The Wrong Wife by Maya Alden

Chapter 39

Declan

My father, who hardly stepped into Knight offices anymore, came into my office. Viv was with me as we went through some documents for the merger.

"Gerald." Viv walked up to him to hug him. He stepped away as if she was toxic.

Viv laughed uncomfortably. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I want the room, Viv. I need to talk to my son."

"You want me to leave?" Viv looked flustered.

My father's irritation showed. "That's what asking for the room usually means. Do you mind?"

Viv looked at me for direction, and I smiled pleasantly at her. She was driving me up the wall, and I couldn't wait to kick her out on her bony ass.

My father didn't bother to sit. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" he bellowed.

"How much time do you have?" I leaned back on my chair and put my feet on my desk. "What's up, Dad?"

"Your mother tells me that you're annulling your marriage with Esme to marry that woman?" He said that with a sneer. I should’ve known that my father would have something to say just like most people in my life did when they heard that Esme had left me.

"Sit down, Dad. It's not quite how it looks."

"Ask that Baker fellow to get me a coffee."

Before I could even call my assistant, there was a knock on the door, and it was Baker with coffee service. Worth his fucking weight in gold.

"Hello, Mr. Knight; how are you doing?" Baker set the tray on my desk. "Coffee black with one sugar?"

My father nodded.

"You met his wife?" he asked Baker.

"Yes, sir."

"You think he should leave her to marry that skinny snake?" my father asked.

Baker controlled his smile. "I believe Dec is working on…how did he say this, save his marriage, wife, and company while fucking over Julien and Viv."

"He’s a damn good assistant," my dad admired Baker as closed the door behind him. "So, what the fuck is going on?"

I told him and saw his eyes harden when I described how Julien had been abusing his wife and Esme. I then told him about Project L.

He smiled finally. "It's a good plan…a little too optimistic but I don’t think there’s much positive in this situation to do better. How can I help?"

"You can help by getting your wife off my back."

My father frowned. "Viv reminds me of her. Two overly ambitious women…not that ambition is wrong, but you must still be human."

"Dad, why haven't you divorced mom?" I asked bluntly.

"Just never bothered," he confessed. "If I met someone and fell in love and all that jazz, I'll drop her like a hot potato. I'm sorry, son; I know she's your mother, but I can't fucking stand her. I was so happy to meet Esme. She's living a real life. Doing social work and helping…ah…fucking hell, now I see why she works with abuse victims."

“Yeah, I felt that realization punch me in the gut as well.”

He drank some coffee and set his cup down. "I think we need to add an element to the plan."

"What?"

"That we can take Julien into an alley and beat the crap out of him. Son of a bitch."

There was a knock on my office door, and I asked the person to come in. It was my mother.

"You're here?" she looked shocked to see my father.

"Yeah, still a major shareholder in the company."

My mother wore a lovely pale pink and blue Prada suit. She looked serious and elegant. Viv would look like that if she wore a similar suit. Esme would look like a fucking knockout—a total sex on legs.

"Dec, I want this wedding to be the year's media event. I don't know why you're resisting it."

"No." I swung my feet down to the floor. "If that's it, Mom, Dad and I were in the middle of something."

"Like what?" she couldn't believe we'd have anything to discuss.

"Did you know that your best friend Julien knocks his wife around?" my father asked.

My mother waved a hand in disbelief. "She fell down the stairs. It happens. You've met Monica; she's a ditz. And Julien tells me she's on Valium, Xanax, Ambien and a plethora of other drugs."

My father shook his head in disgust. "Nina, here is what I'll tell you. Julien is an abuser. You can make excuses for him…" he held up his hand when my mother was going to respond, "but let me clarify. He's not allowed anywhere near my house."

"Your house? Excuse me?"

"Nina, the money is mine. And the house is mine. Sure, you'll get something when I die—but until I do, the shares are mine, not ours."

I enjoyed watching my parents together for the first time in a long time. Usually, my father walked away, but today he was taking the time and effort to put my mother in her place.

"Excuse me? You think I need your money?" my mother sneered.

"You used to be a judge, Nina. And now you're retired—that outfit you're wearing. You could only afford it with my money. You didn’t earn a fortune working the courts—you lived the way we did while you were a judge because I was one. So, let me be abso-fuckin-lutely clear, Julien is not welcome into my house. You bring him in, you can leave with him."

"Your money? You ran the company into the ground. It was Dec who's made it what it is."

"Then it's his money. Still not yours,” dad countered.

