Page 38 of Enemy Boss

I sit down and I think for a moment, and I have a momentary brain wave. It lasts long enough that I pick my cellphone up, ready to call Cyber Safe and ask Bill Bryson what the hell he had had sent to him and what he had told Cullen. Even as I debate doing it, I know that there is no point though. I know that deep down, and I put my cellphone back down before I can embarrass myself in front of anyone else today. What can Bill tell me that Cullen didn’t? That someone emailed him in my name with information only Cullen and I were meant to know. He obviously didn’t know who was really behind the email or he would have told Cullen that instead of saying it was me.

That’s another thing that kind of hurts. To know that there is someone out there who hates me this much that they would send this email and ruin my life. I didn’t even know I had any enemies, and I can’t fathom out who the hell it could be or why they would do it. Why would anyone want to blow someone’s world up like this? It just doesn’t make sense.

I must have dozed off on the couch because I wake up with a jump. I don’t know what time it is or how long I’ve been asleep for. I check the time. I’ve only been asleep for ten minutes or so. I don’t know what woke me up with such a jump; maybe I was having a nightmare or something.

A loud banging sound comes from my front door, and I realize that must have been what woke me up. I’m momentarily confused. Who the hell can it be? Harriet won’t have finished work yet so even if she’s read my text message it’s not her. And she won’t have told anyone else; we never blab the things we tell each other. I’m on nodding terms with my neighbors, but we certainly don’t visit each other so that rules them out. My mom would expect me to be at work at this time so it’s not her.

A surge of excitement goes through me making the skin on my lower back tingle with goosebumps. It has to be Cullen come to apologize to me. I will hear him out, but I am not going to make this too easy for him. He called me a liar and that’s one thing I don’t like at all. But I will forgive him eventually. Of course I will. How could I not?

The insistent knock on my door comes again, and I have to bite my lower lip to not be smiling when I get up and cross the room to the door. I pull it open, and my excitement is gone, replaced with a cold, hard knot of dread in my stomach. It’s not Cullen standing there, but Ross, my ex-boyfriend, the last person on earth I would want to see.

I can’t let him see that I’m still afraid of him. I need to stand up to him and get him to go away and leave me alone.

“What do you want?” I say.

Ross smiles and I get a glimpse of the charming man I originally met. It’s hard to see Ross as anything but ugly now I have seen the true colors beneath his skin, but on the surface, he is a good-looking man and when he smiles, his face lights up in a way that makes him irresistible. Until you learn what he is capable of, there is no doubting the fact that he is attractive.

“Well, that wasn’t quite the greeting I was hoping for from you, but never mind,” Ross says. “I want to talk to you Max, that’s all.”

“No. I don’t want to talk to you. I have nothing more to say to you,” I reply.

Ross shrugs.

“That’s ok. I’ll talk. You just need to listen,” he says.

I shake my head but before I can open my mouth to tell him no again, he speaks again and icy cold fingers of fear dance down my spine.

“I am not asking Max,” he says. “I am going to talk to you, and you are going to listen to me. That’s how it works. It’s called a conversation, and we are going to have one. We can do it the hard way, or we can do it the easy way, but either way, it’s happening. Now are you going to be a lamb and let me in of your own accord, or do I need to make you move out of my way?”

The last thing I want is Ross in here, but I know that low, calm voice. It’s the voice he uses when he is going to get his way no matter what, the voice that means if I step out of line, he will hurt me. I know I am not strong enough to fight him, and now he has decided he wants to come in, I can either stand aside and let him in, or I can stand here and get punched until I fall down, and he will come in any way, just stepping over me where I fall.

I step aside and try to smile, gesturing for Ross to come in.

“See, that wasn’t so hard now was it,” he says in a condescending tone that sets my teeth on edge as he comes inside and pushes the door closed behind him. It doesn’t quite catch, but I leave it and follow Ross to the couch, not wanting to anger him further.

Chapter 28

Ross

Max is my girl. She has been since the moment I clapped eyes on her. And she was easy enough to woo back then. She agreed to go on a date with me, and then another and another, and before I knew it, she had agreed to be my girlfriend. As far as I’m concerned, that is for life. It’s a commitment for all time not just for the good times. And I know Max herself will see that in time, she just needs me to show her the way, reel her in and show her that it’s time for us to stop messing around and settle down together.

I know she’s playing hard to get at the moment, but that’s ok. I’m in this for the long haul, and I will play her games. I will fight for her, show her that I mean business and that she is mine and always will be.

I must admit that I was shocked when she left me out of the blue. We had been getting on so well, or at least I thought we had, and Max was really starting to learn what behavior was acceptable and what behavior wasn’t to be repeated. I know that sometimes those lessons hurt her and I hated having to be the one to lay down the law with her – it definitely hurt me more than it hurt her, and had to be strong to do it for her, put aside my own pain and remind myself that Max was worth every second of it. And she was. She is. She always will be worth the world.

When it hurt me so much to hurt her that I didn’t think I could keep doing it, I always found a way because deep down, I knew it wasn’t about me. It was for Max, for her own good and at some point in the future, I was confident that she would see that and thank me for it. But I don’t need her to thank me for it. I wasn’t doing it for thanks. I was doing it for her. For Max. Like I would do anything for her.

When Max first left me, I figured it was just a little lover’s tiff type of thing we were having and that she would of course come back to me. She would say she was sorry and that she loved me, and I would of course forgive her, and she would never leave my side again. But she was playing harder than that. She really gave me the run around, screening my calls, blocking me on social media, pretending she wasn’t home when I went around to her place. And just when I was starting to think the game was getting somewhat tedious, she massively upped the stakes and moved home and changed jobs.

I spent months looking for her. I started to get sick of it, but I knew it was part of the game and if I wanted to win my prize – my prize being Max of course – then I had to keep on playing the game. I knew what Max was doing. She wasn’t really hiding from me; no, she was making sure I loved her enough, that I would look for her and not stop until I had found her.

Her friends were all in on it of course, pretending that they didn’t know where she had moved to or where she was working these days. No amount of charm could get them to talk. I debated resorting to threats, but it’s not my job to teach every woman I encounter how to behave. It’s only my job to teach these things to Max and maybe she wouldn’t like it if I shared my knowledge with other women too.

I persevered, following her friends here, there, and everywhere, and eventually, dearest Harriet led me to Max’s apartment building. Of course I didn’t know for sure it was hers at first, but even the first time I followed Harriet there, I got a little tingle of recognition in my veins, and I just knew somehow that this was the place. It was a new place for Harriet to visit which made me suspect it was Max’s new place, and I staked the place out for a few days.

Of course, I had been wrong before and wasted many days staking out places that Harriet or one of Max’s other girlfriends visited that seemed out of their normal routines, only for it to be a new boyfriend’s place or a different friend had moved. This time though, I wasn’t wrong, and it wasn’t time wasted. I didn’t realize quite how much I had missed her until I saw Max leave the building one day and I knew then that all of the searching and dead ends and time spent had been worth it.

I felt like it was still too early in the game yet for me to try and win her back. I didn’t know anything about this new life of hers and I needed to know everything to prove to her that she was my life, my everything. So, I watched the building for a bit longer, and the next time Harriet visited, I watched her from the street. She got into the elevator and the red number one lit up above it and then the red number two and it stopped. That gave me Max’s floor number and the next part was easy.

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