Leo pulls back from rubbing my shoulders and looks like he just came up with the idea of the century. Even though I didn’t think I had it in me, I giggle at his face. He is so pure and wonderful. Why didn’t I ever find boring to be enough for me? I mean, really, if I’d never met Camden, would I be the one with the family and the house in the suburbs, wondering which soccer practice was my turn for snack?

“Come to Miami with me,” he exclaims. “We have that client, Evan Meyers, down there. He needs us to do an in-house sweep of their presentation. It will give you a few days to chill out, get some sun, and do what you do best in the office. They won’t know what hit them.”

I think about it. I have to call the police and find out what else they need from me. I need to be sure that my apartment is completely secure, so that no one can get in. I need to figure out what Camden is up to.

I shake my head. I can’t do it. With longing in my eyes, I refuse.

“I’m sorry. It’s the best idea you ever had, but I can’t leave right now. They will need me close if they find my belongings.”

We all sit in silence for a few moments while I try to think of ways I can go to Florida. I’d do just about anything to see my parents right now, to sleep in my childhood room of pink and fluffy things, as well. There is no sweeter place in this world than that twin bed.

“Nevertheless, you will need someone with you, and seeing as we aren’t getting along for some unknown reason I have yet to understand, please take Annie. She looks like she could use a little sun.”

Leo’s eyes perk up. “Annie? Really? You guys wouldn’t mind?” By the looks of it, he had the same idea, but didn’t have the nerve to ask himself.

“Yep,” I say with a finality in my voice. “Go. Take my assistant and make her work her ass off.”

I stand up from our little powwow and head over to my desk to boot up my computer. “Also, can one of you get me the Steel Charter file?”

“Um, Luca, we aren’t taking that account, remember?” Mitch asks hesitantly.

“Yeah, I know. I just want to look over their financials again. Something about Camden isn’t adding up.” I look up to Mitch and give him a tight smile. “Please, I just need one more look through.”

He nods and as they leave, I open my pencil drawer and gasp in immediate horror. Sitting on top of everything in my drawer is a string of pearls, all broken and loose. It’s one of the first strands of pearls I ever got and I can’t believe they are ruined like this. But that isn’t what causes me to shake. I pull the picture out from underneath the pearls to find another poised picture of Heath and me. He is kissing my neck, in the process of undressing me. I remember this moment. All you can see in the picture is my back and his arms and head, but it’s us. It’s me, getting my picture taken during sexual relations with a man…without knowing.

I close my eyes against everything that is happening and focus on the hotel room in Savannah. How the hell was someone taking a photo from that side of us? Yes, these pictures are blurry, so they have been cropped, but they couldn’t have been taken from too much of a distance. I think about the picture I received at my apartment. I only looked at it briefly, but it is ingrained in my brain nonetheless. From the angle of that picture, someone was either taking photos from the entrance of the bathroom or the French doors leading to the small patio balcony. The room was too high up for someone to be perched in the trees, so they had to be there, in the room. I open my eyes and look at the photo I just found in my desk. This one is him undressing me and I’m wearing the destroyed pearls. I didn’t wear them that first night, so it was the next day when I switched out my jewelry, always leaving the anklet on. That poor fucking anklet.

“Stupid, son of a bitch,” I think out loud. Looking back to the picture, whoever snapped this had to be somewhere in the room.

Then it hits me. It doesn’t hit me like a gasp or a little “oh no” in my head. No, this one is a grand slammer that knocks all of the wind that has ever passed through my chest, straight out of the room, into the cold air of Chicago. I literally feel myself turning blue with the stunned feeling of not breathing.

Breathing would mean that I’d have to admit that I must be the absolute stupidest, selfish, most pitiful, asshole that has ever lived. How did I not even think of this back at my place? With the tunnel vision that I pride myself on not having, which I should probably revisit that with my therapist, I only thought Camden had access to my apartment, but what if it was Heath that got into my place and took all of that jewelry. He would have had to be quick. Or maybe he had been there all weekend. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been completely distracted with Camden the whole time.

All of a sudden, I feel sick from not breathing, or blinking, and processing a million pieces of information at once.

A sudden knock comes to my door and Leo steps in.

“Okay, so I am heading back to the house to pack. All systems are a go for Miami.  I’ll be back by Thursday, so please, take care of yourself this week. I’m worried about you, but I know having a few less people here at the office will let you get some work done. Mitch and Annie cleared our weekly office meetings and you just have a conference call with Mapperz on Wednesday, which is not a big deal. In fact, let me have Mitch take that one. It’s probably their new sales guy asking all the dumb questions anyway.”

He’s talking. I’m listening. I’m nodding. I’m smiling where I need to, but I’m fucking shaking like a goddamn leaf and there isn’t anything he can do about it. It’s official. Lucia’s world came flying into this one and now, I’m getting the royal fuck me up the ass treatment I deserve from a frigging prick who likes to play sick and twisted games.

Leo looks down to a folder underneath his armpit. “Oh right. Here’s the Steel Charter file. Annie got it for me. Apparently, we have a small file drawer that holds the rejected accounts. She mentioned there were only eight or so. That’s good, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I say, not knowing exactly what he is getting at. Leo can talk about sand getting in between your toes just to fill the silence when someone he loves is having a hard time. He does it to try and get your mind off the problem.

Standing up, I walk to him and take the file from his hand. Before walking away from him, I grab onto him and hug as hard as I can. He hurumphs and then softly chuckles at my outgoing affection as he wraps his arms around me, hugging me back.

“You are a great friend.” I softly squeeze him a little harder, before releasing him and backing up.

He looks down at me with sincerity. “Please take care of yourself while we are gone, okay?” he asks in a pleading tone.

I nod and give him one last smile, because that is all I have in me. I can’t appease anyone anymore today. I have to think about Heath and all that he has done since we met. I need to get in touch with Carl and find out what other sorts of extracurricular activities our Mr. Landon has. I must talk to Camden and find out anything he knows about Heath, without talking to the police about him just yet. I need to get to Heath. I need to catch him in the act of leaving another piece of jewelry, ripped up or not, and take this god damn stapler and shove it up his ass. I grab the stapler off my desk and hold it in my hands, a fierce grip around it.

Annie takes Leo’s place in the doorway and I want to hurl the stapler at her self-satisfying smile to find some form of release.

“It looks like you couldn’t make this trip,” she says with a little smirk.

“I know. That is why I told Leo to take you,” I explain to her slowly like she is a toddler that doesn’t understand her words yet.

Her face falls a little. I sigh.