Page 70 of Best Served Hot
‘It’s done. I’m sorry,’ Nicole said, her voice breaking. And then she turned again and walked out. The whole thing had taken less than a minute.
Alex was in shock. Nicole had just broken up with her. Why on earth would she do that? Ethan was surely at the back of it.
But that bastard had said many things to Nicole and Alex over these last few days. Threats, bribes, blackmail, intimidation. And Nicole had stood by Alex’s side the entire time, unwavering. What could he have said just now to cause Nicole to abandon her?
Thirty-Nine
Nicole hurried out of the bar, impatient and annoyed. Whatever pathetic attempt Ethan was going to make at getting in his last licks, Nicole wanted him to get it over with so she could walk away from him forever, towards her future with Alex.
‘Let me see your phone first. I don’t want any recordings of what I’m about to say,’ he began dramatically.
Nicole snorted and handed him her phone. What did she care? ‘Here. Nothing running.’
He checked it over, and once satisfied, he gave it back. ‘Alright, then. So, here’s the thing.’ He took a small, theatrical pause and twisted his mouth up into an imitation of a cheerful smile. ‘Alex is going to prison.’
Nicole’s even expression faltered slightly. ‘I think she might have mentioned that.’
‘Well, she doesn’t know yet,’ Ethan said.
Nicole narrowed her eyes. ‘What silly business is this? The video? Because I don’t think it’s enough to put her in prison. She doesn’t even say anything. No confession from her lips at all. And the video itself, while possibly being enough to take down some reputations, is in no way enough to put either of us in the bloodyclink, Ethan—’
‘Not the video,’ Ethan said. ‘She’s an embezzler.’
Nicole gasp-laughed at the audacity. ‘She’s a what?!’
‘There’s just over five hundred thou sitting in her account right now. Or an account in her name.’
Nicole’s brain was frazzled. ‘But she wouldn’t have done that. I don’t believe that for a second.’
‘Doesn’t matter what you believe. The account exists.’
Nicole’s grey matter finally got going again, and she spat, ‘You.’
‘I haven’t done anything about this yet,’ Ethan replied, ignoring the accusation completely. ‘But money went missing. Taken in chunks over four years, starting around the time she did, just after I got the big chair. I discovered it recently. I was able to track it to an account in her name. It went through a few other shell accounts first. She was careful. But then, recently, I guess she got bold. Maybe she wanted to run off into the sunset with her new girlfriend? Who knows? But she moved it into an account in her own name, presumably, so she could collect it in cash.’
Nicole felt like she wanted to sit down, though she didn’t have a chair. But she might just go ahead and sit on the pavement, the way her legs were wobbling. ‘What the fuck is this, Ethan? We’ve been playing a lot of games with each other these past few weeks, but this? This is something else. You’re going too far. You committed fraud, and you’ve admitted it to me. I’ll just go to the police with it.’
Ethan nodded. ‘You can, of course. But I think you’ll find that it’s only Alex’s name on the account, along with her signature. I’m not tied to it in any way. I’m not involved. All her.’ He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, handing it to Nicole.
She looked at it. It was a statement for a bank with an address in the Cayman Islands. The balance was big. Alex’s name was all over it.
Nicole was struck dumb. For all she’d found out Ethan was, he still had a few surprises in him. This shouldn’t have been a shock, but it was.
‘Look, I don’t want to make a big deal of it,’ Ethan said. ‘She doesn’t need to go down over it. As long as you understand that I couldn’t possibly letyoube with a criminal. Even if we’re divorcing, I won’t let that happen. You’d be implicated. And I still care about you way too much to let you go down with her. So, I think it would be best to end things.’
‘You’d gothis farto stop me being with her?’ Nicole cried. ‘You’d lay your freedom, not to mention your stolen money, on the line to make sure of it? I’ve met some control freaks in my time, but you are something else, Ethan.’
‘I’m your husband,’ he snapped back, a little emotion tinging his voice at last. ‘And you’re my wife. And I won’t have you making me feel like this anymore.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like I lost!’ he cried.
There it was. It wasn’t about anything more than that. Even holding that video over Nicole’s and Alex’s heads wasn’t enough. Because he knew that they had each other in a way he couldn’t have anyone.
If he was alone and unhappy, everyone had to be. He was a black hole around which no light could exist. He would make sure of it.
Ethan gathered himself, pretending there had been no loss of control. ‘So, I’m leaving the money there,’ he went on, putting a neutral smile back on his face. ‘Even though theshowcould do with it back. I’m gonna let it sit. I won’t say a word to the police. And I’m gonna have to dip into my own personal funds to secure a full-time private investigator to make sure that you two never have any contact again. For your protection. I think it’s worth the cost.’
