Worthy of Redemption (22 page)

~Kyle~

Mayson’s door was open. She looked up at me standing in the doorway and rolled her eyes.

“If you’ve come to drag me into another piece of your drama, I’m not doing it this time,” she said.

“No, there is no drama,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“Like what?” she asked skeptically, with one eyebrow perched.

“Emmy.”

She groaned and said “I should be telling you no and kicking your ass out that door, but I’m very curious about what it is that you want to discuss.”

“May I come in?”

She cringed. “Now you’re being polite. I’m really frightened.” She gestured for the chair in front of her desk.

I closed the door behind me to block out any eavesdropping employees and took the seat in front of her cluttered desk.

“I need you to be straight with me, Mayson,” I said.

“Aren’t I always?”
she asked.

“Not when it comes to her.”

She was quiet for a moment as she assessed me.

“You haven’t asked me about Emmy in almost two years. I half expected you to bug me about her after she left this last time, but you didn’t. What has changed?”

This wasn’t an easy thing for me to do, to talk to someone who so plainly hated me – and to talk to her about someone that she loved like a sister, someone I had hurt physically and emotionally.

“I need to know what I did to her, Mayson,” I said.

“Why do you need to know that?”
she asked softly.

“I feel like I need to know to move forward.”

“With, Lily,” she said.

“Yes.”

She tapped a pencil on the desk. “I don’t see how that will help, but I only know what you know. Sam said Em looked like she got the shit kicked out of her, but I’m sure that does not adequately describe how she must have looked. You really don’t remember any of it?”

I hesitated. I was about to get very personal. Only Lily was aware of my nightmares, but I felt like I had to tell Mayson. “I have nightmares of me hitting her, punching her and more. I hear her screams – they always sound the same. There are little snippets in my head of glass breaking, furniture crashing to the floor, but I never see her face…or her belly.”

She blew out a long breath and sat back in her seat. She watched me as she gently rocked her chair back and forth.

“Have you asked your dad?”

“He enjoys holding back that information. I even offered to pay him for the information, but he is so evil, even money does not sway him. I even tried using…resources to find hospital or doctor’s records, but I can’t find anything about that night or the following days.”

Her eyes widened. “You have people that can hack into hospital records?”

I ran my hand through my hair, feeling slight discomfort talking so openly about this.

“I do.”

“Wow,” she blinked. “Makes me wonder what other interesting things you know…”

“You really don’t want to know.”

“Probably not,” she agreed grimly. “Well, anyway, she didn’t go to a hospital.”

“Then how did she know if she and the baby were alright?” I questioned.

“Your dad sent her to some doctor…umm,” she tapped a pencil to her head as she tried to recall a name.

“Walter sent her to a doctor?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah. Not in an office or anything, well not an official office. He’s like some kind of underground doctor, which is damn scary. He fixed her up without questions or documentation. Umm…Doctor Larson? No…Laken…”

“Larkin,” I said darkly.

“Yes!” she snapped her fingers. “That’s it. You know him then?”

“Yes,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “You have no idea how much you have just helped me.”

“I’m not sure if I actually helped you, Kyle,” she said doubtfully. “You should have moved on – Em has. Well…” she paused.

“Well, what?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“Well…no one has told her about Lily working here for you, or you and Lily as a couple, but I’m sure you knew that. Lily talks to her sometimes.”

My scowl made her eyebrows rise in surprise. “You didn’t know that Lily speaks to Emmy? They talk like once or twice a month. Oh my god, I should just shut up now.”

“Too late for that now,” I growled. “What do you mean that no one tells Emmy about me and Lily?”

“Look, Lily and I agreed when she first started working here not to tell Emmy. Em had just left here. She didn’t say it to anyone, but it was obvious her last meeting with you was difficult. It hurt her to cut you off, but she did what was best for her and Lucas, and she really loves Luke. She requested that I not mention you, unless you die.”

“How comforting,” I said dryly.

“Take it as a sign of how strongly she felt about you,” Mayson said, in a somewhat comforting tone. “We all thought it was best that since she didn’t want to know what was going on with you that we don’t let you know what’s going on with her, but I have a feeling that you know at
some
things. Though it boggles my mind that you’re such a sneaky son of a bitch and didn’t know your own live-in girlfriend is talking to your ex-girlfriend.”

“I trust Lily. I don’t feel I need to check up on her like that. I keep tabs on her whereabouts for her own safety, but I don’t check her phone or phone records.”

“Don’t start,” Mayson said, pointing at me with a pencil.

“I won’t.”

“And don’t bug her about Emmy, please? You know what? We can pretend this little meeting never happened.”

“I planned on asking you to do the same,” I sighed and got to my feet.

“Cool. Look at that, Sterling. We’re on the same page.”

I had my hand on the doorknob, but I turned back around to look at Mayson.

“This is the most civil conversation we have ever had,” I said.

“It was almost normal,” she agreed. “Except with your little stalking things…that’s creepy.”

“Why are you being so…amicable?”

She sighed, and even though her features were relaxed, they softened even further. “When I was a teenager, I had a serious eating disorder and a serious drug and alcohol problem. I beat up my mom
and
I pushed my father into an early grave. In a way, I’ve been in your shoes. I redeemed myself, and I think you have, too. We aren’t always going to get along, and it isn’t my place to forgive you, but I personally don’t want to keep punishing you for what you did to Emmy.”

“Thank you,” I said after a moment of shocked silence. “Does this mean we can be friends now?”

