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Yet underneath it all, I sensed the pain.
I stared at him, unable to form a single word. An awkward and painful silence stretched for some time.
“Are you serious? You think I leaked that photo of us online to make money? Do you even know how ridiculous that sounds?” I finally found my voice. I turned my phone on.
“Log in to your internet banking. I know the money is there, Laura, so you can stop lying to me right now and tell me why you have betrayed me—us,” he said.
My mind was trying to process what he’d just said.
I handed him my phone, hurt that he was saying these things to me, as though he no longer trusted me. He scrolled through it, and I could practically feel the tension in my body.
“See, there's nothing there, Spencer, and I think—”
“An unknown number sent you this late last night.” He handed me back the phone.
I glanced at my messages, and there was indeed one that I must have missed last night. A picture. I opened the photo and gasped, realising that someone had snapped a picture of Spencer when he’d picked me up off the sand in Sicily and thrown me over his shoulder. The timing was perfect, and the photo of us was pretty good.
I opened my mouth to tell him that there was some kind of mistake because I hadn’t seen that message last night. Besides, the text arrived at nine p.m., and I was with him then. My phone was in my room.
Then he handed me back his phone—a screenshot of my bank statement, showing a transaction for two hundred thousand pounds. I gasped and then quickly logged in to my internet banking. My heart was going a hundred miles an hour as I tried to breathe; I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. It only took several seconds, and when my balance revealed that I was loaded, I widened my eyes in terror.
“I honestly don’t know where this money came from, Spencer, and I hadn't leaked that photo. I swear to God, I have no idea what is going on right now. Please believe me! This is absurd,” I shouted, tears streaming down my cheeks. Someone was setting me up, but the way Spencer was staring at me in that moment felt like he was plunging a blade into my heart.
“Unfortunately, Laura, I have to let you go. You cannot be Maja’s nanny any longer because I don’t trust you anymore. All the evidence is here, right in front of you, so you can stop lying already. I'll send the car, and the driver can take you back to your apartment,” he said.
But I wasn’t listening to him anymore. I kept shaking my head, ready to get on my knees and plead for him to listen to me and believe that he was wrong about me. About this.
“I've more important things to deal with. I've a press conference to attend, and it’s better if you are no longer associated with the Banks family anymore. You have done enough damage as it is.”
“Are you seriously firing me?” I asked in complete shock. I was shouting at this point. My whole body was shaking, and I kept telling myself that this wasn’t happening for real.
He stared at me with a detached and cold expression.
“What did you expect that I would do?” he asked, his voice low. “Cath will send you the confirmation by email. You can collect the rest of your things later.”
“No, I’m not going anywhere. We need to talk about this, please. Why would I leak that photo to the press? You were paying me well enough, I didn’t need that money. This makes little sense,” I said, quickly wiping the tears away from my face. In his eyes, I was the woman who’d taken advantage of his situation, pretended that she cared and then betrayed him. I thought he was different from other men, different from Jake in assuming the worst of me, but … that money in my account was pretty damning.
“I don’t know anymore, Laura, but I’m taking Maja to Sarah’s, and she’s going to stay there for a little while until this whole thing is settled,” he said. “And I don’t want you here when she comes back. I know she’s going to be devastated, but I've to protect my family and my reputation.”
“So this is it? Are you going to dig more into this? I’m telling you, I’ve been framed. And you know me well enough to know I don’t care for status or money. Does it not appear a little odd to you? After what we’ve been through?”
No answer from him. Just a stiff jaw and impassive face.
Regret and resentment took root in my very soul. He really did believe I’d done this.
I took a deep breath and briefly closed my eyes, bracing myself. Doing my utmost to not break down in front of him. “If I go now, Spencer, that is it. Maja will be the one to suffer, not you or your fucking over-the-top ego. This hurts me so much. She and I've a bond, and I don’t want to leave her, but you have crushed my dignity. I'll not beg because it’s obvious you don’t believe me. You don’t want to give me the benefit of the doubt, even though things look bad. You talk about trust, but that goes both ways! I didn’t do this,” I said, my voice rising a little at the end. I was dying inside because this man had lost faith in me.
I was nothing to him.
“Maja is strong, and I'll find a great nanny for her … and whatever happened between us will never happen again,” he said through gritted teeth.
This hurt so much more than I could imagine. Not the fact that he’d made the decision that we were over, but the fact that he didn’t even care about his own daughter’s feelings. Maja was my niece, and she was only nine. This would upset her, but Spencer was blinded by his own ego, so nothing else mattered to him anymore.
“There's no us because according to what you’ve just told me, there never was. A relationship where trust is so fragile that it can break at the drop of a hat? It doesn’t exist. We claimed to feel so much for each other, but it appears we were only fucking after all. But I tell you this: once I prove I had nothing to do with that picture, it will settle this matter and that will be the end of it,” I said and marched out of the office, swallowing my tears. There was no way I would cry in front of him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
He didn’t follow me out, of course. All the evidence pointed to me being the culprit.
My heart shattered with every step I took. I went to my room anyway, because I had some personal items that I needed and I truly didn’t want to go back to this apartment ever again, even though this would truly break Maja’s heart, but it was for the best. I would try to talk to her at some point, but I was in no shape to face her right then.
