❤️ BECAUSE IT WAS YOU

Chapter 06 - The File in Andrew’s Desk

Andrew did not deny meeting David.

That frightened Cindy more than a denial would have.

They were back at the penthouse by late afternoon, with two security men stationed outside the private elevator and Lucas making calls in the kitchen. Rain had given way to a hard blue sky. Manhattan looked scrubbed clean from fifty floors up.

Cindy knew better now.

Nothing was clean because it looked clean.

She stood near the windows with her phone in one hand.

Andrew studied the photograph on the screen.

“When did you get this?”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

“From the same number?”

“I don’t know. It’s blocked.”

He enlarged the image.

“Yes. I met him.”

Cindy folded her arms.

“When?”

“Eight weeks ago.”

“Before I broke up with him.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Andrew gave the phone back.

“Because I saw the bruises.”

The room went quiet.

Cindy felt heat climb her neck.

“I told you what happened.”

“You lied.”

“I gave you an answer.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

She almost threw his own words back at him, then realized he had done it first.

“What did you say to him?”

“I asked him to leave you alone.”

“You asked.”

Andrew’s mouth tightened.

“I was polite by my standards.”

“And the envelope?”

“Money.”

Cindy stared.

“You paid my boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend.”

“He wasn’t my ex then.”

“He was going to be.”

The certainty in his voice infuriated her.

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“No.”

“But you did.”

Andrew looked at her for a long moment.

“I offered him fifty thousand dollars to disappear.”

Cindy laughed in disbelief.

“Why not just buy Ohio while you were at it?”

“I considered a less diplomatic conversation.”

“That isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

She believed him.

That was worse.

Cindy paced away.

“Did he take it?”

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“He left you alone for almost two months.”

“You were watching.”

Andrew did not answer.

Cindy stopped walking.

“You were watching me.”

“I had security check him.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

His silence became an answer.

Cindy’s stomach turned.

“How much?”

“Cindy—”

“How much were you watching me?”

Andrew glanced toward Lucas.

Lucas immediately picked up his phone and walked onto the balcony, closing the glass door behind him.

Coward, Cindy thought.

Andrew went to his study.

“Come with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you answer.”

“That is the answer.”

She followed because anger made caution feel unnecessary.

His study was smaller than his office at Carter Tower, lined with books and dark wood. Andrew crossed to the desk, unlocked a lower drawer, and removed a thin gray folder.

He placed it in front of her.

CINDY STONE.

Her name appeared on the tab.

She looked at him.

“What is this?”

“Everything security collected after I saw your wrist.”

Cindy opened it.

David’s employment history.

Arrest record.

Two dismissed assault complaints.

A debt to an illegal sports book.

Photographs of David outside Cindy’s apartment.

Photographs of Cindy leaving work.

A list of the days she attended yoga.

Her sister’s address in Ohio.

Her usual grocery store.

The name of her dentist.

Cindy closed the folder so hard papers shifted inside.

A photograph had caught her laughing outside a diner with Emma during a visit six months earlier. Another showed Cindy carrying groceries in sweatpants, completely unaware of the lens across the street. None was intimate in the legal sense, but the collection felt intimate anyway. It transformed ordinary moments into evidence.

She thought of all the times Andrew had seemed to know small things she never remembered telling him: that her subway line was delayed, that David’s truck had broken down, that Emma had changed apartments. She had mistaken attentiveness for closeness. Maybe some of it had been. Maybe some had been surveillance. The uncertainty hurt more than she expected.

“You had no right.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because men who hurt women rarely stop because a woman asks them to.”

His voice remained calm, but something old and personal moved beneath it.

Cindy heard it.

She did not let it distract her.

“So you decided to manage me.”

“No. I decided to manage him.”

“By tracking me.”

“Yes.”

She stepped back.

Elaine’s words returned.

Men like William and Thomas call possession protection.

Learn the difference.

Andrew saw the change in her face.

“What did your mother write?”

Cindy almost told him.

Instead, she shook her head.

“That’s mine.”

He nodded once.

“Fair.”

