32. Security Camera

Leonie

Tuesday, I marked the dissertations until noon. Sick of my own company, I pestered Robbie over the phone. He’d found very little, his hacker friend getting through the accounts. I didn’t dare to text Dom.

Wednesday, I went to the gym in our apartment block and redownloaded some dating apps. Every man on there was an empty void or the same personality of a football/rugby lad with a dash of misogyny.

Thursday, I went to the shooting range, then dragged my duvet to the sofa, feigning a cold to Issy. I did anything to avoid feeling hurt by Dom’s rejection.

Friday, there was a knock on my door.

Despite the continuing heat, I was decked out in a high neck jumper under the blanket, back on the sofa again. I was sick of having to hide the bruises Dom had made on my throat and chest.

I was sweating.

“Guess I’ll get it!” Issy groaned. She’d already come back from her morning shift at the bakery, had her training session with Andy, been to the bank and was about to head out for a spin class. She’d already packed for her trip home too.

All in the time I’d been on the sofa. I looked up at her and smiled with a shrug. “If you insist.”

She rolled her eyes. “You know, you are allowed to quit your course. Just because you don’t want to be a lecturer anymore, it doesn’t mean you have to mope. It’s not exactly like you won’t have any money.”

My smile only grew more awkward. She sighed and went to the door where she immediately straightened her back.

“Rocco,” she greeted formally as the huge man walked past her into the living room. “You’re past your station post.”

Rocco stood there, dressed in black, stressed leather jacket on despite the remaining heat wave and gave a stern expression.

He ran a hand over his dark beard, ignoring his ex-lover. Or not so ex-lover. Rocco was not a topic you brought up with Issy unless you wanted to be threatened.

“When are you going to stop sulking and leave the house?”

“Oh, hi Leo, how are you?” I mocked but threw off the blanket covering me. “And what are you chatting about?” I glanced at Issy, who was back in her own world, filling up her water bottle, humming. “I have left the house every day for the last… I leave the house. I left yesterday.”

He stood in our living room, unsure what to do with himself. He took up so much room. “Yeah, the shooting range doesn’t count. You didn’t come down to our training yesterday. Issy said you had a cold.”

Issy stopped humming. “Right, off you both go! Teach her how to shoot a gun or a sword or an arrow for all I care, but only return her when she is less moody.”

“Shoot a sword?” Roc asked, smothering an amused grin.

She cocked a hip and placed her hand there. She finally looked at Rocco, their glares making me roll my back.

“Get out of my flat and take grump with you,” she commanded.

He didn’t look away. Neither did she.

So I pushed myself off the sofa and slipped out of my slippers and into my socks and trainers before grabbing a top from my room and taking his hand, pulling us out of the apartment.

“When did you see Issy?” I asked, raising my brows.

“I’ll spill my dirty secrets when you spill yours,” he said gruffly.

Rocco was a man of very few words with most people. Being my personal guard for the last seven years made us close friends. His father working for my dad had made me love him like an older sibling.

He gave me space when I needed it and didn’t report back to Ivan when I requested. He let me live a life with some form of privacy.

Down at the gym of our apartment block, a dance room could be hired out. When we first moved in, I thought I could get back into dancing and run some lessons there, but I never really got the motivation.

He pulled off his leather jacket and threw it on the floor by the barre. He placed a mat down and already had boxing gloves ready to go as I threw on the thinner top. We quickly slipped back into a routine. Ten minutes of boxing, then hand-to-hand combat.

See, as much as I hadn’t been planning on going back to the family business, I knew who I was. It was inescapable. If I hadn’t been trained so well as a teenager, there was no way I would have made it out of that basement alive after being taken.

Rocco wouldn’t let me quit.

Like Dom wouldn’t when he trained me. When we were teenagers. When our touches were innocent and —

“So you and Dom,” Rocco crooned, eyeing my neck. “That’s not surprising.”

I went to hit him particularly hard, but he stepped back, evading me completely. “Don’t think with those messy emotions, Leo.”

“Does everyone know?”

He shook his head and gestured to his neck. “Sporting lovely green-yellow bruises there.”

I groaned, holding a hand up to where he motioned. “It’s over now.”

He snorted, landing a light jab on my shoulder.

