Partners (Fire & Lies - One) (14 page)

A paper ball
hit him once again in the side of the head. But he barely noticed.
His heartbeat had become so loud that he could hardly hear the
noise of his sister and her husband as they laughed and continued
their play fight.

Aiden stumbled
backward, a dizziness overcoming him as he blinked at the paper,
unable to believe his eyes. Married? What the hell? He checked the
date and saw that she’d already been married for a fortnight. The
air left his lungs and his chest burned as he reacted viscerally to
her betrayal–her deceit. His mind went back to the night they’d
spent together and every conversation they’d had before that. Not
once had there been mention of a fiancé. She didn’t even have a
ring… What the hell was this?

“
Aiden? Oh
no. What’s happened?” Marli asked, dropping the paper she was
holding, her smile disappearing from her face as she noticed the
look on her brother’s face.

He didn’t
answer. He just gripped the paper tightly as he read the article
that went on to detail the long awaited marriage of the heirs to
two of the most powerful companies in the world–their union
signalling a merging of families, and an expansion of power. The
marriage had sent the stock price of both companies skyrocketing,
netting both families billions of dollars as investor confidence in
them grew.

“
How the
hell did I miss this?” he mumbled, shaking his head before
crumpling the paper into a tight ball and pegging it against the
concrete floor.

“
Miss
what?” Marli asked, exchanging worried glances with Jeff as she
looked to Aiden for answers. She’d never seen him as out of sorts
as he had been over the past three weeks. His emotions were all
over the place and when she’d spent a lifetime seeing Aiden in
control, his recent behaviour left her feeling uneasy.

“
I um… I
need to go,” he mumbled, his face set in a frown as he turned away
from her.

“
What’s
going on, Aiden?” she called after him, flinching as she witnessed
his fist shoot out, hitting and cracking the plaster on the newly
painted wall. The action made her flinch and gasp as she watched
her brother–a hulk of a man who normally showed the world his
strength and fortitude–lose his control. It broke her heart to see
him hurting, see him using his fists in anger. She wanted so much
to go after him, but knew that he needed time on his own to calm
down.

As the plaster
fell to the floor in chunks, Aiden growled then reached for the
door, wrenching it open with a force that sent it slamming into
plaster on the other side, created yet another hole, then he
stormed out.

“
He’ll be
all right,” Jeff said quietly, reaching out and placing his arm
around his wife’s shoulders and planting a soft kiss on the side of
her head. “I’ll go and fix the wall.”

Nodding, Marli
watched as her husband moved away before she knelt down to pick up
the crumpled paper Aiden had thrown on the floor. Smoothing out the
creases, she looked over the broadsheet, the article about the
Donovan wedding calling her attention.

“
Oh dear,”
she said to herself, realising that the girl in the picture must be
the girl who was responsible for Aiden’s moods. If the article was
true, she was fairly sure that his happiness was now well and truly
over. His love had gone and married another man.

The moment
Aiden had burst outside he headed straight to his car and got in,
gripping the steering wheel as he tried to work out what to do. He
wanted to go to her. To confront her. But he didn’t even know where
she was.

Like an idiot,
he drove to her apartment and banged on the door, demanding that he
be let in. Of course, there was no answer. She was gone.

***

A few weeks
later, Aiden returned to work, and the moment he entered the
building, nothing was the same. Chloe wasn’t there anymore and the
day was filled with meetings about a merger between the two
companies that were all behind closed doors.

Aiden didn’t
know if it was him, or Terry Donovan, but things were strained
between the two men, and when there was a break after the morning
meetings, Aiden was called into his office to find out why.

“
Aiden, I’m
letting you go,” Terry stated, leaning casually against the front
of his desk as if it were just a friendly chat instead of a
firing.

“
You’re
letting me go? Under what grounds?” Aiden contested, knowing that
he had been an impeccable employee, always carrying out his duties
perfectly–even the not so pleasant ones.