The lack of argument made her angrier.

She picked up the folder.

“Who else has seen this?”

“Lucas. Two people in security.”

“Martin?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“How sure were you that my apartment was safe yesterday?”

Andrew flinched.

It was small, but Cindy saw it.

Good, some hard part of her thought. Let that one hurt.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“No.”

There it was.

A single word, spoken the way Andrew spoke to men in boardrooms when he expected obedience.

Cindy turned slowly.

“Excuse me?”

He recognized the mistake immediately.

“You should not go back to your apartment.”

“That’s different.”

“Yes.”

“Say what you mean, Andrew.”

He breathed out.

“I want you here because I can keep you safe here.”

“I don’t want to be kept.”

His face went very still.

Cindy picked up her purse.

“I’m going to a hotel.”

“You won’t use your own name.”

She glared.

“That was not an order,” he said. “It was advice.”

“You need practice.”

“I know.”

Lucas returned from the balcony just in time to feel the temperature of the room.

He looked from Cindy to Andrew.

“Should I leave again?”

“Take Cindy wherever she wants to go,” Andrew said.

Cindy blinked.

No argument.

No command.

Andrew’s voice was quieter when he added, “If she wants you to.”

Lucas glanced at her.

Cindy hated that this small correction mattered.

“Yes,” she said. “I want him to.”

Andrew nodded.

She reached the elevator before he spoke again.

“Cindy.”

She turned.

He stood beside the open study door.

“I should have told you about David.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

Andrew Carter did not apologize often. Cindy knew because she had written corporate statements in which lawyers spent hours finding ways for him to express regret without admitting fault.

This one contained no qualification.

It almost made her stay.

Almost.

Lucas took her to a small private hotel in Tribeca owned by a Carter subsidiary under a name she had never heard. The suite had one entrance, no adjoining rooms, and windows that did not open.

“Romantic,” Cindy said.

“I specialize in charm.”

Lucas checked the bathroom, closets, and balcony before handing her a room key.

“I’ll be downstairs.”

“You don’t have to babysit me.”

“No. Andrew will kill me if anything happens to you.”

Cindy raised an eyebrow.

Lucas considered.

“Fine. He won’t kill me. He’ll stare at me with disappointment, which may be worse.”

She smiled despite herself.

At nine, Cindy finally showered.

Hot water turned the skin around her bruises red. She stood beneath it longer than necessary, letting the previous twenty-four hours pass through her mind in disconnected images.

David’s bat.

Andrew’s arm around her.

Her mother’s handwriting.

The photograph of Michael.

The gray surveillance file.

By the time she dressed in the hotel robe, exhaustion felt almost peaceful.

Then she heard the suite door close.

Cindy froze.

“Lucas?”

No answer.

She stepped into the living room.

Empty.

The door was locked.

Her phone buzzed.

A message from Emma.

FOUND ANOTHER NOTE. CALL ME WHEN YOU’RE ALONE.

Cindy immediately dialed.

No answer.

She tried again.

Straight to voicemail.

A sound outside the suite made her turn.

Footsteps moving down the hallway.

Cindy went to the peephole.

Lucas was walking toward the elevator.

He had told her he would be downstairs.

Instead, he left the hotel.

Cindy waited thirty seconds, changed into trousers and a sweater, and followed.

It was a terrible decision.

She knew that before she made it. Her temple still hurt, and she had slept perhaps forty minutes in two days. A sensible woman would have locked the hotel door, called Andrew, and let men with security training follow Lucas.

Cindy was beginning to suspect that sensible women sometimes reached the truth last because everyone else agreed to protect them from it.

She followed anyway.

But after twenty-four hours of being lied to for her own protection, terrible decisions made on her own felt almost luxurious.

Lucas took a cab north.

Cindy followed in another.

Twenty minutes later, she watched him enter a quiet restaurant on West Fifty-Second through a side door.

She paid the driver and crossed the street.

Through the restaurant window, she saw Lucas sit in a dark corner booth.

A man was already waiting.

Gray hair.

Silver-headed cane.

Thomas Carter.