Page 18 of Web of Lies
“Come on, Mrs. Nash. You barely had half of your breakfast smoothie. You must be hungry.”
“I'll eat when I'm hungry, Anne. Thank you.”
She glances up at the corner of the window and purses her lips, but she leaves the tray on the bed and goes back downstairs. I'm honestly surprised she let it go without a fight. I'm sure she'll tell Adrian all about it and whatever meal he puts together for me tonight will make up for whatever I didn't get during lunch. I wonder if he'll try to force me to eat. If he does, I'll just throw it up before whatever he puts in it starts affecting me.
It's Friday. He usually brings home take-out on Fridays, and a folder full of papers for me to sign before Monday. But I doubt he'll bring more since he brought a stack yesterday. Something else that's been bothering me is that no one from the office, none of the board members, have questioned the way things have been going. Surely at least one of them should be suspicious by now, even just a little. Maybe they have been and he swept their concern under the rug just like he's done with all my concerns.
Anne tries once more to convince me to eat the sandwich before she leaves in the evening. I refuse and she takes it back to the kitchen. I can almost imagine the conversation she and Adrian will have when she tells him I refused to eat. I'm sure he'll have plenty to say about it when he makes his way up to the bedroom.
I can't hear what they're saying but there is a significant amount of time between Adrian arriving home and Anne's car starting when she leaves. There's an even longer wait between the time she leaves and Adrian walking up the stairs with dinner.
And the brown folder.
I don't look at him when he walks through the door or the white plastic bag of take-out containers, just at the brown folder.
“Are you feeling well, Larken?” he asks, dropping the folder on the foot of the bed and bringing the food up to the night stand. He pulls out a burger and smiles down at me. “No onions.” Then he pulls out french fries and smiles again as he puts a Styrofoam cup with a striped straw sticking out of the top next to them. “And a vanilla milkshake. How’s that sound? Anne said you skipped lunch.”
“I didn't feel like eating egg salad. I'm not very hungry right now, either.”
One of his brows twitches. “Do you feel like you're coming down with anything?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I haven't been anywhere to catch anything. I'm just not very hungry. That's all.”
He draws a breath, his lips sliding into a flat smile. “You need to eat something. You'll lose your strength. We want you to get well again, don't we?”
I look up at him and nod. “We definitely do. I'll eat later. How was your day, Adrian? Is everything going well at the office?”
He glances down at the folder before he answers. “Well enough. Today was decent. No major catastrophes. I do have a few things for you to sign this weekend, though. Whenever you feel up to it.”
“The same ones from yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
I blink at him. “Yes. Yesterday. I must have dozed off when I was reading over them. A payroll addition and a few other things. I wanted to ask about that. That seems like an awfully high starting wage for a lobby attendant.”
“Larken,” he sighs, slowly shaking his head. “I didn't bring you any papers to look over yesterday.”
“You did.”
“No, babe. I didn't. Maybe you dreamed it.”
I close my eyes for a moment, bringing up the memory of the paperwork that I very distinctly remember holding in my hands and reading with my own eyes. “Yes. Yes, Adrian. You did. His name is Roger Bellmont. And I didn't sign off on his payroll paperwork because the wage was closer to what an entry-level broker would make.”
“We don't have anyone at Vincent Solutions by that name.”
“We shouldn't, because I didn't sign the paperwork.”
He tilts his head to the side, his jaw jutting out, the tendons in his neck stretching so taught that they look strained. “I bring the folder home on Fridays, Larken. There isn't anyone by that name working at any position in the company. You imagined it, or hallucinated, or whatever.”
“Prove it.”
He stabs his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Prove what?”
“Prove that there's no one working for me named Roger Bellmont.” I make sure to emphasize the word me, just to remind him who the company actually belongs to. I might be baiting him, but I don't feel foggy right now. I feel more like myself than I have in weeks, possibly months. He needs the reminder.
He laughs. “How? What am I going to do? Take you into the office? You're in no condition to be around anyone. What if you have an episode while you're there? They'd all know you're having problems and then what? How long do you think you'd be in charge of things then?”
“Indefinitely.” I meet his angry glare with one of my own. “If I'm not in charge of the company it gets parted out and any money made off of it goes directly to charity. Prove to me that Roger Bellmont isn't in our system, Adrian. I need you to do it.”
