“Well,” she sighed. “You know I said I will try to see if I can get you a job. So I talked to my boyfriend about it because he has friends from college working in places you might like. The point is, he gave me one of their numbers and I mentioned your name to him to see if there’s a spot. He called back this afternoon and sent me your application. Apparently, you’ve tried to get a job with them before.”
I paced, my heart racing with the uncertainty of where this was going.
“They’d rejected you because of what was on your application file.”
I stopped, my brows almost touching. “My application file? What is there? Is there something they didn’t like about it?” I asked.
“Yes. Your criminal record. You didn’t tell us you got in trouble once.”
It felt like a wave hit me, turning my blood to ice. I took a seat on my bed because I was a second from passing out on the floor. “What do you mean? I don’t have a criminal record.”
“You don’t?” she exclaimed. “I knew this was all a misunderstanding. You’d never try to kill anyone no matter how—”
“Excuse me?” I shot up. I had a criminal record, and it was murder? “Why is there murder on the file I submitted?”
“Attempted murder,” she breathed out, sounding better.
I was not better. I was so fucking worked up and out of my mind. They’d rejected me because of a criminal record I didn’t know about? Usually—every time—when they emailed me back, they were vague with their responses. Something in the line of:
“Thank you for your application. After careful consideration, we have decided to move forward with other candidates.”
“We regret to inform you that you do not meet the necessary qualifications for the role.”
I’d assumed it was just the competitive nature of the job market, and I was just unlucky. Could it really be?
“Did you see it? It could be wrong. It could be another Ainsley Hades. Was it my passport?”
“He sent it to me,” she reminded me. “Although it is wrong to disclose someone’s personal information, he made an exception. So I’m going to forward it to you now.”
“Yes, please.”
I cut the call, placing my phone in my palm, my eyes glued to the screen. A buzz startled me, and I hurriedly clicked the notification, nearly dropping the device in the process.
The image loaded, spreading across my screen. I immediately zoomed in on the passport photo—my face staring back at me—and then my name. It was my application, no doubt.
But then my breath caught in my throat.
Just beneath the personal information, right beside the employment history, it stared back at me in bold letters: Attempted Murder.
My fingers trembled, and the phone slipped from my hand, hitting the floor with a dull thud. How...? How could this be there?
I scrambled to pick it up, my heart pounding in my ears. Shakily, I scrolled to the saved copy I usually sent out to every company—the version I knew by heart. No criminal record. Clean.
No wonder. No wonder I never got past the application submission stage. No wonder no one ever called me for an interview. No wonder I was never given a chance. It was because they had no reason to.
Someone had intercepted my applications. They had to have planted that false record. That was the only answer, the only reasonable explanation. This wasn’t what I submitted.
But who would do something like this to me? And more importantly...why?
Was it even possible to intercept an application? I slid into my message with Theon to ask him that when it hit me out of nowhere.
Theon.
If it was possible, the only person who could have been behind it was him. He wanted to strangle me to death when I saw him again after that night. He’d been following me all these years and I just didn’t know it. What if he had hands in this. He was good with computers, what if he’d done it out of spite. But why?
It couldn’t be. It could—
Attempted murder. Attempted murder.
