What About Us Read online

  The only thing I understood was that the allegations were about crimes that my father didn’t commit. Unfortunately, he had to plead guilty because he couldn’t pay the legal fees to defend himself if the case went to trial, but had the Archers or any of our close family friends helped him, lent us just enough to pay the attorneys, he wouldn’t be sitting in prison right now and I wouldn’t be busting my ass serving drinks to judgmental dickheads like Alexander Archer.

  Three months after the final piece of furniture was auctioned off and my house sold, I left for Florida, just as my dad asked. But it wasn’t because he asked; it was because I had nothing left in Seattle. Not one friend, not one dollar.

  I was all alone and everywhere I went, I was looked at like a leper.

  So why am I acting like a sixteen-year-old with a crush? The Archers were the closest friends we had, and they completely abandoned us. No. Not us. They abandoned me. Not once did I get a phone call, a little help…anything. For all they knew, I was dead somewhere.

  With this parting thought, my attitude changes instantly.

  I remember having to turn down Stanford University because I couldn’t afford it. Well, the truth is, they didn’t want me either. Not after the shitstorm that surrounded my father and our family name.

  I think about the first time I met Gina—she worked with me at a fast-food chain, and she took me to a place where I could crash for free until I had enough for a real place to live. It turned out to be a free campsite somewhere in the middle of the Everglades. I was scared and penniless, but I also realized that there were people worse off than I was. People like Gina who were real survivors. Gina had been on her own since she was fourteen and had never had even a taste of comfort. Yet she always wore a smile on her face and showed me how to become a survivor too. Eventually, I was able to scrounge up enough for an old beat-up car, which became my home for a while. All because I was ostracized and this man sitting in front of me didn’t lift one finger to help. He couldn’t spare a little of his millions to help me.

  So yeah…fuck him.

  “God, will I ever learn?” I mutter to myself.

  I pull my hand away, turn, and go back to the bar, trying to figure out what the hell just happened while tamping down the emotions I’ve had bottled up inside for over a decade.

  Chapter 3

  Alex

  I watch Helen walk away, my jaw pained from clenching so hard. What the fuck is she doing at a bar? Like some sort of blue-collar worker.

  With the stash of money her father gave her—money he stole from my family as well as hundreds of other families—she should be sitting pretty on some Caribbean island sipping piña coladas. At least that’s what I had always imagined. Me and everyone else who was a victim of the Blackwood Ponzi scheme that cost many their entire livelihoods.

  It just doesn’t make any sense.

  After that kiss we shared all those years ago, that kiss that caught me completely off guard, I thought that maybe—just maybe—there was something more than friendship between us. I left that night feeling flustered and unnerved. But isn’t that what Helen had always done to me? Unnerved me?

  She had looked so breathtakingly beautiful and I made a rash decision. Something I never, ever do. I’m always calculated and deliberate in all my decisions. Except that one night.

  Girls had always been attracted to me. Apparently, I was physically appealing to them. However, when they got to know me, they’d always considered me “weird” and “too serious.” But Helen had always treated me normally and had the uncanny ability to put me at ease and make me laugh. Not all the time, but more than anyone else. Actually, no one else has ever really been able to make me laugh or feel truly comfortable or uninhibited. But with Helen, I felt okay being out of control. Except when we kissed. It was…too much.

  But then I woke up the next day and my life fell apart, and her father was to blame. Since that day, I tucked Helen and that kiss in the back of my mind and tried not to think about it.

  Nothing good could come out of loving the taste of my enemy.

  I toss some money on the table and follow her to the bar. “What are you doing here?” I repeat.

  “Working.” She scowls at me, then turns her attention to another customer with a fake smile.

  “Pardon me,” I say to the customer, interrupting them. “Where have you been all this time?”

  “Where have I been?” she asks indignantly, sliding a drink to the customer, who leaves some money and smartly walks away. “When, today? Yesterday? For the last twelve fucking years?” At this point, she’s yelling.

  “Do. Not. Curse. At. Me,” I growl.

  Luckily, over the sound of the music, not many people can hear us. But the daggers she’s shooting out of her eyes clearly show she’s one pissed-off woman. “Excuse me? I’ll curse at you if I feel like it. And how is it any of your business where I’ve been?”

  I reach over the bar and pinch her chin, moving her head side to side. “What the hell? Let me go!” She swats my hand away.

  “What happened to your face?” There’s an angry bruise on her cheek. She’s tried to cover it with makeup, but it’s swollen and if you really look carefully, you can see a bluish tinge.

  “Again, none of your business. And don’t ever touch me again!” As she screeches at me, I feel my phone in my pocket vibrating.

  “Of course it’s my business!” I bark back. “Wherever you’ve been, you went with my goddamn money and my father’s hard work!”

  Every day I wrestle with my anger more and more, and I’ve become the worst kind of man.