“Hell no. Get out of my office. Some of us do real work around here.” She pointed to the door with her pencil and waved me out.

I left Mayson’s office armed with new knowledge that was either going
to benefit me or throw everything to shit.

~~~

“What do you mean he’s ‘just gone’?” I almost shouted.

“I mean he’s
gone
,” Corsey said, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Either he has found a way to avoid us or he has left the area. I can’t find any trace of him anywhere.”

“You
lost
him?”

“Yeah, I guess we did,” Corsey admitted. “He hasn’t been to his house in days and he quit his job. His credit card and banking activity has ceased, too.”

“Is he dead somewhere?”

Corsey looked doubtful. “I don’t think so, Kyle. I don’t think so.”

I rubbed my forehead as I tried not to tear his head off. Corsey and a few of his guys had been keeping track of Vic and keeping him away from Lily. After the night I made him pay for what he did to her, he had stopped calling her and seemed to stop following her. By all appearances, he seemed to have given up on her, but I didn’t really trust that he was completely finished with Lily just because I kicked his ass. In his apartment, we found hundreds of pictures of her. In some instances he had cut her face out of pictures and glued it to pictures of women in BDSM positions, tied, gagged, and helpless. He had everything he could need to take her without her consent and hold her for a long period of time. He had handcuffs, rope, chains, gags, blindfolds, and the scariest things we found were chloroform and the date rape drug Rohypnol.

One of my go-to guys is a detective in the city. Vic would have done very little jail time for what he did to Lily’s leg. She could get a restraining order, but we all knew a piece of paper would not stop him from contacting her or hurting her again. The bottom line was that unless he
seriously
hurt her, there wasn’t going to be much to do to stop him. Even all of the kidnapping paraphernalia in his home wasn’t enough. The restraining instruments could reflect a lifestyle he was free to have, and the drug charges wouldn’t have been enough to keep him locked up long enough to matter, especially if Vic had a good lawyer, which he did. It is why the three sexual assault charges that were brought against him over the past three years were dismissed.

I didn’t tell Lily everything I knew. I didn’t want her to live her life in fear, looking over her shoulder. She still didn’t consider Vic to be that dangerous, more of a nuisance than anything. After several arguments, I started letting her go out on her own without me or Corsey, but I always had my eye on her though she didn’t know it. I couldn’t keep her locked up like a prisoner and I couldn’t keep assigning her a bodyguard every time she wanted to go to the grocery store or visit a friend. She wouldn’t have been happy. The most important thing after Lily’s safety was her happiness.

“Keep an eye out for him,” I said to Corsey. “There’s not much else you can do. I suppose he’s smarter than he looks.”

“I suppose so,” Corsey said.

“Did you find Larkin?” I asked.

“Yes. He’s moved into a house out in the sticks in Jersey. He’s been working out of there.” He handed me a file full of information on the roving doctor.

“Thank you,” I said absently as I flipped through the file.

“If there isn’t anything else, I’m going to take off. I haven’t spent much time with the wife and baby.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot you’re someone’s father now,” I
shook his hand. “I’ll see you next week.”

Corsey nodded and walked out of my home office.

"Hi, Corsey," I heard Lily say to him in the hallway.

"Hey, there, Rocky," Corsey said with genuine adoration. He had given her the nickname one day after he insisted she couldn't knock him on his ass. I know
for a fact that he allowed her to do it. Corsey was a beast of a fighter.

"Aww. Corse, are you still mad about that?"

"I'm not mad. You punch like a girl."

I heard the sound of my little bully's fist hitting Corsey's chest and the subsequent "Oooff!" I shook my head, trying not to smile. She really had to stop beating people up.

"This isn't even fair. I have to stand here and take it," Corsey whined.

"You can hit me. I can take it." I knew from her tone that she was probably bouncing on her toes, excited to fight.

"No, thank you. Your boyfriend -
my boss
- will kill me."

"It's okay. I can take him,
" she said confidently.

"But I won't. Listen, enjoy your trip. Stay safe."

"You, too, big guy. Send me pictures of the baby."

They bid their goodbyes. I could tell by her squeals that he had lifted her off of the floor in a bear hug. If I didn't know Corsey was madly in love with his wife, I would have been unhappy about his arms wrapped around her.

"Hey, there, my sexy boyfriend," Lily grinned as she came into the office moments later.

"You're in a really good mood," I said.

"You're about to whisk me away from the ugly city to blue seas, white sands, and hunky cabana boys serving me drinks with umbrellas in them. Of course I'm in a good mood!"

She rounded the desk, sat her hot ass in my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck.

"Hunky cabana boys, huh?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.

"Like you won't be checking out all of the beautiful women on the beach," she said, rolling her eyes.

"You're the only beautiful woman I care about," I said, slowly caressing her leg.

She leaned in and gave me a slow, passionate kiss that had me growing hard.

"I really appreciate this trip," she said softly.

I laced my fingers in her hair. "You deserve it. You worked your ass off in the office and you were working hard before that."

She kissed me again, but I took control of it and kissed her hard, holding her head in place as I ravished her mouth. I couldn’t get enough her – everything about her – her mouth, her body, her smart ass remarks, and her love. Every time I kissed her, held her hand, made love to her, or just sat and had a normal conversation with her, I never knew if it was going to be the last. Lily meant everything to me, but I wasn’t sure if I could give her everything that she needed. One of the biggest reasons I was sweeping her away to Bora Bora was so that I could suck in as much time with her as I could before everything came crashing down.