My mother watched him, stunned. Dad winked at me and stood up. "Time for me to go."

Is this what my marriage with Viv would've been like if we'd stayed together? Probably.

"What's gotten into him?" she sat on the chair my father had vacated.

"Mom, I have a meeting. This is my workplace."

She frowned. "I don't like how Esme is spreading rumors about her father. But what can you expect from people like that."

"People like that?"

My mother rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. I'm just saying there's something low-class about them. That's all."

"Because they're of Mexican heritage?" I wasn't about to let it go. It was time I put my money where my mouth was. Just as I wanted Esme not to allow her parents to take advantage of her, I needed to confront my mother who was more interested in status symbols than her only child's happiness.

"What a thing to say," my mother scoffed.

"But that's what you mean when you say people like that, right? For all your big D democratic agenda, Mom, you're a racist and snob."

Her eyes widened. "How dare you speak to me like this?"

"Just telling it as it is, Mom. You know where the exit is if you don't like it." I waved my hand toward the office door. I stood up and walked to the tall windows. I looked out at the vast city before me and wondered where and how Esme was.

"Don't you dare ignore your mother, Declan Knight," my mother reprimanded.

I turned around to face her.

"Do you know why you like Viv? Because she's like you. All show but nothing inside. The pursuit of status and power is what you both are after. And you know what, good for you. But you don't get to look down on those who make other choices. Esme has chosen to help people in the most direct way anyone can. She's not throwing money at some charity ball or putting something out on social media to garner attention for a cause. She's actually on the field, making a difference. Why can't you respect that?" I spoke calmly. I wanted to understand my mother or at least allow her to explain herself.

My mother took a deep breath. "She's not part of a power couple; Dec. Viv is. The Knight family has been at the forefront of politics and business for generations. With Viv, that legacy will continue."

"And what about love?"

"What about it?" she mocked. "Are you telling me you're in love with Esme?"

"What if I am?"

That took her aback. "You've known her six months. You were in love with Viv for longer. If this is about love, then go back to Viv. Make a life with her. A life I can be proud of."

"You can be proud of? Have you ever wondered if I'll be happy? Or will we have a marriage like you and Dad do? You can barely stand each other. You think he's a rich spoilt brat—and he thinks you're a cold-hearted bitch. Why would you want that for me?"

My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out of my pocket. It was a message from Raya: Hacker has been identified. Come to the boardroom asap.

I responded with a: On my way in five.

My mother clutched her bag. All the color in her face had drained. "I don't know what you mean, Dec. Gerald and I have a wonderful partnership."

"I wish I had the time to tell you that have no such thing with dad, but I don't." I walked to the door of my office and opened it. "You can see yourself out."

I walked straight to the boardroom, which was on the executive floor, where I had my office.

There were four people already there, Mateo, Raya, my assistant Baker, and a woman whose name I thought was Janice but wasn’t sure.

I sat at the head of the table and waited.

"This is Janice Walden; she's been Mateo's temp assistant for the past three weeks while Tim is on paternity leave."

I nodded. "Hello, Miss Walden."

"I'm sorry. They…I didn't know it would be such a big deal."

I looked at Raya for an explanation. She raised her five-foot ten-inch lithe frame and walked to the monitor and Janice looked nervous as hell. I didn’t blame her, Raya looked like a warrior with her cropped blonde hair, well-defined muscles thanks to a strict workout routine and the leather tight jeans she favored with dress shirts, a leather biker jacket and biker boots. A complete antithesis to the delicate feminine women that Mateo tended to take to his bed. And yet, I’d always felt that they had undeniable chemistry—which Esme had also detected.

Raya nodded at Mateo, who flipped something from his phone onto the large screen in the meeting room. It was a map of the server farm we maintained in Las Vegas.

"The hack was into our server here." A red dot appeared on one of the servers.

Then that dot expanded into a line and came to Los Angeles and Mateo's office.

"God, Mateo, are you telling me you're fucking with our servers?" I joked. "Because you don't need to hack in, you know that, right?"

"Fuck you," Mateo said jovially.

"I'm assuming that Miss Walden here put a Trojan virus into your computer Mateo that our security didn't catch, and that's how whoever influenced Miss Walden got access to our system?" I surmised.

"Exactly." Raya smiled and sat down next to Mateo.

"I interviewed Janice and hired her," Baker spoke for the first time. His stoic British demeanor was still in place if tinged with some guilt. "We did a background check and found nothing untoward."

