Page 101 of Total Obsession

"No," he replied, and I nearly got whiplash from turning to look at him so quickly.

"What do you mean, 'no?' You just said--" but he cut me off by holding up his hand.

"The original plan was to give you fame and fortune and then to take it all away from you. When I realized I'd fallen in love with you, I retired the original plan."

"Fell in love with me?" I repeated his words, trying to make sense of them.

"Yes, or rather, realized that I’d never fallen out of love with you.”

I put my head in my hands and curled up in my chair. "You're in love with me?"

"Very much so."

"Well, stop it," I said.

He let out a booming laugh, and I peeked at him through my fingers. I hated how good Axe looked. How soft and smooth his dark hair was, even after being on the run all night. How sharp his jawline was and how perfectly white his teeth were as he threw his head back and laughed.

I hated that the first person to ever tell me that they loved me was him.

And, I hated that my heart responded to it.

Stupid heart.

Stupid muscle.

"Trust me, pretty girl," he said before quickly saying, "Zoey," in correction. "I tried. Many, many times. I'd wanted revenge on you for what you put me through for so long. For over a decade of my life, I watched you from the shadows, putting everything into motion to help build you up, just so I could watch you fall.

"I thought I knew you so well. I thought you'd become exactly like you were those days in high school. An arrogant, cocky bitch who had no time for anyone in this world. And then, I got to spend time with you. I got to know you. You opened up to me. Showed me how misguided my feelings of hate and revenge were through your own, gentle actions. And I fell hard for you all over again.

"I eventually came to realize that I'd never actually stopped loving you. I just couldn't live in a world where you didn't love me back."

"What you did was wrong," I finally said to him.

"I know. Fourteen-year-old boys don't always think things through clearly, now do they?"

"That's not an excuse," I said. "You could have stopped it when you got older."

He turned towards me and reached for my hand, but I recoiled from him. "I did."

"You were too late," I said. "You can't put a Bandaid on a bullet wound and expect it to stop the bleeding or the pain."

"I know," he said. For the first time ever, I saw a look of utter defeat in Axe's eyes.

"Well, good," I said, not really sure how I felt about the entire thing. I waited another couple of minutes before finally speaking up again. "So, you didn't release the video. Then, who did, and why?"

"My assistant, well,formerassistant, Will did."

"Why did he have access to it?"

Axe shook his head. "I never gave him access to it, but Will has access to basically whatever he wants if it lives on the internet in any form."

"Who is he?" I asked.

Axe chuckled. "Until yesterday I'd only ever known him through phone calls and emails. He was a hacker who I'd brought onto my team about ten years ago. He handled anything that could be handled for me virtually."

"So, what happened?"

Axe sighed and closed his eyes. He leaned back in the chair and began to tell me things that I probably didn't want to know.

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