Chapter 26 - Silence Is Louder

Chapter 26: Chapter 26 - Silence Is Louder

For a moment, Jesse said nothing.

The words were right there on the tip of his tongue. Lustre. The cat mask. The birthmark. Anonymous12. He could picture her face going white. He could picture her knees buckling.

It would feel incredible.

And it would be the stupidest thing he could possibly do.

If he told her now, she’d know he knew. She’d shut the account down by tonight, scrub every video and disappear. Jesse can’t have that, not when he hasn’t gotten a couple millions out of her. Right now, Jesse held a card nobody knew he had. The moment he played it, it had to be worth it.

He swallowed the words and reached for something else.

"You’re asking me if I have shame," Jesse said, leaning against the doorframe. "Meanwhile, you’re marrying a man you don’t even like."

Natalia’s eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Jesse tilted his head. "I’ve watched you two for years, Natalia. At company parties and everywhere else. Every time he puts his hand on your back, you flinch. Every time he talks, you check your phone. You laugh at his jokes exactly one second too late." He shrugged. "You don’t really have the hots for Andrew. You don’t like him. You like his money."

Natalia’s face flushed red from the collar of her silk blouse to her cheekbones.

"How dare you."

"How dare I what? Say it out loud?"

"I don’t know what you’re talking about." She stepped toward him, her heels clicking against the floor. "You don’t know anything about me. You haven’t for a very long time, Jesse. And you don’t know anything about my relationship."

"I know a gold digger when I see one."

The word cracked across the room like a whip.

Natalia’s jaw tightened. For a second Jesse thought she might slap him. Her hand actually twitched at her side.

Instead, she laughed. A cold, brittle laugh with nothing behind it.

"A gold digger." She shook her head slowly. "That’s funny, coming from you. You want to know why a woman like me might need to marry for money, Jesse?" Her voice dropped, sharp and quiet. "Because someone’s father stole almost everything they had."

The air in the room changed.

"My family had everything," Natalia went on. "Everything. The house in the Hamptons. The apartment on Park Avenue. My grandfather’s art collection. My college fund. My mother’s jewelry. And your father took it. All of it. He smiled at my parents across our own dinner table, ate our food, drank our wine and robbed us blind." Her eyes glittered. "So if I happen to be a gold digger, maybe you should ask yourself whose fault that is."

Jesse looked at her for a long moment.

He remembered that dinner table. He’d sat at it. Natalia had sat right across from him, kicking his shins under the tablecloth and trying to make him laugh while the adults talked about the stock market.

"So that’s it," he said quietly. "That’s why."

Natalia frowned. "Why what?"

"That’s why you’ve treated me like dirt for thirteen years." Jesse pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room. "Every time you see me, you look right through me. You call me a filthy low-life where I can hear it. You walk past me in the hallway like I’m something you stepped in." He stopped a few feet from her. "Why are you being so cruel and vindictive to me, Natalia? I am not my father. I was not the one who took your family’s money?"

Natalia opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

She closed it again.

Jesse watched something shift behind her eyes. It was like watching someone walk into a room they’d kept locked for years and suddenly find the door wide open.

He’d been a teenager. A kid who didn’t know where his father went any more than she did. He’d lost his house too. His school. His friends. His face. Everything she’d lost, he’d lost, and more.

And she knew it. Deep down, she’d always known it.

It was just easier to hate someone who was standing right in front of her than someone who’d vanished into thin air.

Natalia looked away from him. Toward the window. Toward the floor. Toward anywhere that wasn’t his face.

The silence stretched on.

"You don’t have to say anything," Jesse said softly. "Your silence is louder."

Natalia’s head snapped back toward him. Her eyes were bright, and for one strange second, Jesse thought she might actually cry.

The door opened behind him.

Andrew Hyland walked in.

He stopped just inside the doorway. His eyes moved from Jesse to Natalia and back again. He took in the distance between them. Natalia’s flushed cheeks. Jesse’s calm expression.

Something cold slid across Andrew’s face.

He didn’t say anything right away. He walked past both of them, circled around his desk and sat down in his chair. He leaned back, steepled his fingers and looked up at Jesse.

"What are you doing in my office?"

Jesse opened his mouth to answer.

"Babe."

Natalia cut in before Jesse could speak. Her voice had changed completely. It was bright and smooth, every crack in it sealed over, like the last five minutes had never happened.

"I need to run," she said. She walked around the desk, bent down and kissed Andrew on the cheek. "I have a few things to sort out for our date tonight. The reservation, the dress. You know how it is."

Andrew’s eyes stayed on Jesse even as his fiancée kissed him. "Sure, honey."

"See you at seven."

She grabbed her phone and her clutch from the desk and walked toward the door.

She passed right by Jesse on her way out. She didn’t look at him. Her shoulder came within an inch of his arm, and he caught a faint trace of her perfume. Something expensive. Jasmine and vanilla.

The door clicked shut behind her.

And then it was just the two of them.

Andrew didn’t say anything. He just sat there, watching Jesse with narrowed eyes, clearly trying to piece together what he’d just walked in on.

Jesse didn’t give him the chance to ask.

He stepped forward, unfolded the wire confirmation and laid it flat on the desk. He slid it toward Andrew with two fingers.

"Mr. Hassan’s been paid in full," Jesse said. "I wired it from my personal account a few minutes ago, ahead of schedule, so we wouldn’t have any more problems with the shipment." He tapped the paper. "I need to be reimbursed."

Andrew frowned and picked up the paper.

He glanced at it. Then his eyes went wide.

He read the number again, more slowly this time.

$412,600.00.

Andrew looked up at Jesse. His face had gone through confusion and disbelief and landed somewhere between suspicion and contempt.

Yesterday, this man had walked into his office in a five-year-old shirt, begging for a promotion. Andrew knew exactly how much Jesse made. He’d signed off on that salary himself. Jesse couldn’t have had four hundred dollars in his account, let alone four hundred thousand.

And today he was driving a Porsche, and he’d just paid a supplier nearly half a million dollars out of his own pocket. Like it was nothing.

Andrew set the paper down on his desk.

He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.

"Since you’re so rich now," Andrew said, "I’m not paying you a dime."