I nodded. "Thanks, Baker."

"So, Miss Walden, why did you do it? Money? Love?" I asked.

She began to cry. "I'm so sorry. This man I met asked me to send Mr. Silva an email and open it on his computer, which I did while he was at lunch one day. That's all I did."

"How much were you paid?"

"A hundred thousand dollars." She was still in disbelief that something so simple could be worth so much.

"That's a lot of money. I understand why you were swayed." I tapped my fingers on the polished mahogany table. "And who was this man?"

Raya grinned. "And this is where it gets interesting. The man is a black hat called DemonRum."

"He's a mercenary," Mateo interjected. "Hacker for hire. We already found his signature in the corrupted code. And that helped us track Janice here."

"Did a competitor hire this black hat?"

"No." Raya was bursting to tell me who had hired this man to internally sabotage Knight Tech. "Julien Hartley did."

I felt a surge of anger and of satisfaction. Ah, Julien, we now have you by your short and curlies.

It wasn’t uncommon that Knight Tech hosted FBI agents now and again, considering our expertise but never to arrest one of our own.

Per our counsel Carolina Vega, Janice Walden who was arrested after that fateful meeting would be charged with cybercrimes, specifically for unauthorized access, computer fraud, malware distribution, and damage to computer systems.

In the following days, DemonRum was also arrested thanks to information Raya's team had acquired regarding his whereabouts. The connection to Julien Hartley was tenuous and would take further investigation.

While we were busy dealing with the fallout of the hacking, my days were getting longer with travel to customer sites. However, I checked in with Mark every day to make sure Esme was alright. Which she wasn't, according to him.

"She doesn't talk to me. She goes to work and then stays in her room. She's lost weight, and I've heard her cry in bed."

It hurt to think of Esme crying alone at night. I wasn't getting much sleep either. I was playing a delicate game with Viv and Julien, which required more energy than I had, adding to my stress. It didn't help that I missed my wife…all the fucking time. I wanted to hold her and comfort her; and be comforted in return.

"She saw pictures of you and Viv at that movie opening," Mark continued. "That was not a good day. She didn't cry and smiled, even cooked dinner. It was torture watching her pretend she didn't care."

"I know what you want me to do, Mark, but I can't," I told him. "She needs to fight for us. I can't keep loving her and have her fold whenever her family gives her a hard time."

"She has PTSD, Dec; give her a break."

"I love her, Mark, and trust me, I know her, and she needs to do this. If I bring her back… she'll never believe in us."

"And in the meantime, I must watch her fall apart."

"Yeah, I’ll owe you."

I would have much rather she was falling apart with me, but when she'd signed those annulment papers—she's chosen her fear over us. She needed to trust me, believe in us, and know that together we would and could beat the odds. It would take time—and I didn't know how much time, but I knew she'd find her heart. My Esme was strong—and the bond we had built, I knew, connected her to me in a visceral way. It wasn’t going anywhere, this love and hunger we had for one another.

But waiting wasn't easy, and I had to talk myself out of going to Mark's place or Safe Harbor to grab her and bring her home, tell her where she was supposed to be almost all the time. That might get her home in the short term, but it wouldn't free her of her parents. Sure, she'd walked away from her mother right now, Mark had told me, but would she be able to fight for me against them? Would she be able to look her sister in the eye and say, "I love him, and he loves me? We're together. So, butt out."

Three weeks after we'd returned from New Orleans and a week before the board meeting, we were supposed to announce my upcoming marriage to Viv when all hell broke loose at Safe Harbor. Maria called me to tell me there had been a fire at the women’s shelter. She assured me that Esme was unharmed, but they were scrambling to find a temporary home for the women and children.

I immediately got ready to leave my office and realized that I couldn't just got to her. I had to stay away from her until she was ready to come to me. I was frustrated. "What do you need, Maria."

"You have any buildings that are standing empty? Right now, we need space."

I thought about it momentarily and told her I'd get back to her shortly. I called my father. "Dad, you know that building you used to rent to those hippies on Spring? Is that still available?"

My father, who couldn't remember which day it was, miraculously remembered the building. "The artist's commune. Oh, yes, it's empty. I've been thinking about getting it into shape and seeing if we can bring some writers and painters back there, you know create an art collective."

"How would you feel if it became a Women's Shelter?"

He was silent for a short moment. "Of course, son."

I sent him to Safe Harbor to deliver the good news to Maria and take care of Esme for me.