, except for her eyes, and even those barely resemble her current state. Eddie took one of me and her, and I took one of him and her.
Now she looks triumphant and I know for certain that this, combined with her not masking her IP address, was an act of sheer desperation.
“But it proves I know you!” she insists.
She has a point, albeit a very tenuous one. Maybe in her current state of mind she’s convinced herself it would pay more.
At the time, we were both very careful. She was a civilian contractor with security clearance who worked for the DoD. I was active military and didn’t yet know exactly what my future was, but I knew I didn’t want it to include naked pictures cropping up if my law career took off. My father was also still active military, a high-ranking officer, as were some of my brothers.
It’s that very relationship to all of them that delayed my unit’s deployment in-country as long as it did.
Well, that, and the fucker Elsa had in her pocket, although I didn’t put that together until later.
I didn’t want my actions negatively reflecting on my father or brothers and risk getting me excommunicated from my family, much less thrown in the stockade or out of the Army.
At the time, the arrangement we had worked for both of us.
Until I fucked it up by falling in love with her, and then letting her twist me around for her own sick amusement and profit before she discarded me, after making me and Eddie both go through a cruel loyalty test that I didn’t realize at the time would alter the course of my life.
Had I known her other faults, at the time, I never would have gotten involved with her. At least, I’d like tothinkthe stupid kid I was wouldn’t have gotten involved with her.