I slapped him. A loud thwack sounded around the room and he smirked, holding me by both my biceps. “You two ever thought of, you know, talking it out?”

When I went to speak, he laughed and interrupted me with, “Instead of fucking it out?”

“Rocco!”

His lips stretched into a smile he didn’t bother to fight. “I’m just saying. Imagine the Belov-Castillo empire. He hasn’t left his house in four days.”

“So? He probably has women coming to his.”

But he shook his head, letting me go. “No one has been or gone. Well, other than Is briefly.”

Roc was my man. His dad’s allegiance to mine had only transferred between us. He was the only one truly loyal to me. He updated me on the Castillo side of the business, any information I sought to do with the Belovs.

“How do you know that?”

His attack blindsided me. He put me in a tight headlock and, as I squirmed, he ruffled my hair with his fist. “Gotta look out for my girl’s best interests.”

When he released me, I knew my hair was a complete mess. I huffed at him. “But you’re his friend, too.”

“And?” he asked, rolling the mat up and pushing my feet off it. “Can’t I be both?”

“No,” I said. “He… nothing will happen there anymore.”

My heart thudded erratically at how sure I sounded.

“Why?” he asked, putting the mat away, but the way he asked the question… I knew I had his full attention.

“Because ten years ago, when I needed him most, he wasn’t there. He left me to go through… to go through all of that alone. We were best friends, Rocco.”

“And people can’t change? People can’t be sorry?”

“Sorry has not come from his lips once,” I muttered, shoving the high-neck top back on before picking up my phone. We walked back to my flat.

I had to rid myself of Dom. So I texted the last person I should text. Well, the second from last.

LEONIE: When are you back in town?

Roc glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, fuck sake, Leonie,” he groaned, closing his eyes in exasperation. “Not him. His family is already causing enough problems.”

“Problems?” I asked.

“They’ve made some gains on Darley that they shouldn’t. We’re keeping an eye on them.”

He was always willing to share the real crap that went on.

I could keep an eye on Sam Yun.

He kissed me on the cheek and shook his head. “Leave him well alone.”

Really, it would be helping out the family business, right? And when I got a picture of him naked, it would be two birds, one stone.

I pottered around my room, tidying up my toiletries, even half-heartedly washing my make-up brushes, glancing with a twisted gut at my phone lying on the bed.

He could still be abroad. On his Instagram, he’d been in Brazil five days ago, holding a thousand-pound bottle of vodka high in the air.

When my phone dinged — because, yes, I’d put it on loud for the occasion — I dropped the foundation brush into the bowl of water and let the splashes cover my mirror as I lunged to the bed.

SAMMY YUN X: I’ve been in town for two days. Didn’t hit you up because your Instagram is still covered in that little twerp.

I pursed my lips to stop laughing aloud. Twerp.

LEONIE: Twerp’s gone.

SAMMY YUN X: He’s out and I’m… in?

LEONIE: If you want to be in.

SAMMY YUN X: Always so eager, Leo.

I wouldn’t call myself eager. I’d call myself desperate to get over Dom. With the old cliché of getting under someone else.

During our texts, I hadn’t moved. I stood stock still at the end of my bed, thumbs dancing.

LEONIE: Want to go to Issy’s birthday with me tomorrow? Would be a bit of a throwback to be in my old room.

Where I’d lost my virginity to him.

The three dots of his reply were immediate.

SAMMY YUN X: As in a date? With little Leonie Castillo?

I couldn’t stand texting. Did he want it to be a date? Was he disgusted by the very idea? I couldn’t gauge that. And if it were a date, Dom would lose his shit.

LEONIE: As in we get drunk together with our friends from school. If you want to buy me breakfast in the morning you can.

SAMMY YUN X: Let’s see how much of a good girl you are first.

Before, my stomach would have been flip-flopping with excitement. Now it fluttered with guilt. I’d done it and there was no going back.

LEONIE: You know how much of a good girl I can be.

SAMMY YUN X: Show me.

After those first few photos I sent him, Sam and I regularly exchanged naughty snaps. Regularly, until Jared.

I settled on the bed and pulled off my jumper and bra. I folded an arm over my nipples, lifting up so my cleavage was clear before snapping a picture of my mouth slightly parted.

Even now, I always cropped out above my mouth.

