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I hold my hands out to stop the questions. “I don’t know. She was crying. She didn’t want me to comfort her. She wouldn’t listen. She just sped out of here like a bat out of hell. Something has happened. We need to…”
“Fuck,” Oliver shouts, interrupting my flow. He’s staring down at his phone with eyes as wide as a lemur.
“What?” Stefan steps closer to his friend, looking over his shoulder at the screen. “Jesus. Is that?”
“How?” Whatever it is, it must be bad. Oliver’s lost all the color in his face and his hand is trembling. He swipes and swipes, his expression growing grimmer and grimmer. Stefan shakes his head. “It’s deliberate,” he tells his friend. “Someone’s out to sabotage you.”
“Forget me,” Oliver says. “I don’t give a shit about me. It’s Allie I care about. She must have seen this.”
“SEEN WHAT?” I yell, losing patience. “CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?”
Oliver holds up his phone and we all squint at the image. It’s a blur of figures around a central blurred figure. When Carson, who’s closest, swears and grabs the phone for a closer look, I know what it is. An image of last night by the pool when Allie took us all, one after another. The night we showed Allie what a goddess she is.
Who could have done something like this and why?
We’re all just ordinary guys, aren’t we? I don’t have anyone who has such a grudge against me that they’d go to these lengths to fulfill. I can’t imagine the others do either, except Stefan immediately believed that Oliver’s the target, and I want to find out why right now.
“Oliver, you need to start talking.” I crowd closer, using my extra height and bulk to add physical presence to my demand. “If you know something, you need to share it with us. Allie’s hurting.”
Stefan and Oliver exchange a loaded glance. Oliver’s not the only one who knows something. Stefan’s in on this secret too.
“This is aimed at me,” Oliver says. He runs his hands over his face as his phone is passed around the group. He seems to have aged ten years in five minutes. “I just inherited from my uncle who recently passed. He detested his own children and left everything to me.”
“Your cousins have done this?”
He inhales, expanding his chest and letting his breath out in a rush. Without his neat appearance and impeccable clothes, he seems so diminished. “I don’t know for sure, but if I had to bet, I’d say it was a ninety-nine percent chance it’s them. They know if there’s a way of having me discredited, I’ll lose control of the businesses.”
“What businesses?” Jimmy asks, stealing the question from the tip of my tongue.
“My uncle was in publishing.”
Something about this response seems deliberately evasive. Publishing is a broad field. “What did he publish?” I ask.
“Newspapers and magazines.”
“Which ones?” I ask, like a dog with a bone. Oliver might not want us to know the full facts, but he’s damned well going to be transparent, or I’m going to shake the information out of him. He lists three major newspapers and three magazines. The name of the last magazine makes all our heads turn.
“You own the magazine that Allie works for?” Tom’s jaw ticks as he clenches it, already knowing the answer.
Oliver glances into an unoccupied corner of the hallway, his shoulders rounded and hands hanging limply at his side. His hair is disheveled from sleep and it’s the only time he’s presented himself to the group as less than perfectly groomed. His revelation has far-reaching consequences, but at least he has the decency to look contrite. Oliver nods in answer to the question, like using the word yes is too much for him.
Guilt rolls off him in waves.
“You’re Allie’s boss?” Jonas asks.
“Not her boss.” Oliver’s voice returns, but his defense is stupid.
“Her boss’s boss, then?” Jonas isn’t going to let Oliver worm even an inch out of accepting this situation for what it is.
“Why are you here, if you’re her boss’s boss?”
He holds his hands out, palms to the group like a man about to face a firing squad. “I know it looks bad. It looks like I came here to take advantage of Allie, but that isn’t the case. One of the notes my uncle left for me regarding Fine Line was that Kirsty wasn’t moving the magazine forward in the way he’d hoped. His opinion was that women’s magazines don’t have the level of socially relevant content that they should. He advised me to try to find a replacement who could improve this. I looked into the staff roster and Allie seemed like the best candidate. I forced my way into this house under the guise that I wanted to see one of our journalists in action.”
“And then you fucked her?” Gabe isn’t taking any prisoners. The betrayal in his voice on Allie’s behalf is palpable.
“That wasn’t my idea.” Oliver shakes his head, denial taking over. “I warned everyone at the start. I tried to steer the group away from that. I tried to leave but I could see she felt rejected because of it. And I couldn’t take it any further without revealing my identity. It would have ruined the whole assignment.”
“So, you put work first and Allie’s welfare second?” Theron says. There’s guilt in his tone too, the impact of his proposal smacking us all in the face.