“
The merger
requires us to condense our workers. The Goldsmith’s head of
security will be taking over your position and you’re overqualified
for anything else.” He twisted his body, picking up a large
envelope, which he held out to Aiden. “I’m sure you’ll find your
redundancy package more than adequate.”

With his teeth
clenched so tightly his jaw hurt, Aiden reached forward and
snatched the envelope from Terry’s hand, looking inside to find a
cheque that covered at least five years worth of his salary and
bonuses.

“
You’re
paying me to go away?”

Terry’s mouth
twitched at the corners as he kept his gaze steady, giving the
question a moment’s pause before he answered. “I’m making you
redundant.”

“
Don’t
bullshit me, Terry. We’ve been friends for a long time. Just be
honest and admit this is about Chloe.”

Pushing off
his desk, Terry moved around to his large leather chair and took a
seat, the leather creaking in the quiet of the room as Aiden waited
for his answer.

“
I’m sure I
don’t need to remind you, Aiden–your confidentiality agreement
prevents you from discussing anything about this company outside
these walls.”

“
That’s not
answering my question.”

“
I’m well
aware of that,” Terry said, steepling his fingers in front of him
as he leaned his elbows on his desk. “You have thirty minutes to
clear out your desk and leave. Security will escort you out of the
building. Good bye, Aiden.”

And it was at
that moment that two large guards who Aiden had employed to the
company himself, appeared beside him to escort him out of Terry’s
office.

Shaking his
head, Aiden turned on his heel and left with the two guards behind
him.

“
I’m sorry,
man. We’re just doing our job,” one of them said as Aiden started
pulling his things out of his desk.

“
I know,”
he stated, sifting through his drawers and taking only what he
cared about–which wasn’t very much.

As they
escorted him to his car, his colleagues had filled him in on as
much as they could, telling him that Chloe left the company about a
week after he’d gone on holiday. There was a meeting between her,
her father, and the Goldsmiths, and pretty soon she’d made the
decision to leave.

There was a
lot of talk about why she left so suddenly. ll of the employees had
expected her to be the one to take over from her father, but now
that she had married a Goldsmith and the companies were merging,
there were fears that jobs would no longer be safe as departments
were merged.

Feeling like
his world had been ripped from under him, Aiden shook the hands
with the men he once worked with, got into his car and drove home
in a daze, heading straight to his liquor cabinet and proceeding to
work his way through his collection of scotch.

Days went by,
and every time Aiden woke to a moment of sobriety, he’d notice
there was another hole in the wall of his home. Marli did her best
to keep an eye on him, and tried her best to talk him out of his
funk.

“
Maybe you
should get away for a while. Go. Travel. Try to have some fun with
all that money. You’re only hurting yourself by drinking in your
house on your own,” she’d said.

But her words
meant nothing until the day he woke in his car, in the middle of
the bush, the airbags deflated all around him and the front end
crumpled, that he finally listened to her and booked a flight out
of there.

He’d spent a
month in the Greek Islands, sampling a life that reminded him what
he’d always loved about being a bachelor, being unattached, and
when he’d returned home, he’d found that his brother in law had
repaired the damage and somehow, he’d felt as though life would go
on.

He had vowed
to never even let the name Donovan cross his mind and he may have
been successful too, if he hadn’t been hauled into the police
station for questioning over his position at the Donovan
Corporation.

While Aiden
had been away, burying himself between the thighs of attractive
English tourists, the Donovan Corporation had fallen, and it was
the greed of a single man that was to blame.

Somehow, Terry
Donovan had funnelled over six billion dollars of the company’s
money into an offshore account, and from there, it had vanished.
He’d done it by setting up fake dealings with shell companies that,
unluckily for him, all lead back to one place–his front door.

As a result,
he had been arrested, the company’s assets were frozen and the
merger was off. No one had a job anymore. The company was dead.

