The man was relentlessly awful, but for the first time in Desmond’s life, Matthew’s threats seemed ridiculous and immature instead of dire shots that could turn his entire world upside down.
“What do you want from me, Matthew?” he asked, sounding more weary than furious.
“I want you to be humiliated the way you humiliated me,” Matthew snapped in return.
“Oh, is that all,” Javier said in a deadpan manner as he untied the strings of his headdress that were choking him so he could ball the wild thing in his hands.
Matthew glared at him. “This has nothing to do with you. Back off.”
“Honey, this has everything to do with me.” Javier stood as tall as he could. With a face full of garish make-up and glitter, he actually looked terrifying.
So much so that a small girl whose mother had just brought her to the bouncy castle burst into tears.
Desmond sent both mother and daughter an apologetic look, relating to the girl more than he wanted to, then gestured for Matthew to follow him away from the children’s play area to a more adult section of the garden so they could really get into things. Javier walked by his side, sending him a look that questioned what he was doing, but said he would stand by his side. Surprisingly, Matthew followed them as well.
As soon as they reached the edge of what looked like a rose garden, stopping beside its thick archway made out of boxwood, Desmond turned to face Matthew.
Before he could do more than open his mouth to say what he should have said a long, long time ago, Matthew launched in with, “This can all go away if you’d just reinstate my allowance.”
Desmond flinched back, eyes going wide. “Are you truly that thick?” he asked. He’d always seen Matthew as an unfortunate leech whom he had to appease to keep silent, but not only were all the reasons he needed to buy Matthew’s silence gone now, he was beginning to wonder if Matthew wasn’t simply an incompetent boob who thought it was easier to hurt other people than to make something of and for himself.
Matthew did not appreciate being called thick. “I know things about you,” he said by rote. It was the same meaningless drivel he’d been spouting for more than half a year now. “I know exactly how to bring you down.”
“I don’t believe you do,” Desmond said, glancing to Javier, his strength. He looked at Matthew again, a new and relaxing confidence filling him, and said, “Not anymore.”
“Oh, so the insider trading just went away, did it?” Matthew took a step closer to him. “All those facts and figures and insider secrets Angus and I got out of you? They just vanished, did they?”
“You didn’t get anything out of him,” Javier said, crossing his arms with a challenging look.
Matthew snorted. “You have no idea. Or have you not figured out that your special friend here has loose lips after drinking whiskey and having a few orgasms?”
Heat flooded Desmond’s entire body, making him wish he could run away again.
He wouldn’t do it, though. Not this time. It was long past time that he stood his ground and defended himself for doing the best he could at the time.
“I deeply regret allowing you to coerce me into that situation with Angus,” he said, wanting to stare down at his shoes, but maintaining eye contact, squared shoulders, and a firm jaw all the same. “It will probably take a great deal of therapy for me to unpick why I let those things happen, but none of it was entirely my fault, and I accept that.”
Javier smiled and inched closer to him, resting a hand on the small of his back.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Matthew said with a frown.
“It means I’m sorry that those things happened, but I’m not entirely certain I am the one who deserves the blame in the situation,” Desmond said.
Javier’s smile tightened as he spotted something behind Matthew, at the corner of the rose garden. He was taller than Desmond and in a different position, so Desmond couldn’t see what he saw. He wondered what had caught his attention when Javier looked at Matthew with something wild in his eyes and said, “So you admit that you and this Angus guy got Desmond drunk and put him in a compromised position so you could bleed stock tips from him?”
Matthew glared at Javier. “We did what we had to do to get what we needed.”
Two seconds later, Albert Jones emerged from the other side of the trellis arch. “Would you mind repeating that?” he asked, looking like some sort of holy avenger.
Matthew flinched so hard Desmond swore he could see the man’s soul leaving his body. “Mr. Jones. I didn’t see you there.”
“Evidently, you did not,” the man said. “But I would be very interested to know more about how you entrapped my formerstar partner into revealing insider information that benefited our strongest competitor.”
Matthew turned downright green. “I didn’t do anything. Desmond was the one who—did you sayformerpartner?”
“I quit,” Desmond said, confidence and freedom rushing in like a warm tide on a peaceful summer’s day. “I am no longer employed by Pickering Jones.”
“So you don’t really have anything more to threaten him with, do you, sweetie,” Javier said, giving Matthew the tightest, meanest smile Desmond had ever seen.
