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You shouldn’t feel entitled to threaten me in the first place!
We’ll talk about this next week, babe. Keep your head down, worry about your dad and not Matt. Sleep well.
I sat there a while longer, but there were no further messages and I didn’t hear anything that sounded like someone breaking into the house, so I made my way to my bedroom as silently as possible and locked the door behind myself once I got there. Checked my closet and under my bed and the well in my desk where the seat went even though it was ridiculous to think anyone with those long legs could hide anywhere in my room.
Even then I didn’t want to get undressed where there might be eyes on me. I changed into my pyjamas carefully, without exposing any extra parts of my skin to the open air.
I slipped into my bed without turning the lamps off and kept my grip on my phone. I was not going t
o sleep at all that night, and I had a feeling that was in the region of what Axel had hoped to achieve.
There was no way I could just take this. He had crossed all the way over into stalking… or at least he was going to make me feel stalked while trying to avoid having to actually do anything that would land him in trouble.
Well, these messages he was sending me would probably land him in trouble… except revealing them to anyone might land me in trouble too, because Dad and I were now dependent on him financially. And that was the outcome that assumed anyone believed those messages were really unwanted. At this point pretty much everyone seemed to believe we were having a flirtation that had gone wrong, and that meant they were likely to believe I was just angry and trying to ‘get’ him.
I supposed there were girls out there who would do that sort of thing. Tamara had muttered a few things about some crazy ex of Steven’s, but I would have bet our house on that being just the exception. And yet when a girl had to accuse a guy, there were always these questions. That was just how the world had to work I supposed.
And if there was no evidence he’d actually come anywhere near my house without my knowledge, if he was just trying to rile me up about it like I was struggling to convince myself was the case… I would just make things worse for myself, for Dad… probably for the boys too.
But two could play at this stalking game, surely. If he was going to force a connection to my family, I was going to use that for all it was worth. He was going to be the one fearing me popping around every corner.
Having made that decision, I was actually able to close my eyes and start to drift off.
Chapter Thirteen: Axel
It was still pissing me off the next day, but I had what I needed and I had a busy day ahead of me, so I was trying not to let it get me too distracted.
She ought to be grateful to me though. That fucking Aileen. She had to realise her dad was a flake, never going to be able to do anything right for himself. He was exactly the same type as Matt’s mother: never got over that one disappointment, was just going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life.
People like that needed help, they needed all semblance that they were ever going to contribute properly to society taken off the table. That wasn’t a service our government was prepared to provide: it was up to people like me, who were able to get it done. In the case of the Andersons I was happy to do it even, because Aileen wasn’t a flake. She worked, maybe not as much as she could have, but dealing with someone like that father all the time would be a drain. I didn’t expect the father to do anything useful for me under my ‘employment’, I just wanted him out of the way where he wouldn’t cause anyone trouble.
It kind of amused me, to be honest, to get to his place to see what he was working on and to have a girlfriend show up in short order and have him cancel on me. That was the sort of move that took either big balls or a tiny brain: maybe both in his case; the girlfriend was definitely MILF standard, if you were into that sort of thing. I didn’t expect shit from this guy, so good luck to him if he wanted to spend his afternoon fucking his remaining brain cells out instead of proving to me he was useless.
But then Aileen had sneaked right off to Matt’s place once she thought she knew where I was going to be, hadn’t she? What the fuck was she even doing with him? I knew Matt was smarter than to cross me by fucking around with someone I was doing business with, and I didn’t believe for a second Aileen would even touch him after what I’d done to her. She’d come along to show me how much I wasn’t going to get to her and then I’d gotten to her. No way she would be able to think of some other man yet. I bet she’d be up for another punishment if I decided she needed one—and I was definitely leaning in that direction.
I was going to have to be careful though because she was getting to me a whole lot more than I wanted. You had to respect an opponent who wasn’t easily humiliated, and when it came to Aileen that cute little arse end was as interesting as the mouthy end.
I wasn’t going to have her running a deal on me. That coming week, I’d put her in her place. I’d figure out how to deal with Matt too; I had plenty of dirt on him I hadn’t spilled yet.
For the moment, I had a guy to meet about my product. Lucas had put me onto him in exchange for a generous percentage of any deal we thrashed out: he ran a boutique science education line and just happened to be looking into the viability of getting a shop set up in Hobart. So I’d invited him to my place, and I was going to blow his mind with my prototype and my sales talk, and that would be the start. I’d graduate running.
It was about time for him to arrive, so I stepped outside and started a slow stroll down my driveway to meet him. Well, officially I wasn’t going to be meeting him, I had much better things to do with my time. But if he happened to turn up when I was already checking my mailbox, I could escort him grandly up into the house and control the experience for him right from the beginning.
There was someone already hanging around our mailbox when I got down past the cars near the end of the driveway, back turned to me… the wrong type of figure to be Mal Cowen, surely.
My hand started to twitch as if it held its own memories. I knew, even before she turned around: Aileen.
How had she gotten here? There were hardly any buses; it was one of the nice things about this neighbourhood. Was this more of Matt’s interference? Why was she practically on my doorstep, and today of all days?
“Hello, Axel,” she called as I came close. She was keeping her voice perky, but the nearer I got the more I saw her shaking. She knew for sure she was taking her life into her hands here. “I thought I’d be the one visiting you this time. It’s not that hard to get here; I did have to take a very early bus though.”
“Aileen, you need to get your little arse home now. I don’t have time to deal with you right now.”
Aileen’s chin went up. “Don’t have time to deal with my arse, you mean? You mean you’re not going to spank me in front of the entire neighbourhood?” She started turning as if she was going to get into position for me.
“Keep your goddam voice down, you’ll kill some of the old folk in the neighbourhood with that sort of talk.” Maybe being gruff would make her behave. “I’m meeting with a potential business partner, like, immediately, so if you don’t want to fuck up your daddy’s chances of making it big you’d better make yourself scarce.” She was wearing this cute little sundress with no back and hardly any front, her tits peeking out on all sides. How the fuck did they fit bras under those things?
I did not need to be thinking about her tits right now. Hadn’t I gotten enough of those already? I was starting to lose my focus, and of course right on time, a car pulled up outside my house. The man who stepped out was shorter than I expected, but otherwise matched the photo of Mal Cowen I’d found on his company website.
