Page 175 of Rush of Jealousy

Graham snickers. “Oh, he definitely has his fill of them.Don’t let the boyish looks fool you. It is all a facade. Pretty sure his tastes exceed my own. And you know firsthand how demanding of a bastard I am.”

I nod eagerly, making him laugh. I think about Nic now that I know his background. “That is still lonely. Never connecting beyond a physical standpoint.”

“Finally you see how life changing you were for me. Before you, everyone I—” He taps a finger against his jawline, making me cringe over where this storyline is going.

“Banged.”

“Encountered.”

“On an intimate level…”

He sighs. “Surface level, sweetheart. Don’t you get it?” He shifts his weight, adjusting to get comfortable. “You have changed my entire view of what I want out of this life. Flipped my world completely upside down. No one has gotten under my skin like you have—and no one ever will.”

“I hate every single bitch that you ever touched before me.” It makes me crazy to think about all of those women who have been lucky enough to have had Graham. I want to preserve how he makes me feel for only myself.

“I may have touched them, Angie. But they never touched me like you have.”

I know he is speaking in a figurative sense, and in a way, I feel better at his confirmation. However, it is still something I need to continue working through if we are going to move forward.

“Okay.” I nod. “Keep going with the story.”

“The silver lining for helping Nic catch Tara was that it gave me confidence that my prototype worked and could be concealed. He moved back to the Portland area looking for a fresh start and to hopefully erase the memory of Tara from his mind. He wasn’t interested in a desk job or something formal. He was never that type of conventional person. He needed to jump into something exhilarating and meaningful. He was still healing from the pain of a failed future life with someone he thought he loved. So he yearned for a distraction while he had time to put his life back together.”

“That’s so sad.” I cross my legs on the floor and lean back on my palms. I am waiting. Waiting to hear some kicker. Something that lets me know about the current situation.

“So we started a business together running a secret company that would catch people cheating. Nic kept his name out of the company—although we were equal partners off-paper. He still had his eyes set on a government security job—the ones that did not require sitting in a cubicle and doing mundane tasks—and didn’t want to fail any lie detector tests if he were to need clearances. So, I made sure he was not on any documents. I kept his name clean and tried my damnedest not to dirty up my own. We did everything online through the use of an encrypted website using fake IP addresses to keep ourselves hidden from any potential fallout. Nic felt inspired over his ex and wanted to channel his energy toward something productive.”

“And help other people find revenge?”

Graham shrugs. “Perhaps? He knew the ins and outs about cyber privacy and security. I was able to create my tracking devices to help facilitate us in letting customers know if their significant other was being unfaithful. But a lot of the evidence was found through hacking texts and email. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who cheat who like to take candid pictures of their new partner.”

“Gross.”

“We were a team to be reckoned with and yet no one knew we were pulling all the puppet strings. It was thrilling and exhilarating. It was the exact type of rush Nic needed to pick up the pieces of his own life and channel his hatred.”

“How were you able to run a company doing illegal activity with the tracking devices?”

His eyes grow dark. “I told you I wasn’t a good man, Angela. I convinced myself that the useful results justified the shady method to retrieve them.”

I nod. That seems to be a motto for how he lives his life too. But if I felt like someone was cheating on me, I would want to know—regardless of how.

“And I was helping out my brother,” he adds. “And to me, that drove the desire. We did everything behind the scenes using fake names and never meeting with clients face-to-face. We had a ninety percent success rate in proving cheating. The other ten percent we would say the sourced information was inconclusive. There was no way to prove someone was not cheating. I perfected my devices and was even able to remotely shut them off when each job was done. We told ourselves what we wanted to hear so we could sleep at night peacefully.”

“Did you ever plant video cameras?”

I watch Graham swallow, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat. He glances away, and I know the answer.

“You made a lot of money from this?” I ask.

“A ridiculous amount. But then we had a family emergency.”

“Penny?”

“Yeah. And it changed everything in one moment.”

I know exactly what he is talking about. The accident changed my life forever. One moment. Just one. And I am still feeling the ripple effects that could last a lifetime.

“Penny was hospitalized for possible assault from a drugging incident. Some stranger had to call 9-1-1 and get her help. She could have died in her own vomit from whatever she was slipped. She had to deal with it all alone until we were notified. It devastated our family to the core.”

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