From the depths of a house, a baby began to cry.
Jay went white. “You didn’t,” she whispered, seeming to register the gist of the conversation at last. But this time it was Michael she spoke to, Michael who couldn’t meet her eyes.“Why?”
“Mikey?” Angie’s voice echoed down the hall. “Mikey, I heard a noise. What are you—oh my god. Oh mygod. What happened to you? Do I need to call the police?”
Nicholas gingerly touched his nose. “Hello Angie.”
“Did you do this?” Angie whirled on him. “Get out. Get out of my house, Nicholas, or I’m calling the police.”
“Ask him about the pictures.”
Angie looked rattled and stared at Michael with the trace of insecurity that he remembered so well from high school.
No matter how many extensions she purchased, or antique porcelain she put in her pretty house, she would always be that jealous, petty girl from high school, crying by the pool to her friends because her ex liked someone better.
“Whatpictures? Pictures ofher?”
“No! I didn’t take any pictures.” Michael blotted his nose with his shirt collar, giving Nicholas a baleful, watery glare. “I paid your employee off with money and information so she could go to the papers but she was going to do that anyway. I never did anything else.”
“You say that like you’re capable of doing your own dirty work.” Nicholas put his arm around Jay’s waist, pulling her towards him. “Did youpay offanyone else?”
“No, I told you, I don’t know anything about any pictures.”
“If my husband said he didn’t, he didn’t,” Angie snapped.
“Why?” Jay repeated, her hazel eyes glittering with their own internal fire. “Why would you go against my back like that?”
“Because he wants you,” Nicholas said bluntly, when Michael didn’t respond. “And since he can’t do anything about that now, all hecando is punish you for not being the pristine little angel he never got to fuck.”
Jay jerked away from him. “Nicholas.”
Angie cracked him across the face, breathing hard. She looked at Jay, who flinched expectantly, but it was Michael she went for next, leaving gouges that must have stung.
“What the fu—”
“I’m taking our child to a hotel,” she spoke over him. “I can’t deal with any of this shit right now. I have to meet with our investors tomorrow.Someonehas to bring in a paycheck.”
“It’s not my fault,” Michael protested. “Angie—baby—” She shook him off and disappeared deeper into the house, towards the direction of the crying child. His whole body sagged as he watched her leave. “Shit.Fuck.”
“You should have denied it,” Nicholas said. “But maybe you wanted to punish your wife for not being what you wanted, too.”
Michael turned hot eyes on him. “You’ve fucking ruined my life, Beaucroft.”
“No,” Nicholas said, reaching out and grabbing Jay’s left hand. “You’ve ruined your own.”
He saw the other man’s eyes go to Jay’s ring, and the matching platinum one that he wore on his own left hand. Horror and disbelief filled his eyes. “You—”
“Me,” he agreed coldly. “And her. Goodbye.”
With a final backwards sneer, Nicholas let the door close behind him with a slam.
Chapter Nineteen
???????
Jay was silent on the drive home, her face gradually shifting from anger to something that he wasn’t sure how to identify. “There’s blood on your shirt,” she said at last.
Nicholas made an impatient noise and undid a few of the buttons before yanking his shirt over his head and wadding it up into the backseat. The car swerved.
