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“Isn’t that your job to find out? But I’ll tell you this, Laurence was in Rome the night the drugs were found in my Maserati, and those two, Theo and Jocelyn, have a history of trying to attack both myself and my girlfriend. So, I suggest you start piecing things together and finally work out that I have no more questions to answer. There is something going down here between the three of them, and like I have tried to tell you all along, I have had nothing to fucking do with the drugs found in my car.” Phillip puts his hand on my shoulder to try to calm me down, but it has no effect.
“What Mr. Weston Darby is trying to say is we would be happy to help with your inquiries into this mess and look forward to you confirming the woman’s identity and the connection between the three of them.”
It’s all falling into place in my head, but I need them to finish this once and for all. I have no idea what the relationship between Jocelyn and Laurence is, but it’s no coincidence that the woman who despises me the most in this world and is a drug addict, is in an alleyway with my employee who was in Rome that night, and he then gets beat up for owing her drug dealer money.
Phillip takes over the discussion, and I just answer where I need to. We finally leave the station a few hours later and are told they will speak to me again as soon as they have confirmed everything. I have told them everything I know, including the discussion I overhead between Theo and Jocelyn at the charity function.
At last, I slip into my Porsche, after what feels like a day that has gone on for eternity, and I start the drive out to the estate. There is a lightness hovering over me, something I won’t allow myself to truly feel until this is all settled. Nothing has been proven yet, but I can feel that we are close.
Broderick and Rem have been telling me for a while to sit tight and wait. Things were happening behind the scenes, and they were close. They knew that something would come eventually, and now I think I know who the anonymous tip to the police was from. They have been piecing everything together, and I trust that the police can now see what’s right in front of them, thanks to my team who have made sure they do.
They have tracked down a drug dealer in Rome that sold the methamphetamine to a man with an English accent who was talking about using the drugs for revenge, but they haven’t gotten a physical description out of him for who the customer was. Not that Laurence would have used his real name anyway. There is footage of the deal happening, in the alley just up from the hotel, ironically the one I stepped into and kissed Victoria for the first time. I hate that they have tainted it with something like this. The guy can be seen with a hood over his head, a baseball cap on, dark glasses, and the police can’t seem to identify him. However, now they may have a chance of finding the disguise at Laurence’s place because he is probably stupid enough to have kept them, and then things will fall into place.
I still can’t process why he would do this to me. I thought we had a great relationship, and he is good at his job. I’ve never had any problems with him, or so I thought. My life has been so upside down, I’ve given up trying to work out any of it lately.
I asked Mum to stay in the apartment in London this weekend and have arranged for tickets to different musicals in the West End. Wallace will drive her around, and she can shop to her heart’s content with my card, even though I know she won’t. Broderick will watch over her, which makes me feel better, and he wanted to be the one to do it in person rather than assign a guard. In a way it makes me feel better, as I trust him, and he assures me he can work while she is in the shows, so things will still get sorted.
I just need time on my own, something I haven’t had since Mum got here, and truly, I don’t think I have taken the time to just let out the hurt and sadness of feeling so bad for what I put Victoria through. I don’t care how fucked up I feel, but it’s what she is going through, because of me, that kills me.
Walking into our bedroom, which is what I call this room now, my heart physically hurts. I avoided love for so long, and then this little redhead came storming into my life and there was no way I could ignore it any longer. Her fire and attitude were what grabbed me, and I knew I couldn’t let her go. For the first time in my life someone called me out on my bullshit and pushed me in a way I had never been pushed before. But once I brought her here, we finally found that there was so much more between us. The intimacy we share, I crave that just as much as the way we connect through our bodies when she submits fully to my need for control. She knows what I desire, and we found a place that we both can finally feel set free in the way we share our passion.
Watching Victoria submit to me is what allows me to breathe. She gives me life in a way I can’t describe. I want that again, here in our room, totally stripped bare and not just physically. I’ll give her my whole being like she deserves.
But not yet. This needs to be finally settled.
And we both need to be ready.
I have to work on myself, something I can admit in the stillness of this room, so that when I finally lay her down on this bed and find my home inside her, I will never let her down again.
Oh, my beautiful girl, how I miss you.
As I lay my head on her pillow that still has the faint hint of her scent lingering, tears start to fall. In the quiet of my home, I let go.
I finally let it all go.
VICTORIA
It’s been three months since I left London, and although my heart aches to go home, it’s not to the city that I miss… but for my Nicholas.
I thought traveling would heal my pain, but instead, all I have done is learn to tolerate the loneliness, while enjoying the places I have visited and the people I have met.
I don’t think I ever would have done this if I wasn’t pushed to leave. My dreams were big, but I don’t know if I would have taken that leap for a long time yet. There would always be an excuse as to why I couldn’t go. I liked the security of my life, but that changed in an instant the day I met Nicholas.
Running from him was the worst night of my life, and I cried the whole train ride to Paris, so much so that the older lady that was three seats down from me got up and offered me some tissues, probably to shut me up. I wish I was a quiet crier, but let’s be honest, I’m not quiet in anything I do. It’s always dramatized, and that night was no different.
I have an alert set up for him on my phone’s browser, so I would know any good or bad news that was happening in his life. If I thought he needed me, there is nothing that would have kept me away. But instead, things have been quiet on the web, and that worries me more. He’s been hiding, and I hate that for him, because it tells me he is as affected by all this as I am.
I long for any updates from Lou. She hasn’t been dating Flynn, but they have stayed in touch, and she makes sure she gets any news she can for me. Her anger at Nicholas for what happened is overshadowed by how much she understands he means to me, so she continues to push Flynn for answers.
Nicholas shocked me when I finally turned on my phone the day after I left. There was not one single missed call from him, no text messages or fired-up voicemails where that deep voice of his was yelling at me to get home immediately. I lay at night in bed, sometimes wishing there had been, just so I could replay them and hear his voice, the one that makes me go weak at the knees and tingle all over. But the more I think about it, he did what I should have known he would do all along when dealing with emotions.
He shut me out in true Nicholas style.
It never made the gossip columns that his case was resolved, but Lou told me that he had his name cleared of the drug charges, not that I ever had any doubt that it would happen eventually.
I was shocked to hear it was Laurence, his builder, that had set him up. The poor man had become caught up with Jocelyn, and he was trying to win her love. He was never going to be good enough for her, just being a builder in her eyes and not some corporate highflyer, but she used him for sex and information on what was happening in the company. The poor man was under her spell, loving her and not realizing it wasn’t returned the same way. So he thought if he set Nicholas up, it would win her over, once and for all, and she would take control of the company they both believed should have been hers all along.
The sad part of the whole story was that he did it all on his own. There was no evidence of her involvement, so when everything fell apart for him, she hung him out to dry. She was the one who owed money to Theo, the disgusting little drug dealer that he turned out to be. Laurence was trying to help her defend herself against Theo, while begging her to stop using drugs. It was a tragic love story in the end. Laurence and Theo were both charged, but the woman at the center of it all walked away with nothing but a bad reputation which will disappear when some other scandal is more interesting, because that’s just life.
