Page 70 of Adoring Alejandro

He glared at her, sneering, “I’m here because, apparently, someone I trusted with the security of my business targeted my friends and my woman with nasty threats.”

Denise turned white as a sheet. “You can’t mean me, Sylvester. I’ve only ever been loyal to you. Your company’s security is important to me, why would I target anyone?”

AJ clucked his tongue, jerking her attention back to him. He could see the panic settling in, and the desperation beginning to rise.

“It seems as though you set your sights on me and all my money, isn’t that right? You saw the emails between Maeve and I, and you decided you were going to cash in, sliding in to claim you were Swan to get your greedy hands on me and my wallet.”

She shook her head violently. “No, that’s not true. I love you, AJ. Your money means nothing to me.”

He laughed hard. “Oh? So when Sly’s man, Samson, dug into my bank account and saw all these tiny micro-transactions, it wasn’t you keeping tabs on my fortune? It wasn’t you making illegal inquiries into my net worth? Huh. That’s funny. I’m pretty sure he said he could trace each of those security breaches to you. You were smart enough not to just steal everything, that would have led to direct investigation, and you’d run the risk of getting caught. I mean, you aren’t totally arrogant. You are human. Though, you do think you’re better than the majority of computer geeks, otherwise you never would have sent Maeve those threats via email.”

Maeve sobbed, her body shaking so hard he could see it from where he was standing. Blaze went to her, helping her to sit in one of the barstools, his comforting hand on her shoulder.

Fuck, AJ wanted to be the one standing beside her, holding her up, comforting her.

But he had to take out the trash first.

“AJ, I have no idea where you get these ideas from. Obviously that woman is filling your head with lies. Why would I need to threaten her? She’s a fat nobody, she’s nothing like me. You and I, we’re perfect together. She made all this up to try to get her for yourself. Those emails she sent you as Swan, those were her trying to trick you, scheming to get your personal information so she could blackmail you. I admit, I confronted her when I came that first time. I only claimed to be Swan because I fell in love with what I read—the man…not the money.”

Holy shit, the woman was so fucking delusional, he couldn’t even keep up with the web of lies she was spinning.

Tall and built like a linebacker, Det. Oliveira strode forward, handcuffs in plain sight in his hand.

Denise grew frantic, backing up as the detective moved forward, her head on a swivel, looking for a way out. Sly and AJ were blocking the entrance, and she would have to get by silent Samson and the detective to get out the back.

She was trapped. By her own lies and the men she’d fucked with.

“You shouldn’t have threatened our women,” Sly snarled, his face a mask of disgust and rage.

Her hands around her throat, where the invisible noose tightened even more, she shrieked, “No, I—”

“Denise Walters, you are under arrest for—”

“No!” she screamed, fighting against the unsurprisingly strong hold of the detective as he wrapped her wrists in bracelets of steel.

Oliveira continued as if never interrupted. “You have the right to remain silent….”

As the man droned on, Denise finally deflated, the fight leaving her.

Fuck. She deserved every last page of the book being thrown at her.

Needing to be with his woman, he hurried across the room to Maeve, pulling her into his arms.

Great big sobs shook her frame, and he held her, his cheek pressed against the top of her head. Blaze said something to him and moved away, but AJ couldn’t focus on that, he could only focus on the woman falling apart in his embrace.

As more police officers entered the building, and Sly, Blaze, and Samson spoke to them in quiet tones, AJ held his woman as she cried.

Finally, the sobbing stopped and she pulled her face from his chest. Peering up at him with wide blue eyes filled with stark relief and burgeoning joy, she croaked, “It’s over?”

“Yeah, baby, it’s over,” he declared, skimming his lips over her cheek. The taste of her tears making his soul groan from the depths of his being. For the rest of his life, he would never make her cry again.

“But how did you figure out what she was doing?”

Shame made his cheeks flame, and he ducked his head in chagrin. “Well…Monday, I was watching you, angry that you’d run from my bed Saturday morning….”

Her cheeks turned red, but she said nothing.

“You got an email and it was like the soul left your body. You turned white, your body sunk in on itself—I could tell that something was wrong. Really wrong. So, after you left, I went home and texted Blaze about getting access to your emails. I wanted to see what you saw that hurt you so much. I wanted to take the look off your face and fix whatever was wrong. What I found….” He shuddered with the memory of it. “She’d threatened the woman I love, and my sister, and my friends. I couldn’t just do nothing, Maeve. So, I called Blaze and Sly. We talked and came up with the plan to draw Denise to Jackson Key, lock her out of the White systems and wipe her phone, and then confront and arrest her.”

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