Page 42 of Acquiring Ainsley
“You have no idea what I think of him.”
“Oh, I have my suspicions.”
I crossed my arms. “Come on.”
“Have you slept with him?”
“That’s none of your business.” I scoffed. “So, no comment.”
He blanched. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
I shrugged one shoulder.
“Jesus, Ainsley. You have no idea how serious this is. I mean it—youcan’tmarry him. This can’t happen, and I have plenty of reasons why.”
I swallowed the dry lump in my throat. “Forgive me for having a hard time believing you right now.”
“If you don’t believe me, then believe this—”
Ashton opened the door on the side of his desk and pulled out a thick, overstuffed manila folder that resembled the one I’d seen weeks before at the meeting where he and Trevor made the offer they’d convinced me that I couldn’t refuse.
He opened the front and took out a few large black-and-white photographs, which he then handed my way. “See for yourself.”
The photos showed Trevor having dinner with a woman who looked about the same age as me. She was laughing at something he said, and the way she tilted her head toward him told me she trusted him, that she liked his company. The next photo showed them getting in a black car, and the third showed them outside what looked like an apartment complex on the upper East Side. A few more photos showed them together, and in one, they looked like they were having a heated and intense discussion.
“So?” I handed the photos back to him.
“Her name is Olivia van Hewitt, and at one point, healmostmarried her.” Ashton shifted through some more of the paperwork in the file folder. “They had a tumultuous relationship. And while on vacation in France about two years ago, she made a report with the police. She accused him of physical abuse while on a yacht they’d rented.” He gave me some pages of a French police report. “Photos are attached.”
My French was rusty, but I still managed to make out the narrative in the police report. After a night of heavy drinking, Olivia told police that Trevor had become upset when she didn’t prepare the breakfast croissants he liked. According to her, he threw a plate against a wall near her head, then broke a chair and a table. He allegedly hit her several times and she tried to fight back, but she said she “feared for her life.” The accompanying photo showed a thin woman with streaked eye makeup and a large welt just below her right eye.
I looked up from the pages. “She later dropped the charges. And they broke up.” I paused, wondering why I hadn’t heard about this. This was huge, monumental even, and I’d known nothing about it at all. Was I dreaming? “This never hit the media over here, did it? It was completely buried.”
My thoughts raced. This wasn’t the Trevor that I’d come to know, the man who seemed so funny and generous behind his tough businessman exterior. This couldn’t be real.
Right?
“I’m sure there is an explanation,” I insisted, my tone desperate and hollow to my own ears. My thoughts began to race, going over every small detail of my interactions with Trevor. Nothing he’d done gave me any clue that he might be capable of something so serious. Even that night at the Whitney Museum—he’d been aggressive, yes, but that didn’t mean he was an abuser. “There has to be more to this. There has to be.”
Ashton scrubbed his face with his hand. “God, this has been such a mistake.” His jaw hardened. “I knew it… I knew it…”
“Knew what? About him?” My voice rose as questions spilled out of my mouth. Maybe Ihadbeen deceived. “Then why did you suggest I marry him in the first place? Ashton, if you—”
“This is my fault. I-I don’t—” Ashton pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb. “I convinced myself that I should just trust my instincts on this one, and I didn’t bother digging into his past before I suggested that you marry him. I was so blinded by our situation, and the failure of our finances, that I didn’t vet this properly.”
The implication of his admission hung in the air between us.
“I won’t let you do this. You can’t marry him. I won’t allow you to sacrifice yourself to a man like this.” He sneered. “A man capable of behaving this way.”
“Why now?” I managed. “What made you discover all of this now?”
“My attorneys were doing the usual due diligence on the final steps of this merger, and I asked them to look a little bit further into his personal life.” He wrinkled his nose. “This is serious. He’s ruthless, Ainsley. Remember that. He’s the kind who will do anything to get what he wants.”
“Some people would say the same thing about us. And about our father.” I rubbed my eyes, feeling the beginning of a headache. God, this was such a mess. “We didn’t get here because of our business genius—apparently our father was more focused on winning than he was on building a solid company with a good foundation. We didn’t wind up with all this to lose just because someone in our family happened to reinvent the wheel. We were willing to do anything to get it, and we have.” I massaged my left temple. “Hell, apparently you were willing to do anything to keep it.”
“Are you defending him? After all this? Are you making excuses?”
“No.” I crossed my arms, attempting to squelch the nausea and rotten butterflies pitching around in my stomach. “I wouldn’t defend this kind of behavior. But I don’t think—”