Shell shocked,
Aiden left the station after hours of interrogation over his
knowledge of any of the alleged ‘dealings’. He knew nothing. His
specialty was security. He knew very little of exactly what his
boss did for a living. But one thing seemed very clear, Chloe’s
marriage, her exit from the company, and the jump in share
prices–it all seemed too coincidental. It was as if she had a hand
in it all somehow. The more he thought about it, the more he
realised that the Chloe he thought he knew was just an act – a
façade; meant to cover up what she was really doing. She was either
helping her father or was taking off because she didn’t want to go
down with him. Either way, in Aiden’s eyes, she’d failed as a human
being. Decent people didn’t run. They didn’t take off, promising
the world when they’re really planning on delivering a steaming
pile of shit.

And that’s
just what Aiden’s life had become since meeting Chloe Donovan–a
steaming pile of shit.

PRESENT,
8 days before the job

“I HAVE to
admit, I miss seeing you in a suit every day,” Chloe says, as she
walks beside me toward the bank. Her arm is looped through mine and
if anyone looks at us, we seem just like any couple in the
city.

“Why did we
stop working together again? Oh, that’s right. You took off and I
lost my job,” I reply, as we reach the bank’s electronic doors.
It’s a bit of a shitty response, but I’m a bit on edge after
spending hours getting into this disguise, trapped in the chair
while she stood between my legs, her body brushing against me while
my fingers itched to explore further beneath her clothes. It took
every bit of control I had not to take her then and there. And I
wanted to. My god, I wanted to drive myself into her so bad that my
dick is still throbbing with my need. So I’m still struggling with
my need to push her up against the wall and fuck her brains out as
well as the need to get in that bank and see what we’re dealing
with.

I take a deep
breath, willing my body to behave as going through with the
appointment wins out. Honestly, I’m beginning to want these
documents as much as she does. I’ve spent years being angry, and
learning that it was all set up just makes me want to do something
to fix it. I can’t help but think that both Chloe’s life and mine
would have been a hell of a lot different in a world with no
Goldsmith’s around to fuck things up for us.

She turns to
me and sighs, her swollen ruby lips pursing slightly. “And I was
thinking we were getting past that.”

“What can I
tell you, sugar, I’m a rollercoaster of emotions,” I say dryly,
guiding her in front of me as we step through the doors. She shoots
me an unimpressed look, and I can’t help but muse that we look more
like a married couple now than we did a moment ago.

“Mrs Knowles,”
a slight woman, with bleached blonde hair and more makeup than
we’re wearing says, as soon as she sees Chloe in her disguise. It
consists of a long auburn coloured wig and green contact lenses
with accentuated cheekbones and somehow she managed to give herself
a dimple in her chin without making it look weird. She’s wearing
this short-sleeved black dress with a wide red belt pulling in her
waist. On her feet are a set of lethal looking matching red heels
that are really doing it for me. I fucking love watching her walk
in those things and I take a moment to admire the shape of her legs
and the swing of her hips as she joyfully greets the woman, who,
I’m assuming, is the bank manager on duty.

Supposedly, we
have an appointment with her to discuss transferring our fictitious
wealth to them and she’s going to walk us through our options and
show us the facility.

“And this must
be your husband,” she states, turning to me and holding out her
hand in greeting.

I take it,
shaking her hand as I say, “How do you do.” The moment the words
leave my mouth, I catch the amused look on Chloe’s face. For some
reason, I suddenly have a British accent. God only knows where that
came from.

We follow her
into her office and take a seat while she talks about the benefits
of banking with them. Chloe very slyly questions her about the
safety of her jewellery collection on their premises and even has a
story about another bank whose safety deposit boxes were recently
raided to explain her worry.

“Yes, I did
hear about that. Such an unfortunate thing to happen, and our own
security protocols have been toughened as a result. I can assure
you, there is no access to that room to anyone but staff. Would you
like me to show you the process?”