Actually, she’s the only person I want to see right now, which is what makes this whole thing so dangerous.
I head over to the park. When we get there, I walk with Lacey over to the playground area and I help her play, keeping a close eye on her. Ten minutes later, I spot Erin walking quickly over toward me.
I have to suppress a smile. Something in my chest blooms and I want to grab her by the waist and kiss her. I should hate her so much, but my first reaction isn’t hate.
It’s pure desire. And maybe that’s worse.
She comes up to me, a little unsure of herself. “Hey, Griffin,” she says.
“Hey.”
“Erin!” Lacey runs over to her, and Erin smiles big.
“Hey there, little girl.” Erin scoops her up in a big hug. “How’s it going?”
“Play!” she says.
“Yeah, we’ll play, of course.” She looks at me and I shake my head once.
“We need to talk,” I say.
She nods and looks back at Lacey. “Can you go over to those big blocks and show me how good at counting you are?”
Lacey nods vigorously and Erin puts her down. Lacey walks a few feet away to these large yellow blocks with numbers painted on them that she can spin around in circles. She mostly just hits them and spins them, but it distracts her enough for now.
“What did you want to talk about?” Erin asks.
“It’s about… your job,” I say.
“I’m sorry about that,” she says quickly. “Seriously, Griffin, I hate myself for doing that, and I really was keeping my father away from you. I hate him for this, you know, and I’m trying to get away—“
“Stop,” I say quickly, interrupting her. “I can’t hear that right now. I just need to know something.”
She stops and nods, taking a deep breath. “Anything,” she says.
“My friend, James.”
Her face falls. “Oh god,” she says.
“Was he involved?”
She hesitates then nods once. “I’m so sorry, Griffin,” she says. “I didn’t want you to find out this way. I don’t know how or why, but my father got him to introduce me to you.”
That hurts even more than her betrayal. At least she didn’t know me when she agreed to get involved with this insane plan. But the fact that James betrayed me is even fucking worse.
I feel like my whole fucking world is a lie. James has been my closest friend for years, but clearly I was wrong about that. If he can do something like this to me, I don’t think we ever had a real friendship. I can’t imagine what Fisher offered him in exchange for betraying me.
More money, maybe, but he’s already rich. I can’t even guess at his motives, and I don’t want to.
At least I know now. That’s what I realized and should have seen from the start, that’s what was nagging at me. My friendship with James blinded me to the fact that Erin only came into my life through him.
“So you never worked for him?” I ask her.
“Never,” she says. “He was in on it. My father was bragging about it when we first put this together.”
“That fucking bastard.” I clench my fists.
“I don’t know why he did it,” she says quickly.
“I’m going to kill him.” I turn my back on her, raging on the insane. “I’m going to fire that fucking snake.”
“Wait,” she says. “Hold on.” She steps up next to me. “Isn’t he more useful if you keep him around?”
I glance at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, I don’t want to tell you what to do. I’m sure you hate me and you have every right to. But now you know that he’s a cheat and a liar. You can feed him bad information or even figure out what my father’s going to do through him.”
I listen to what she’s saying, and although the only thing I want to do right now is to drive over to James’s place and punch him in the smug fucking mouth, I know she’s right. He’s more useful if I keep him around, but the thought makes me ill.
Still, that’s the world I’m a part of now. Apparently friendship means nothing. I want to destroy James, not just fire him, and keeping him close will help me come up with the perfect way to get that done.
I watch her for a second before taking a deep breath.
“How did you protect me?” I ask her.
She looks a little surprised. “I told my father that you were having your bathroom remodeled.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Well, so that he couldn’t come into your apartment with a team of guys to bug the place. I wanted him to think that I was still on his side, even if I wasn’t.”