Annihilate Me (Vol. 4) (The Annihilate Me Series) (25 page)

“It’s
going to destroy us.”

“You
don’t—”

“I
do.
 
And it is.
 
It’s happening as we speak.
 
I don’t mean to come off as some
babbling crybaby, Barbara, but I can’t be strong all the time.
 
I love him.
 
You don’t know how much I do.
 
I’ve never felt like this before.
 
I’ve never been reduced to this point
before.
 
But even though he’s
willing to leave me, I can’t leave him.
 
But I might have no choice.”

She
turned behind her and grabbed a Kleenex from the box on her desk.
 
She dabbed beneath my eyes, and then
gave me the tissue.
 
“Listen to me,”
she said.

I
blinked away tears.
 

“Alex
is not going to leave you.”

“You
didn’t hear what he said.”

“I
wonder if
you
did.”

“What
does that mean?”

“We’ll
get to that in a minute.
 
What I
know for a fact is that he’s in love with you.
 
But he’s afraid for you.
 
That’s all this is.
 
Both your and his emotions are running
at full tilt.
 
And why wouldn’t they
be?
 
He wants you to be safe regardless
of what it will cost
him
, not just you.
 
Look at me.
 
Listen to me now.
 
Did you hear me?
 
He also knows that there is a cost to
him
,
which is physically losing you, something he couldn’t bear.
 
Now tell me.
 
Exactly what did he say?”

“He
said that after tonight, if I felt that I needed to leave him, he would
understand.
 
To me, that says that he’s willing to let me go.
 
He’s willing to throw this away despite
how hard we’ve fought.”

“Just
tell me what he said.”

“He
said that he wanted me to be safe.
 
He called himself toxic.
 
He
said that if we had to let go of our relationship, then it’s because we needed
to save my life.
 
He said he was
damned if anything else would happen to me because of his association with me.”

“And
there you have it,” she said.
 
“You
heard something else.
 
You didn’t
hear him.”

“What
are you talking about?
 
How didn’t I
hear him?”

“He
said that if
you
needed to leave,
he’d
understand.
 
He was giving you the option to
leave.
 
He was trying to make things
easier on you, not him.
 
Look.
 
I understand that you’re overwhelmed
right now.
 
And that you’re probably
scared to death and not able to think clearly.
 
But as an outsider who knows your
partner?
 
Here’s where I can
help.
 
He didn’t say that he was
leaving.
 
There’s a difference between
what you heard and what he said.
 
He’s willing to sacrifice losing you so you can potentially move on and
live a full life without danger.
 
He
wants you to be safe more than he wants himself to be happy.
 
That’s what this is about,
Jennifer.
 
Look at me.
 
That’s right.
 
Oh, you poor sweet girl.
 
That’s what this is about.
 
And I can’t begin to tell you how rare
and special it is.
 
He’s willing to
make a major sacrifice here.
 
He
knows it.
 
Maybe it came out wrong.
 
Maybe the timing was wrong.
 
But that’s where he’s coming from.”

“What
concerns me is that it’s in his head.
 
If things don’t go well tonight, if something bad happens on the heels
of what happened to me at Saks, he may decide to really pull the trigger and
just be finished with this because he wants to protect me?
 
That could happen.
 
That’s not unrealistic.
 
That’s how fragile our relationship is
right now.
 
We’re right at the
edge.”

“Projecting
what might happen between you two is time ill spent.
 
Now, look.
 
I need you to pull yourself
together.
 
Your relationship is not
on the brink.
 
Do you hear me?
 
It’s not.”

“You
don’t know that.”

“Neither
do you.
 
So, here’s what I
recommend.
 
You don’t see him or
speak to him for the rest of the day.
 
You just cool down and stick with me.
 
We’ll have lunch ordered in.
 
I’ll clear my calendar.
 
If Tank needs to brief you and Alex, he
will do so separately.
 
Then, later,
Bernie and I will get you ready for the party.
 
By the time you meet Alex at eight, each
of you will have had time to process what was said this morning.
 
And when that happens?
 
I have a feeling that you’ll be dealing
with a different dynamic.”

“What
if it’s a worse dynamic?
 
Come on,
Barbara.
 
He’s going to have the
whole day to think about this.
 
What
if it gets worse?”

And
for the first time since I’d known her, I had left Blackwell speechless.

CHAPTER TWENTY

As
promised, Blackwell cancelled all appointments for the rest of the day.
 
“Margaret, please reschedule all of my
appointments and have Ann reschedule all of Jennifer’s appointments.
 
Jennifer will accept no calls.
 
I’ll only accept calls from Alex, Henri,
or Tank.
 
Use your judgment if you
think I need to take someone else’s call.
 
It needs to be urgent because otherwise, I don’t want to be disturbed
today.
 
If Alex calls, notify me and
I’ll take it on a private line in another office.
 
Thank you.”

I
looked at her when she hung up the phone.
 
“Why wouldn’t you take his call here?”

“Because
he’s also going to need me—I know that.
 
