This Man Confessed(169)

“Baby, please, I need to see you.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I remind him quietly, resting myself on a barstool. “What else could you possibly have to tell me, Jesse?”

“I’ll be home soon.”

“Will it make me run?”

“I’ll be home soon,” he repeats and hangs up, leaving me with John’s phone suspended limply by my cheek and a stomach churning with trepidation. The penthouse phone screeches, making me jump, and John thumps his heavy feet across the kitchen, now with his glasses back in place. I won’t waste my breath trying to extract any information from him.

He returns to the kitchen, looking too fraught for such a menacing man. Now I’m really worried. “I’m needed downstairs. You’ll lock the door behind me and you won’t answer it unless I call you to say it’s me. Where’s your phone?”

“What’s happening?” I stand, starting to shake.

“Where’s your phone?” he presses, taking his own from my trembling hand.

“In my bag. John, tell me.”

He tips the contents of my bag out and quickly locates my mobile. He sits it neatly on the island and picks me up, placing me gently on the stool. “Ava, now isn’t the time to argue with me. There’s someone the concierge is suspicious of and I’m just going to check it out. It’s probably nothing.”

I don’t believe him. Nothing suggests I should, not the tone of his voice or his body language. Everything is suggesting that I should be terrified, and I’m beginning to feel it. “Okay,” I agree reluctantly.

After nodding and squeezing my shoulder affectionately, he carries his big body from the kitchen, and I soon hear the front door close, leaving me still shaking and with a racing mind. I just want Jesse. I don’t care what he’s got to tell me. I clench my phone and run up the stairs to the bedroom, quickly locating the key to Jesse’s office from my underwear drawer before rushing back down and making quick work of unlocking the door. I know I’ll feel better when I’m sitting in his big office chair, like he’s wrapped around me in a sense.

I burst through the door, frenzied and out of breath.

And the first thing I see is a woman.

She’s standing in the middle of the room, staring at my wall.

Ruth Quinn.

My legs buckle, making me stagger forward and my heart stop in my chest. But my dramatic entrance and gasp of shock doesn’t seem to faze her. She maintains her rapt stare, not giving me a second glance. She’s spellbound and if it wasn’t for Jesse and John’s recent words and reactions to this woman, then I would be thinking that she not only has a crush on me, but she is insanely obsessed.

Too much time has passed before my brain registers that I should be running, but when I slowly start stepping back, she looks at me. She looks hollow, not the usual bright-eyed, fresh-skinned woman whom I’ve become used to. It has only been a few hours since I’ve seen her, but you would think it was years.

“Don’t bother.” Her voice is cold and carrying an air of loathing, and it immediately eliminates any thoughts I had that this woman is crushing on me. Now I know, with absolute certainty, that she hates me. “The lift will be out of action and Casey will stop you on the stairs.”

I might be in shock, but those words register loud and clear. So does the mental flashback of Casey in his suit…and in the CCTV footage from the night I was drugged. I even manage to ask myself the sensible question of how the hell she got in the penthouse let alone Jesse’s office.

Then she’s dangling a bunch of keys in front of her. “He made it too easy.” She throws them on Jesse’s desk, and my eyes follow their path until they clatter and eventually still. I don’t recognize the set, but I’m not stupid enough to wonder what they’re for. “Your husband’s stupidity and my lover’s desperate need to make me happy has almost made this boring.” She looks back to the wall. The Ava Wall. “I think he’s a little obsessed with you.”

I remain exactly where I am, racing through my options. I have none. No escape, no chance of anyone getting to me, and with the new concierge keeping guard, I’m helpless.

The tip of her finger meets the wall where Jesse has written something. “My heart started beating again?” She laughs, a cold, sinister laugh, increasing my already potent unease. “Jesse Ward, the obnoxious, woman-using arsehole is in love, married, and now expecting twins? How perfect.”

I’m facing another scorned ex-lover, but this one is on a whole new level. She hates him, and in turn, hates me. Frightening clarity, plus the way she has now turned and is staring at my stomach, informs me that she also hates our growing babies. My fear has just catapulted to the highest level, and I know for certain that my babies and I are in grave danger.