AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She would regret if she didn’t and besides he was a right to know. She would no doubt mention this as evidence I should tell Mike. The difference was I could see that Reece was good, that he would support Gia and be there for her even if Gia couldn’t. Yes, he had lied by omission about his money but it had been understandable considering Gia’s attitude at the time and everything worked out in the end. I knew no such thing about Mike. Not for sure and neither did Gia. She and Reece were happily married. There was no way she could understand my conflicted feelings about Mike.
The kettle started to scream in the kitchen. Putting the test back on the counter, I went to put it out of it’s misery. Making a cuppa more or less the way dad had taught me, I sat down at the table, taking a long sip, the effect of the concoction instantly doing its work, calmness washing over me making me physically relax. I thought about my dad then and what he would have thought of the whole situation.
He had been a pretty clever man, in both the street and the book sense, and would likely have figured that Mike was being manipulated. I doubt he would have been thrilled about the exact circumstances of it’s coming about he would have been happy to be a grandad. I really wished I could have called him then.
Chapter Fourteen
Mike
The turkey design on the google home page was just one more reminder that Thanksgiving was upon us, though I didn’t really feel like I had too much to be thankful for. I had been shutting myself off for weeks. Either in my office at work or in my condo working at my station.
I was starting to get what looked like prison pallor due to a lack of sunlight. I convinced myself it was to try and forget about Sally. Doing what Reece had suggested, though I doubted he had meant to do it in quite that way, but it was, of course, bullshit. I knew what I was doing, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it yet.
Thanks to Jessa I was cutting myself off from my social life to keep from having to see her or Sally at social events. Jessa had made it clear that she knew where I was most of the time and Sally and I had a few too many friends in common not to bump into each other. On the other hand it might not be so bad if that happened. I felt pretty bad about what had gone down and didn’t feel quite right approaching her directly but I still wanted to talk to her. I knew Reece had been right and there was no realistic way that Sally was a spy for Jessa. Me suspecting that Sally was working for Jessa was exactly what Jessa had wanted. She had moved us like chess pieces and we had let her. I really hoped I would have been smarter than that but, like Ava liked to say, for a genius I could be really stupid.
I was pissed off at Jessa for what she did but even more than that I was mad at myself for falling for it so completely, for being so terrible to someone as sweet as Sally and cutting her out of my life because of a scheme from my super-villain of an ex who could give most spy masters a run for their money when it came to subterfuge.
Suddenly, the words of George Orwell came flooding back. The bit about how rolling in the muck was not the best way of getting clean. I had fucked up but was over taken by a new drive. Not one of anger against Jessa or indeed myself, but a more constructive one towards trying to make amends and set things right if such a thing were still possible. I grabbed my coat and called the limo company.
Chapter Fifteen
Mike
It was dark by the time I pulled up. The street was pretty jammed with cars and I had to have the limo parked six blocks away from Catharine’s brownstone. The length of limo playing no small part in the difficultly in getting a spot just the right size for that mammoth machine. I made a note to myself to not asked for a stretched limo next time. They looked nice but had too may problems to make them worth dealing with.
It was a sterling example of automotive ballet as the driver got the limo in the gap between a Lexus and an Audi. Both testaments to the upper class culture of the area, which had been freshly gentrified, anything even resembling a detached house being like gold in New York, even if they were in Brooklyn. At least they were close to the bridge. You could actually see the Empire State Building from the street I was on.
