Page 38 of Heartless

“Everything is fine,” I sigh, dropping my foot from the barre where I’d been doing stretches.

“Don’t make me call Onyx and ask him. Is it Onyx? Has he done something wrong?” she asks in alarm.

“No. It’s not Onyx. He’s fine...or at least, I guess.”

“What do you mean, you guess?”

I inhale deeply and close my eyes. The tears well up inside, and I will them to go away, but they refuse to. No matter how hard it is for me to try to keep them at bay, they slip from underneath my eyelids.

After that comes an ugly, gut-wrenching sob, and I double over, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Meadow! You’re scaring me. Honey, what’s wrong?” Kaia asks, bending over and holding me.

It takes several moments for me to calm down before I can begin to explain. And for the first time in a long time, I tell the story about what happened to me a little over two months ago.

“Oh my God, MJ! You’ve been holding that inside all this time? Does Onyx know?”

I press my hands to my eyes, rubbing them in furious circles before I nod and say, “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Does your family know?”

Shaking my head, I reply, “No one knows what happened except for Onyx and my staff. I made Onyx and them promise not to tell anyone, including his family.”

“Did you at least report it to the police?”

“Yes, but they haven’t found him.”

“Even with all the details the Amy chick was able to give them?”

I look away and close my eyes. “Even with that. They think he may have skipped town.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“No. I don’t.” I look away from her, pressing my lips together.

“What is it, MJ? What do you know that you’re not telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit! What’s going on?”

My heart thunders in my chest. Kaia knows me better than anyone. In some respects, she knows me better than Onyx does, but that’s only because she’s known me a lot longer which has been since we were kids in the third grade.

“The man, Jesse, indicated that he’d worked for the Maxwells.”

“So, it’s someone that Onyx could very well know?”

Shrugging, I reply, “I don’t know if he knows him, but this man has worked for their companies.”

“Your husband might hold the clue to finding him, MJ. Does he know?”

I shake my head rapidly. That’s the one thing that I haven’t told Onyx, and I don’t know why.

“No, I can’t tell him that.”

“Why not?”

“It was insinuated that the reason he came after me was because I was targeted as a member of Charleston’s elite. He believes that anyone the rich and privileged of Charleston haswronged deserves to have retribution against them. He only came after me because it’s hard to get to the rest of them. I was an easy target because of my business,” I say sourly.

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