Rebound (39 page)

“
Matt?” I
whispered.

“
Hmm.” He responded
sleepily.

“
Now that we’ve declared
our love for each other, can I still ask you to fuck me?” I leaned
my face into his, seeking his mouth. He kissed me longingly,
pulling me on top of his body. His soft chest hair excited my
breasts. I could feel his arousal, hard on my pubic mound. My legs
instantly straddled him. His hands set on my buttocks, grinding me
into him.

Oh yeah, we can still fuck.

For the month after Chelsea’s wedding, I was
living under the euphoria of our love. So many changes had taken
place. I was let go from the Inn. I was disappointed that I lost
that job, but was relieved that I could devote more time to Matt.
Ross told me that he was planning to sell the Inn because he was
spending more time with Alice while she was preparing to pass on.
Her health worsened, and I visited her a few times for less than an
hour. She’d get tired or I’d become too emotionally unstable to
remain by her side. She looked like my mom, lying down in bed,
covered with quilts. Her head wrapped in a scarf to stay warm. Ross
took great care of her. Their extended families took care of the
little things. All I wanted to do was give Alice a bit of
normalcy.

I talked about Matt and our
relationship. She’d expressed her hope that we would marry and have
lots of babies. She made me promise to work on pursuing the career
that I’m most passionate about because she feared I would flounder
from job to job with no direction. She’d expressed her regret of
not continuing with her parents’ love and care of the Inn. Alice
understood that it was time to let her dream go because it wasn’t
fair to Ross to continue living someone else’s dream. She was at
peace with the sale of the Inn. Ross would be financially secure
for the rest of his life.

I thought more about what Alice
advised about the future. I needed to prepare for my future. My
debts were making it impossible for me to live comfortably. Matt
had money and properties. I had a studio and debt, which I couldn’t
climb out of. I’d lost my ambition. The lesson I learned from
Alice’s illness and the passing of my mother is that life is short,
and I needed to make a plan to implement stability.

Matt and I would spend a few evenings
a week together. I’d spend Friday evening to Tuesday morning at his
place and give myself a few weekday evenings of alone time at my
place. He’d argue that we could have individual quiet time in his
apartment, which was big enough for the two of us. We’d also drive
to his house up north and spend the night. I still maintained my
morning shift on Sundays, but I was considering dropping that from
my schedule too. Money wasn’t as tight because Matt picked up the
expense of food and commute. He also purchased my toiletries when
we’d shop for food together. I’d allowed him to buy me a few gifts
of clothing. I had to stop him from buying out the store on one
occasion.

On Thursday afternoon before my shift
in the sales office ended, a knock on the door startled me because
I was engrossed in my work and was lulled by the sounds of the
activity in the main workout room. I looked up to find Eric
standing at the door with a smile that wasn’t his normal teeth
baring grin.

“
Hi, Eric. How’ve you
been?” I smiled, genuinely missing our repartee.

“
Hey, Perla. Can I talk to
you privately for a moment?” He asked tentatively.

“
Sure.” I motioned for him
to take a seat. He shut the door behind him. I got nervous, but
tried to mask it when I asked, “What’s up?”

“
I really shouldn’t be
telling you what I need to tell you.” He paused gathering his
thoughts as to how to start his revelation. “I’m working for a
company here in Boston. It’s a huge corporation. I’m one of the IT
security people on staff at their headquarters.”

“
Okay?” I
prodded.

“
The company name is
Pentagon Group. Have you heard of them?” I thought about the name.
Nothing rang a bell. I thought it was an odd name because the
United States has the ‘Pentagon’, which is a military installation
in the Nation’s capital.

I shook my head, “No. Should
I?”

“
I definitely think you
should. You see . . .” He looked up and over to the wall and
continued, “Your boyfriend, Matt, is Dr. Mathias Keene,
right?”

“
Yes. He’s an orthopedic
surgeon.”

“
He is, but he’s also
affiliated with Pentagon.” I shook my head. And thought about what
he was saying.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Dr. Keene is part owner
of Pentagon Group, along with four other people. Each of them own
twenty percent of Pentagon.”

I shrugged knowing he was talking
about Lark, Zipper, Kent and Brady. “Okay? I don’t think it’s any
of my business what his affiliation is with Pentagon.”

“
Pentagon owns a bunch of
smaller corporations and businesses. It’s a multi-billion dollar
company making decisions in Boston and many cities around the
country and they’re also working on places in Europe.”

I wanted him to get to the point, but
I didn’t want to be rude. He obviously felt I needed to know.
“Eric, Matt and I are in a committed relationship, but I’m not
interested in his business ventures. Thank you for the information
. . .” He interrupted me.

“
Did you work for the
Liberty Inn?”

“
Yes.”

“
And did you work for
Parisi Company?”

“
I did. What’s going on?”
I was starting to worry.

“
I have information that I
compiled, which I want you to read. It’s a lot of documents, emails
and texts that I retrieved when I was working on a system failure.
I didn’t want to print anything out. I saved everything on this
flash drive.” He handed me the drive.

“
Why are you giving me
this? I don’t understand.” I pleaded. My heart skipped a beat in
slight terror.

“
I think you should know
who your boyfriend really is and the power he’s been holding over
you. Listen, I’m giving you more information than I should. I just
want you to be aware of what’s on the drive, and make a decision
for yourself. I’ve gotta go. Here’s my card. Call me if you need
me.” He slid a card on the table, opened the door and exited the
office. I took the drive and inserted it into the USB
port.

I opened the first of many files,
pictures, and read through several text conversations between Matt
and Brady, Matt and Zipper, Matt and Kent, or Matt and Lark. Mostly
it was between Matt, Brady and Zipper. The conversations were about
Liberty Inn and their need to purchase to proceed with the ‘Second
Big Dig’.

