Chapter 64 That's My Offer
Once I pick myself up off the floor of David’s hallway, I head outside and call Selena instantly. She meets me outside the front of my old building, the one I used to call home before I moved in with David. It doesn’t feel like home anymore. But then again, I can’t exactly call David’s home either now.
We hug for a while, I cry into my best friend’s shoulder, oblivious to the strange looks we get from strangers passing by.
Eventually she coaches me upstairs, unsavoury memories hitting me from all angles... David coming to get me in the middle of the night... Someone grabbing me from outside... The night I found out David is the perfect match for me.
It almost doesn’t surprise me when I finally reach my door and see it open, the wood by the lock splintered from being kicked in.
Selena is careful, spy-like when she enters, her eyes darting left and right for an intruder. But I know this was done a while ago, while I had been living with David. The thugs would have come here after I first got away from them, at the direction of my father, trashing the place to try and find clues of where I would be. That is his M.O. after all – to ransack his target’s environments. To invade their intimate lives.
Kicking the debris aside as I walk in, I try shutting the door behind me, but it just swings back open.
“Typical.” I mutter, throwing my suitcase to the floor. “Guess I’m sleeping with the sofa against the door.”
“Absolutely not. You’re staying with me until that door is fixed.” Selena commands, picking up the picture frames that are lying shattered on the floor. “I can’t believe he’d do this to you.”
“Can’t you? I can. I can one hundred percent believe that my dad would do this. Although he did say if he knew it was me, he’d have been nicer. Maybe then I would at least have had a chance to get my security deposit back.”
“Has your landlord not even mentioned this?”
“David has been paying the rent since he took me to his place. Said it would be good to keep them thinking that I still lived here.” I say absentmindedly while I start putting the ripped pillows back on the sofa. “So as far as the landlord knows, I’m still here. But I guess I won’t even be living here much longer anyway.”
“Why not?”
“What money do you think I have at the minute, Selena? I’ve barely worked for Whitaker Enterprises in weeks, haven’t worked at The Red Room either. I’ve got some savings but not enough to keep paying rent for months on end.”
“I’ll get your clients back.”
I sigh, sinking into the sofa and shaking my head.
“Thing is, I don’t think I can go back there. He knows where I am now. Even if… even if David is still talking to me, I think I’d have to leave.”
Selena is quiet as she sits down beside me, rubbing a hand up and down my back as I run my hands through my hair.
“David will talk to you again, you know.” Selena says, trying to comfort the horrible, sickening feeling in my stomach. “He just needs some time.”
“I don’t think so. Not this time. He was right, I had so many chances with him. And this… it’s not like he found out some cute secret like me still having a stuffed teddy bear. This directly affects him, has affected him for years. I betrayed him.”
“You didn’t–”
“I bet that’s how he feels.” I interrupt, picking at my fingernails and avoiding looking at her.
“Maybe. But he’ll realise soon enough that none of keeping that hidden was about him. You are allowed to try and leave your trauma behind you.”
“Didn’t do a good job of that, did I?” I mock, and Selena gives me a sad smile. “I also didn’t do a good job of keeping the first guy after…”
I don’t have to finish my sentence, because Selena knows me inside and out, and she knows what I am going to say.
“Alright.” She says suddenly, standing up and walking to my room. “We’re getting your shit and going to mine.” I start to follow her. “And we’re going to get you two back together.”
“He doesn’t want–”
“Look, I know you’ve completely ignored me while playing Mafia wife,” she teases, opening my closet and starting to pull out some of the clothes I left here. “But I know how David looks at you, and feels about you. I knew it before he came to The Red Room, when he was just your boss, just from the way you talked. And since I met Marcus, we’ve both talked about how fucking obvious it is.”
“Selena!”
“So I am going to talk to Marcus, and then we are going to go radio silent until David is ready to fix this. And you will fix it.” She says, pointing at me before chucking more stuff on the bed. “And we can also tell your dad to go fuck himself while we’re at it.”
“What an amazing plan.” I say sarcastically, picking up another suitcase from under my bed and starting to pack the bundle of clothes she has created.
“I know, right? First things first, I’ll get Nico to bring round some liquor. And food.” She replies, getting her phone out of her pocket and already texting him. “Then we are going to lock my door, turn our phones off, and get fucking drunk and you can tell us everything.”
“You know every–”
“Nah-uh. You’ve not spoken to us properly in weeks. I mean everything.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A few miles away, and a few hours later, David is walking through one of his abandoned warehouses, where he has asked Malcolm Voss to meet him. No back-up. No guns. No tricks.
Although Marcus, Harlan, and Theo are two blocks away, ready to drive at a second’s notice, with a trunk full to the brim with ammunition.
David is sure that Malcolm Voss has a similar setup nearby. The question is whether either car will be needed.
Malcolm stands arrogantly in the centre of the warehouse, and David can see his smug smile from the minute he walks through the doors. His hands are in his coat pockets, his stance wide and broad like he is confident he has already won. As David approaches him, he feels his anger starting to rile back up at the thought of Nora betraying him, feeding things back to her father without David even realising.
“I guess you didn’t need twenty-four hours to make your decision, Reid.” Malcolm mocks.
“And I guess you were never going to give them to me.” David retaliates, making Malcolm shrug in half-agreement. “I have some questions before I give you my decision though.”
“I don’t see how they’d be relevant, but go ahead.”
“When did you know she was here?”
Malcolm smiles at David’s question, and at his naivety. His opponent has unwittingly just shown his entire hand. All he really cares about is Nora.
“Last night, at the hotel.” Malcolm answers. David breathes in deeply. “What, deciding whether I’m telling the truth?”
“You don’t exactly have a good track record of being honest.” David says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’ll give you that. But I never lie when it comes to my daughter.”
The word makes David’s skin prickle unpleasantly.
“I’ve decided to make some revisions to my offer.” Malcolm continues. “Like I said, if you agree, I’ll leave you alone.”
“What are the revisions?”
“If you don’t agree, she’s coming with me. And I’ll use her to take you down, so it’s not just a war you’d be losing.”
“You’d never lie about her, but you’d use her as a pawn against me?”
“If I needed to. Because she may have fooled you into loving her, maybe even fooled herself into thinking she can do this all by herself, leave her old life behind, but I know exactly how to break her back down and make her come crawling back.”
The dread shoots through David’s stomach, but he swallows the feeling down to make sure it doesn’t show in his expression. The thought that this man would use Nora against him is sickening, just like the way he speaks about her. Like she's not even a person. Then a fragment of her confession bleeds through his brain.
‘I didn’t have any kind of relationship with him anymore. I hated everything. So I left.’
David looks back into Malcolm’s eyes, and he finally sees what his anger wouldn’t let him see when he first walked in.
The coldness, the hatred, the spite, the conceit.
That is all Malcolm is, and while David has always assumed there is some humanity he must be hiding somewhere, he realises now that it clearly makes no difference to him whether Nora is his child or not. He will use her however he needs to get what he wants.
Maybe there is truth in what she had said to him, the parts he can remember right now anyway. Maybe this is one of the reasons she kept it secret from him for so long.
While Malcolm clearly lacks humanity, David does not.
“I don’t want her in the middle of this.” he says, making Malcolm raise one eyebrow at him. “If I agree, then you leave her alone, right?”
“Aww,” Malcolm teases. “The mighty Reid has a heart. Who knew?”
“That’s my offer.”
“Fine. You give me control of your docks, and all the shipments that come with it, and I will leave Elizabeth alone.”
David clenches his teeth, his brain not liking him using that name for me one bit, not liking the whole situation either.
But he nods nonetheless, and the two men shake hands.