Page 33 of Alex

Just like I thought, the closer I get to her address, the worse the scenery is. Large mansions morph into small outdated houses which turn into dilapidated shacks.

Nice stone faced businesses and houses turn into graffiti ridden and boarded up businesses and houses.

Even simple things like streetlights and sidewalks are broken, dirty, and neglected.

Is this really how the city lets its citizens live? Why isn’t the city council or mayor doing their jobs?

Monday morning, I will be getting these questions answered with a solution in place to fix what’s broken.

Elise doesn’t speak until I’m pulling up in front of her apartment. With one hand on the door handle, she turns to look at me.

“Thank you.”

I raise my eyebrow at her, wondering what she could be thanking me for. The entire twenty-minute ride was in complete silence.

Why the sudden change in attitude? Does she regret last night? Is this her way of letting me down easy?

“For what?”

“For everything. For driving Kate home, driving me to the office, driving me home, and-” She glances away and doesn’t finish her statement.

“And what?”

She glares at me as her face turns light pink. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

I grin, finally knowing exactly what the ‘and’ was, but I don’t speak.

She sighs. “And for last night. It was incredible.”

“It was incredible.”

Neither of us speak for a few moments. Shelooks like she wants to run away, so I say, “I guess I’ll see you around. Are you coming to the office?”

She climbs out of my car and dips her head inside to answer my question. “I guess it depends on what your dad said in the voicemail.”

I nod my head as she closes the passenger door. I wait until she’s inside the building before putting the car in drive and heading towards the office.

When I get to the office, I have to park in the furthest row from the building. A half dozen cars are all parked out front alongside a fire truck.

I find Dad in the crowd and jog over to him. “Dad, hey, what’s going on?”

“The police investigators and insurance guys are inside gathering pictures of the mess for the claims, and the firemen are verifying that everything is safe enough for us to walk around and collect everything that’s not ruined.”

I look around for the copper haired man, but come up short. “Where’s Peter? Did you send him home?”

Dad blows out a breath of air. “He quit. He didn’t even try to work out a two-week notice or anything. As soon as he saw me, he told me to find a different security guy.”

Why the hell would Peter quit? Did the intruder scare him that badly?

“Did he at least tell you what happened last night?”

Dad shakes his head. “He just left. I tried looking at the camera footage from my phone, butit’s disabled. The company is going to try to reactivate the cameras and send me the lost footage, but until then, we have to hope the police figure out the cause of all of this.”

Dad heads inside the building, leaving me outside.

I don’t want to say that Peter had a hand in this destruction, but his quitting so abruptly raises several red flags.

Did he do this because I was with Elise last night and I’m the boss’s son, so this was the easiest way for him to get revenge?

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