Reading through the rest of the text
and documents, I learned that Pentagon purchased Parisi, which was
Brady’s acquisition. There was a text stream between one of Matt’s
buddies and my ex-sister-in-law, Aida. It was an explicit and
intimate history of their personal relationship; a relationship
that I wasn’t completely aware of.

When I finished reading and analyzing
the files on the flash drive, I spent two hours over my shift
following up with online research about Pentagon and the men behind
the conglomerate. I cursed myself for not researching Matt, which
would’ve led me to his association with Pentagon. A simple online
search connected all the dots. I found interviews, hard stories,
soft stories, about each member of Pentagon and their life-long
friendship and business dealings. After exhausting my own research,
the big picture of our relationship was revealed to me, and it
turned out that our love affair was all a lie, a well manipulated
lie, for which the root was money. Money destroyed my past and
threatened my future with Matt. I needed to get to him. He needed
to finally tell me the truth.

***

With the key he gave me, I unlocked
the door to Matt’s apartment and entered, scanning the open space
for his presence. I heard bare feet walking on the hardwood floors
from my left. He’d been in his office. He looked at me surprised,
“Hey. I thought you were going home. What are you doing here? Are
you okay?” Surprise in his voice.

“
Tell me about Pentagon.”
He didn’t flinch. There was no expression in his face. He took a
moment to respond.

“
What?”

“
Tell me about Pentagon.”
I asked evenly.

“
What’s this about?” He
opened his arms by his sides, showing me the palms in his
hands.

“
Matt. I’m going to ask
you one last time. Please, tell me about Pentagon and your
connection to that group.”

“
I don’t know what you
expect me to say.”

“
I expect you to tell me
the truth; the fact that you’re a majority shareholder, along with
your buddies, Brady, Zipper, Lark, and Kent.”

“
What does that have to do
with anything?” He kept his voice even, and his eyes trained on
me.

“
So you’re not going to
tell me? I’m giving you an opportunity to tell me everything about
Pentagon. Do you want me tell the story?”

He folded his arms in front of his
massive chest. His mouth and neck tensed waiting for my response. I
was surprised that he was so defiant about telling me the truth. I
took a deep breath. “It has come to my attention that Pentagon is a
company that may have indirectly and directly affected the course
of my life. Do you need me to explain further or can you agree that
so far I’m right?” He looked down and took a few steps forward, but
stopped when I retreated backwards. I clenched my fists to the side
of my body bracing myself for the words that I was going to sling
at him.

“
Let me start from the
very beginning of this depressing and deceptive tale.” I folded my
arms around my body, holding me up for the battle I’m willing to
wage against him.

“
Pentagon is a company
that was created by five best friends who went to boarding school
together. These friends started a very small investment group while
in boarding school. Impressive, five young men could begin such a
venture while they’re in high school—a very prestigious high
school, so you expect nothing less from gifted, privileged and
entitled young men.” He didn’t even baulk.

“
Over the years this small
venture grew bigger and bigger, even when these five friends went
their separate ways throughout the country, attending medical
school, business school and law school. Despite frequent overseas
travels and forming families, they maintained an impenetrable
relationship where they planned to own the world. They continued to
invest and proceeded with corporate takeovers, along with little
side operations like restaurants, entertainment clubs, and hotels
throughout Boston, New York and Las Vegas; hoping to expand to
Miami too. Remarkable, but I suspect that throughout the years, it
wasn’t easy to just expand to become the conglomerate that Pentagon
has become without using people.” He winced. Finally, I broke
through the shield he hid behind.

“
Perla . . .” He proceeded
to walk toward me. I put my hands up to stop him from coming close
and shutting down my revelations. He put his hands on his hips, no
doubt trying to restrain himself from touching me.

“
And now for how I think
Pentagon indirectly impacted me.” I closed my eyes and took a deep
breath.

“
Over two years ago, when
I was Director of Finance at Parisi, I noticed discrepancies in
accounting at my husband’s, now ex-husband’s thanks to Pentagon,
construction company. I wrote memos to the heads of the companies,
whom were my sister-in-law Aida and my ex-husband Ben. Ben was
surprised about the discrepancies. He was shocked and over the
months after my revelation, he agonized over my discovery. He
couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop talking about it, wanting to
figure out what went wrong. I suggested he hire an accounting firm
to do an internal audit, but he declined because there was no
reserved money to do so.” I sighed, and inhaled fresh air, hoping
it’ll give me some energy to continue.

“
There were lots of
discussions in my home about how we should proceed next. There were
lots of sleepless nights. We didn’t talk about anything but the
business. Sunday dinners at the Parisi household were excruciating.
There were accusations thrown between brother and sister. My
father-in-law who created the business had to referee between the
two children he adored. My marriage, which I once thought was fine,
wasn’t anymore. My husband withdrew from me. First it was his
affections, which weren’t much before, so the loss of touch and
talking was painfully missed. He moved out of our bedroom, and
barely looked at me.” I paused, reliving the events.

“
Ben blamed me for
upsetting the blissful ignorance that the company was drowning
under debt and eventually wouldn’t be able to pay their employees,
retirement funds or taxes. They’d planned to do an IPO to open the
corporation, but all these revelations that I discovered and warned
them about stopped that from happening. Do you want to know what
happened next, Matt?” He shook his head ‘no’, but I ignored
him.

“
Living with Ben became
unbearable. He accused me of stealing from the company, charging
that I had too much access to the accounting of the business.” I
turned away from him, trying not to shed the tears that were now
starting to form. I swallowed down the bitter saliva that collected
at the back of my throat. I decided to turn back around to face him
so I could gauge his expression.