Page 36 of Dirty Little Secret, Baby
"What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost. Was HE here again? Just say the word and I'll..." Veronica says, looking around as if she wants to see if Alex is hiding somewhere.
"Worse," I say weakly, holding out my phone to her. "He was right. About everything."
"Hmm," Veronica says. "You think it's real? You can fake anything with AI these days," she says thoughtfully.
"I don't know. It looks pretty real. The image quality. The sound. That's typical for an intercom. The angle of the recording fits, too...," I say, pausing as it occurs to me why I know that so precisely. I've stood in front of that door too, in front of those exact stairs where it all began, and I know only too well where exactly the intercom is mounted.
Everything from back then has been practically burned into my brain.
"Yeah, that's true," Veronica says thoughtfully.
"Maybe what he said is true and I should..." I pause as the door opens behind me.
"You don't have to do anything, Beth. I would just be happy if we could talk again," says Alex, who must have been waiting somewhere outside before sending the message. I feel hot and cold all at once as I see him, and then I realize what this must look like, with Ben's bassinet here next to the counter.
"I... uh..." I stammer, glancing back and forth between Veronica and Alex with a beet-red face.
"Thanks for watching him. I'm just going to take him upstairs and change him, okay?" says Veronica, who thinks on her feet, for which I'm grateful, but it also weaves the web of lies even tighter. Of course, she didn't say he was her son. But I know what it must look like as she gently lifts him from the bassinet, strokes him, and takes him upstairs.
"I have to tell you something, Beth. Something really important. I don't want anything else to stand between us," Alex says, coming closer, and my knees involuntarily begin to tremble.
"Yes?" I croak, wondering what he could possibly want to tell me. Something about the video? Something else? And what am I supposed to do about the secret that just disappeared up the stairs?
Chapter 14
Alex
Two damn days and countless messages later, with zero response from her, here I am, standing in her shop, going all in.
Enough with the secrecy. Enough with all this crap. I’ve had it, and I want to put all my cards on the table so she finally knows what's going on and Jake can't throw a wrench in the works again.
Because the thing with Dilara and the photo was his idea, of course. He even admitted it point-blank when I called him after Beth practically threw me out of her shop.
"That's against the rules," I'd explained, knowing how silly it sounded. He'd already made it clear that he had no intention ofsticking to the code of honor we'd agreed to back when we used to work together and bets like this were the order of the day.
"Against the old rules. There are no rules anymore," he'd returned indifferently. "This is about business. And all's fair in business. Unless you’re backing out?"
"Not a chance," I'd snapped too quickly, though I realized Jake was probably trying to push me into exactly that corner.
So it was clear now that this wasn't just a simple bet like the old days over a sum of money, honor, and the girl—and, in this case, the shop. It was a fight. From now on, it was war, and I had no intention of holding myself to any rules when it came to Jake or Dilara.
It was obvious to me that he wouldn't stop his games, so my only option was to go on the offensive. I wanted to let Beth in on everything. Confess it all to her, tell her about the bet and my intention to take over the shop. I knew that could be another setback, which was why I first had to figure out how to get her to listen to me, or at least reply to me again.
My attempts to reach out over the next two days were unsuccessful. Beth didn't answer. At least the private investigator I'd posted outside the shop reported that nothing unusual was happening. Neither Dilara nor Jake were gearing up for their next move while I considered my next steps.
I was on the verge of just driving to Beth's without any plan or strategy. It wasn't just the thing with the bet and Jake that wasbugging me. It was much more than that. I just couldn't get her out of my head. No woman had ever ignored my messages like this. I'd never had to think about the last kiss with a woman at breakfast and admit to myself that I wanted more than that.
Damn it, why did all of this have to be so complicated? Why did everything seem so intertwined, and why did there seem to be no way to convince her of my innocence?
The solution came to me rather suddenly and in an unusual way, when I least expected it. Cutie, my kitten, was meowing to herself. At first, I couldn't find the little furball, but then I heard her sound coming from the small utility room behind the coat closet, where all sorts of cables, technical devices, servers, and all the smart home tech were bundled. She must have gotten in somehow when the cleaning lady left the door open, and it must have then closed shut behind her.
In any case, Cutie was sitting in front of the small screen that showed the video feed from the intercom outside and recorded it on the connected hard drive system.
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. There had to be a recording of Dilara and me. Hopefully, the system hadn't overwritten the data yet.
"You're the best, Cutie," I said, stroking my cat, and got to work finding the recording.
As I watched the relevant segment over and over, I knew this was the solution. I had Eric edit the video since the audio was a bitpoor. He seemed less than thrilled when I explained what was on it. I have no idea why; maybe he didn't like the task, but I didn't care either.
