Page 81 of Open for Negotiation

Chapter 17

Max

“Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much. I’ll keep you updated as we progress,” I say into my cell phone before ending the call.

I don’t even get the phone into my pocket before it vibrates with an alert that someone is at my front door. I check the app and see that Garrett Barnes is standing on my front steps.

“Hey,” I say to Jackson, who is sitting on the sofa behind me in the media room. “You good in here for a few minutes? I’ve got someone here apparently.” I hold up my phone.

“Oh yeah, take your time. We’re all good in here.” He smiles hugely.

“Good, thanks, man.” I close the door behind me and make my way down to the front door of my house.

When I open the door, I step outside rather than having him come in. There’s something off about his decision to just show up at my personal residence that is rubbing me the wrong way.

“Can I help you with something, Garrett? Is everything all right?”

“I just, I feel the need to talk to you about something and honestly, I’m not sure where to begin.”

“And it couldn’t wait until we were in the office?” I ask.

“No, because… it’s about Scarlett.” He shoves his hands into his pockets.

I can feel my blood pressure already rising. “Is she all right?”

“I saw her last night.” He won’t even look at my face when he talks. He just leans against the column on one side of my steps. “And she seemed pretty upset.”

“Christ.” I scrub my hand over my face. “What did you have to tell me about her?”

“Uh, well, it’s not really about her, per se, but it does involve her…. and me… and your wife.”

My hands begin to shake, and I try to remain as calm as possible as to not overreact or jump to conclusions before I hear what he has to say.

“What could you possibly have to do with Miranda?”

“Look, before we continue, I need you to, I don’t know, maybe sit down?”

“No, I’m absolutely not sitting down. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

I can audibly hear him swallow before he says the words that shake me to my core. “Miranda and I have been… seeing each other.”

“Now isn’t the time for vagueness, Garrett. I need you to be specific as fuck right now.”

“Miranda and I have been sleeping together,” he pauses briefly, “for a while. She came to me first and we started talking about your divorce and how she thought you were sleeping with someone else. It got really intense and that’s when she started planning everything out.”

I begin to pace the length of my porch. I can’t stand still. I have to move in order to process and in order to stop myself from knocking him out.

“I’m the one who was slipping her information on our accounts that way she could go ahead of you and mess them up. I’m the one who let her into the office the day it was trashed. We did that, well she mostly did it. I’d never seen her so angry before.”

“Were you responsible for what happened at the news station?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

“She’s the one who filmed you with Scarlett at your house. I was the one who made the edits to the file before it was broadcast.”

There is a ball of energy building in my arms, rage-filled anger that I can’t control, and it explodes out in the form of a solid punch to the center of his face.

My fist is instantly on fire, thumping in pain from connecting with his skull.

“Fuck!” he shouts, falling backward and slipping down the stairs then colliding with the concrete. I see the blood pouring out and into his hands when he cups his face.

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