  The kind of man who has nothing to lose, which also makes me the most dangerous kind. And anyone who is within five feet of me seems to be able to sense this and tends to give me a wide berth. I’ve been told I sneer and that my eyes are piercing and cold. People are scared of me, and I couldn’t care less. They should be scared of me.

  Except, Helen slams a glass down on the bar top and leans toward—not away from—me. She’s not only not scared, she’s ready to fight me. There are only two people who never back down from me: one’s Bradley and the other’s my mother. Now, here’s the person who should be the most afraid of me and yet, instead of running as far away as she can, she is inciting the fire further.

  “What’s going on here?” the guy working beside her asks, noting our heated gazes.

  She’s glaring at me.

  I’m glaring at her.

  “You motherfucking sonofabitch!” she yells, which catches her colleague off-guard. My phone keeps vibrating, so I take it out of my pocket and glance at it.

  “Damn it,” I curse. If it were anyone but Bradley, I wouldn’t even think about answering. But when Brad calls, I rarely ignore it because it’s always important. “This isn’t finished. Do not move,” I order, which gets me a middle finger from her. I growl as I turn away from her to answer the phone. “Not a good time, Bradley.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” he says, in a serious tone. Normally, he’s stoic, but right now he sounds worried, and a worried Bradley is never good.

  “One second.” I make my way out of the noisy club, moving past people as quickly as I can. “Okay, I’m listening,” I say when I step into the alley.

  “Seasons Enterprises is meeting with Glen tonight. Right now. They’re making an offer.”

  I think I misheard. “I’m with Glen right now. What are you talking about?”

  “Our inside guy says that Anthony from SE is on his way to meet with him. They may already be together. Where are you? What was all that noise?”

  “I just left a goddamn nightclub. The prick is still upstairs. He hasn’t been out of my sight more than ten minutes. There’s no way he’s meeting with SE. You got bad information.”

  “No. No way. Close this deal, Alex. I’m not
letting a billion dollars slip through our fingers, especially after the Holloway debacle last quarter. Damn it, I should’ve gone myself.”

  “I’m the Archer in Archer Technologies, asshole, and you have half your body in a cast. So shut up and let me do this before I fire you.” I’m seriously pissed at his lack of confidence in me. We lost a shitload of money last quarter with the Holloway venture, but we are in no way destitute. He needs to calm the hell down.

  I hear silence, then an uncharacteristic laugh. “You fire me?” He laughs harder. He knows I value him and can’t fire him. Not really. He owns forty-nine percent of the company. But he also knows that I’m great with numbers and have the better business sense of the two of us, which is why we shouldn’t have invested in Holloway. Bradley was adamant it was a sure thing and that I was wrong about their negligible accounting practices. I wasn’t.

  But selling and marketing—that’s Bradley’s strength, not mine. Dealing with CEOs, boards of directors, presidents of companies…that’s all Bradley. Nevertheless, he doesn’t need to be a dick about it.

  “I’ll call you back.” I hang up and look at the line to get back into the club. I skip ahead and the same guy who originally let me inside must’ve remembered me, or took note of my “don’t-fuck-with-me-right-now” face, because he lifts the red velvet rope and I walk right in.

  Where the first floor of Duality is all white and sleek and modern-looking, upstairs is the opposite. As soon as the elevator door opens, I have to adjust my eyes to the dark and smoky-looking room. The first floor is all class; the second is all decadence, with black velvet furniture and a few hints of gray. Hell, even the crystals hanging off the chandeliers are black.

  The room is shaped like an arena. In the center are two stripper poles, with women dancing completely naked. There are intimate booths all around the dance floor. Then there is a second level with more tables and a bar on the east and west sides of center stage. On the north side, the is a second level is filled with mostly naked men wearing odd-looking Venetian masks, breathing fire. From the roof there are cages hanging down with more dancers—male and female.

  Between the lights, the music, the nudity, and the amount of people dancing, it’s sensory overload.

  I immediately hate it. More so than the first floor.

  I like quiet. I can’t hear myself think in a place like this. It reminds me of some sort of erotic circus.

  I know I need to find Glen, but my mind can’t seem to wander away from Helen. How can she be working in a place like this? At least she’s downstairs and clothed. Not that it’s any of my business what she does or doesn’t do. I never expected to see her again, and running into her without warning has the effect of slamming me right into a brick wall. My head throbs.

  Three security guys run past me and a group of people start to congregate around an altercation at the other end of the club.

  Glen.

  “Damn it,” I groan and make way to the area just as a topless woman points a red fingernail at Glen while a security guard holds him back.

  “Let me go!” he barks, a thick vein on his forehead looking like it’s about to explode. “I didn’t do a goddamn thing you didn’t want me to do.”

  “You disgusting old man! I didn’t want your fat fingers on me!” She lunges forward, but there’s another guard there ready to grab her before she gets to Glen.

  “Anthony! Tell them who I am. Tell them.”

  Anthony? I hadn’t even noticed my competitor standing beside him. He’s just…there, looking helpless and lost.

