Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,90
I’d be good. Her spare bedroom was ready and waiting in case I needed to get away from home tonight. She’d taken Sam to the hospital to get his shin X-rayed because it had swollen up and gone a horrible purple colour—once again proving that this whole fucking nightmare was cursed—but she’d be back later.
“I just said I wasn’t hungry.”
The movie theatre at Riverley Hall was usually a comfy, cosy place, but tonight, a chill washed over me as I stepped through the door. The big screen at the front of the room glowed grey as it waited for me to press play on the clip I’d cued up earlier. A picture painted a thousand words, right? So a video should be good for a million. I couldn’t speak anyway. My throat was too dry.
Nine sofas—three rows of three—sat on three levels, complete with cushions and fluffy blankets. Vintage movie posters decorated the walls, and a drinks cooler hummed in one corner. A table held bags of candy Toby hadn’t yet got around to confiscating, and because Bradley had done the decorating, there was a vase of fresh flowers too.
Black dropped onto the middle sofa and patted the seat beside him.
I sat.
Felt sick to my stomach as I pressed play.
Raw footage from Sam’s jump flickered across the screen. The roll. His release. The ground rushing towards him, a lurch as he adjusted his direction, and finally, the slate tiles of the guest house roof filling the lens. Black’s arm dropped away from my shoulders. I’d never known him to be scared before, not once, but that night, I smelled the fear seeping from his pores.
And then I knew the truth.
“What’s all this about?” he asked mildly, but he couldn’t hide the tension in his voice.
Our guess had been right on the money.
“I don’t think I need to explain.”
His voice softened to the faintest whisper. “I didn’t plan to do it.”
“Oh, right, it just happened, did it? You simply tripped over the briefcase and decided to replace the contents with a bunch of fakes?”
“I came home early because there were things we needed to discuss. And then I realised he was there, and I heard you fucking, and…”
“You thought you’d destroy him and then lie about it?”
“Technically, I never said I didn’t do it.”
Oh, that prick… I shoved him in the shoulder and stood up.
“Don’t treat me like an idiot. You offered to head up the investigation into the theft and then conveniently didn’t find anything.”
Black stood too, and I wished I had a stepladder.
“I spoke to people. Made sure the FBI didn’t prosecute.”
“Oh, gee, so because Alaric stayed out of prison, that makes everything okay, does it?”
“Clearly not.”
“For once in your life, can’t you show some empathy?”
“I…struggle with that.”
“No kidding. You almost got me killed that day. How does that make you feel?”
“I had no idea you were going with him. If I had…”
“You’d have come clean?”
“I’d have stopped it somehow.”
“People died, Black. Alaric lost everything. I lost a man I cared about.” I sucked in a breath and stared my husband straight in the eye. “Who I still care about. And now I’ve lost you too.”
“Emmy, I—”
“Shut up! Your jealousy’s a monster. Sure, you had feelings for me back then, I get it. But instead of growing a pair and telling me, you sabotaged nearly every relationship I got involved in.” I ticked off on my fingers. “Take James, for example. Rather than risking us getting back together, you engineered him into the presidency and bribed a woman to marry him. A woman, I hasten to add, who you were fucking at the time. You think I didn’t know that? Yet you don’t see me losing my shit every time you’re alone in a room with Diana, do you?”
“James wanted to marry you.”
“So? Did I want to marry him? No. After everything that happened—” I swallowed down the sob that threatened to burst out as I recalled the nightmare of a week that had ended my relationship with James Harrison. “After everything that happened, marriage was never an option. And you’re still an asshole to him even now, eleven years later.”
“Because he’s still in love with you.”
“Fucking hell! It takes two to tango, and the last contact I had with his balls was when I planted my knee in them. You’re irrational! And what about Gideon? You had him reassigned to Paris.”
“It was a promotion.”
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a deep breath.