When he calls—and he will
call—I will listen to him alone.
 
I need to treat each of you equally, which is important, don’t you
agree?
 
Then I hope to understand
precisely what’s going on between you two so we can get things back on track
and moving forward.”

“If
there is a forward.”

“I
think there is.
 
I think all of this
was an unfortunate misunderstanding.
 
Alex meant well, but because you’re both under so much pressure at this
point, it didn’t go well.
 
While
you’re apart from each other today, both of you can think of what you want
most.
 
Going your own separate ways,
or weathering through this together.”

“You
already know what I want.”

“I
do.
 
A smart woman always knows what
she wants.
 
So,” she said, “how
would you like to spend the day?”

“I
don’t know.
 
With work?
 
Something distracting?”

“Perfect
answer.
 
In the end, work always
saves us—never forget that.
 
So, choose.
 
This is your
day.
 
Whatever you want to discuss and
explore, we’ll start there.”

Two
hours later, when we were deep into a conversation about the future of Wenn
Cosmetic, my cell dinged and vibrated in my purse.
 
I felt my heart sink when I heard the
sounds, because I knew what they likely meant.
 
“I don’t want to look,” I said.

A
flash of worry swept across Blackwell’s face before she could check
herself.
 
“I’m afraid you need to
look.
 
Come on.
 
Let’s do this together.
 
If it’s another threat, Tank needs to
know about it so he can do his job.”

I
removed my phone, turned it on, and saw yet another email address that was
foreign to me.
 
I opened the email
and read it aloud:
 
“‘Wenn will you
be dead?
 
Tonight?
 
Tomorrow?
 
Next week?
 
Who knows?
 
Oh, right.
 
We know.
 
Especially since Wenn has yet to cancel
any deals or takeovers.
 
Alex chose
to ignore us?
 
Fine.
 
Now we finish this.’”
 
I looked at Blackwell and saw the
hardness in her eyes, the anger that caught fire there.
 
“They spelled ‘when’ W-E-N-N,’” I said.

“Aren’t
they clever?
 
Did this one come with
an attachment?”

“It
did.”

“We
should look at it.”

I
opened it, saw the photograph, and tossed the phone onto Blackwell’s desk.
 
It was a photograph of me in the fitting
room at Saks.
 
My
face—wide-eyed and terrified—was in close-up.
 
There was a knife pressed against my
throat, which brought back a memory I’d sooner forget.
 
As they’d done before, they’d defaced
the photograph, this time with fake torrents of blood spurting out of my neck.

“This
will be the end of us,” I said to myself.
 
“He’ll see that photo, and after this morning, that’s all it will take.”

Blackwell
looked up from the photograph, and I could tell by her concerned expression
that she knew that it was a possibility.
 

“I
need to forward this to Tank,” she said.

“Fine.”

“I
can’t hide this from Alex.”

“I
know you can’t.
 
I don’t expect you
to.
 
This affects him as well.”
 
I held out my hand for the phone.
 
“Here.
 
Let me do it.
 
That way, you won’t carry any of the
guilt when all of this goes south.”

“Jennifer—”

“Just
let me do it, Barbara.
 
Better me
than you.”

She
gave me back the phone.
 
I forwarded
the email to Tank, and then I turned off the device and dropped it into my
purse.
 

As
I sat there looking at her, I felt my soul grow cold with a mix of rage,
sorrow, and the pending loss of my relationship.
 
Worse?
 
I felt at this point that nothing could
be done about it.
 
First we thought
it might be Adrianna Bomba and that crew.
 
Now we were shooting for Welch and Faust.
 
We were trying our best to think this
through rationally, but when you came down to it, we were just taking stabs in
the dark, hoping to hit our mark, which continued to elude us.
 
Nothing was concrete.

We
aren’t going to win this.

Earlier
that morning, I woke with a sense of dread, thinking that all would go wrong
that night, when in fact, all went wrong when Alex came into the kitchen that
morning.
 
My premonition was
displaced.
 
It was earlier when
everything went to hell.
 
Logic told
me that since these people already had acted twice in public—once outside
db Bistro, the other inside Saks—they wouldn’t do so tonight.
 
They were taking calculated risks.
 
They weren’t fools.
 
And because of that, they’d know that
tonight of all nights, we’d be surrounded by security, which of course we would
be.
 

So
tonight, we’d be fine.
 
What I felt
in my bones wasn’t what I had felt this morning.
 
After this email, I knew better.
 
They’d strike later, when we least
expected them.
 
They would appear
when we were too surprised to act.

Unless
Alex leaves me
, I
thought.
 
And then I guess I’ll
be out of this for good.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By
the end of the day, when it was time for Blackwell and Bernie to whip me into
shape for the party, Alex still hadn’t called.
 
Instead, he’d kept his distance from
us—which surprised not only me, but also Blackwell.
 
But she didn’t speak a word of it
because I could sense that she already knew what I was thinking.
 
Tank had forwarded Alex that email.
 
He knew that I’d been threatened
again.
 
He’d seen the photo.