  I shake my head and step back, trying to blend into the crowd. I think I’m going to sit back and let this play out. Anthony stumbles around, trying to say the right things to the security personnel, even taking out his wallet, which is met with reproachful stares from the security guys. I can’t help but laugh, quietly.

  “We don’t care who he is. Rules are rules, and he grabbed one of the dancers. He’s out of here. Cops are on their way.”

  “Cops? What the fuck!” Glen starts fighting to get loose from their grips as he’s dragged to the service elevators. Anthony’s stammering insults as to how they’re treating Glen and threatening to take legal action on Glen’s behalf.

  I slip out through the side exit and quickly call our lawyers.

  By the time I get to my house, I have local attorneys working on getting Glen out of jail courtesy of Archer Technologies, and tomorrow I’ll have to talk to the owners of Duality to see about having the charges dropped.

  If this doesn’t land us the business, nothing will.

  If it hadn’t been for Helen, a memory that almost feels like a hallucination, I’d say that the night turned out better than I expected, thanks to Glen’s sleazy antics.

  Helen

  I unlock the door to the pay-by-the-hour motel and turn on the light, which takes a moment to work. As the lights flicker, I try to ignore the loud noises coming from my neighbors on either side.

  I toss my purse on the bed and go take a hot shower in the tiny, rusted bathroom, still in disbelief about seeing Alex Archer tonight. I still can’t believe he insulted me in one breath and then turned around to take a call. As if the accusations he spat my way were part of a normal day at the office for him.

  And…and he touched my face.

  Why the hell did that do weird, sexy things to my body?

  Stupid traitorous body!

  I’m still fuming and confused as I lather. Movement in the corner of my eye by the hot-water knob on the shower faucet draws my attention.

  “Oh my God!” I screech loudly as I hop out of the shower while also trying to avoid getting shampoo in my eyes. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God!”

  A cockroach!

  A brown-winged disgusting creature has taken over my shower. I know it’s girly and not very independent-woman of me, but I have a ridiculous fear of roaches.

  I break out in a cold sweat and can practically feel it crawling on my skin as I run in place like a lunatic, unsure what to do next.

  If I didn’t have soap all over my body, I would never step foot back inside the shower, but I have to rinse off.

  I’m bone tired, and this damn bug with its little animated antennae is just staring at me while the water continues to run. Naked and dripping wet, I jog to the room frantically, grab my shoe, and throw it at the creature. But it just flies around, which causes me to screech more. I throw another and another until I have three pairs of soaking wet shoes. Finally—crunch!—I get it with a pair of sneakers. It’s plastered against the wall, and I’m scared it’s going to resuscitate or slide down and land on my toes.

  I throw a towel on it to cover it and awkwardly step back into the shower, not taking my eyes off the towel hiding the vermin as I take the quickest shower known to man. Then, I run out and close the door to the bathroom, as if that makes any difference. I look around the small room, looking for more roaches. “Please God, I don’t ask you for much…please don’t let its family be nearby.”

  When I don’t see any more, I put on my pj’s, strip the stained comforter off the mattress, put a dry towel on the sheets, and crawl into bed, covering my head with another towel, just in case Mrs. Roach comes to execute revenge for her husband’s murder.

  I can’t wait any longer.

  I need to move back home or to a better temporary apartment.

  Which is why, four hours later, I’m standing in front of the bank, waiting for it to open.

  “Good morning,” I greet the teller, even though there is not one good thing about this particular morning. “I need to access my safety deposit box, please.”

  “Sure. ID, please.” She slides a paper my way. I already know the drill. I sign and wait for her to check my identification before she walks me to the room. She turns the counter-key, then leaves me
alone. I dig my own key out of the bottom slit of my purse, the one I cut out and then re-sewed, and open the box. I promised myself I would sell these things only if there was an emergency.

  Even when times were the hardest, when I was homeless, I still never sold one. I was innocent, sentimental, and holding on to some sort of hope that was never realized. I’m not eighteen anymore. I have real responsibilities that I can’t put off. My heart breaks as I pull two of the Limoges boxes out of the safe. I don’t even look at which two because if I did, I’d sit here all day figuring out which means less to me. I stuff them in my purse, lock the safety deposit box, and walk out of the bank feeling completely and utterly defeated for the first time in my life.

  As I get into my car, my phone rings—it’s a private number. Monday at this time, it can only be one person. I answer and accept the collect call fee.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hi, honey. How are you doing?”

  I turn on the motor and swallow down the lump in my throat. Sometimes I wish I could vent. Tell him how things are really going. Instead, I lie. Just like I’ve done every single week for twelve years. “I’m good. Nothing much going on here.”

  “You sound…off. Everything okay?”

  “Of course. Everything’s fine.”

  “You sure? You’re not lying to your old man, right?”

  “Of course not, Dad.” I don’t want to burden him with my problems. He has enough going on. Being wrongfully accused and having his name smeared all over the news—no, my problems are nothing compared to his. I get to live out in the world and he’s stuck in a jail cell for the rest of his life.