Looking down at the picture, I didn’t want to send it to Sam. I wanted to send it to Dom. I wanted to send him something far more revealing.

I’d be able to trust him with a photo of my face.

But not the man I’d been screwing for ten years.

Dom would punish me for being so silly as to send a nude with my face in. I wanted to relish in it. I wanted to know what photo he would send me back.

He didn’t strike me as the type to take a picture of his dick, no matter how perfect or cocky he was.

I threw my phone back on the bed and, when it rang a second later, I picked it up with a sultry, “Did you like it?”

“Like what?” came Mia’s voice.

Shite.

“Sorry, thought you were someone else,” I said in a panic and threw my top back on. “You okay?”

“Where are you?” she asked just as a FaceTime request came through from Sam. I let it ring.

“Er, at home, why?”

“I’m around the corner in the coffee shop,” she said. Normally, we only went to Issy’s bakery for coffee, but she wouldn’t be welcome there. “Can you bring me my stuff? Dom told me he gave it to Issy but she won’t talk to me, let alone meet with me.”

Oh yes, her stuff that Issy had hauled in the other day. Including a mini fridge.

“You spoke to Dom?”

“Yes.”

Wow. Okay.

“I can’t carry it all. Why don’t you—”

“No, bring what you can. Keep the rest.”

“Keep the—”

“Leonie, I need to speak to you,” she pleaded. I couldn’t pick up if her voice was angry or near tears. Maybe angry, frustrated tears. That’s how I often felt after a conversation with Dom.

“Okay,” I said, dragging out the vowel and already throwing my trainers back on, my phone pressed up against my shoulder with my ear. “I’ll come now.”

The walk to the coffee shop was only a couple of minutes but loaded with two shopping bags worth of her things, it felt far longer.

Especially knowing I’d have to deal with her weeping pity party when I’d slept with her ex within twenty-four hours of them breaking up.

I could slam my head into my palm over and over.

Stupid, stupid Leonie.

Though Roc always kept his distance, I could feel his presence behind me. I should have asked him to help me carry everything.

Mia sat upon one of the low sofas, a coffee before her on the table as she texted away. When she saw me approach, she straightened and crossed her knees, gesturing for me to sit before her in the armchair.

My brows were down already. This wasn’t the teary, loving welcome I was expecting.

I placed her bags by her feet and sat where instructed, right on the edge of the seat. I picked at the hem of my shorts, suddenly nervous as if I was the one who had cheated.

Maybe I wasn’t exactly the best of friends to her, but…

No, there wasn’t an excuse. I was an awful person.

“That’s all your stuff apart from the fridge,” I said, sounding apologetic. “If you pop round while Issy’s out—”

“Leonie,” she said, her voice stern. Her tone told me she didn’t care about the fridge. She locked her hands around her knee, looking down at me. “I know.”

When I first met her, she had tried to be intimidating. I’d found it amusing but only laughed behind her back.

But now she was really trying to intimidate me. And I had no loyalty to her at all.

“I don’t follow,” I said, my hands sweaty only because of the heatwave. “You know…”

“You and Dom.”

She watched for a reaction, her own pretty face serious.

“What about me and Dom?” I asked with an awkward laugh.

She lifted a brow and cocked her head to the side. “How long have you been fucking my boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I said by impulse.

She rolled her lips, proud that she was right and I had just given it away.

Damn my need to defend myself.

“So when you spoke to him, he told you?” I asked, my heart beating harder. He’d only done this to throw it in her face. Just as I thought he would. Because I was right, he was a dickhead and, even though we’d used each other, he was using me for a different reason. To hurt her. I was just collateral.

“I saw the two of you on our security camera,” she said, leaning back with a smirk, having grabbed her coffee. “Looking very cosy.”

But when we’d left their house, I had purposely kept away from him, two steps ahead.

“You can keep the fridge,” she said and lifted two earrings from the table that I hadn’t noticed. “I’ll keep these for when I tell Issy about her best friend and her brother.”

“Please,” I said, reaching to cup her hand with mine, clasping her fingers around the jewellery. “Please don’t.”

“How long, Leonie?” she asked through gritted teeth. “How long have you been fucking him? I can put a date on it.”

“A date?”

“Pretty much as soon as you and Jared broke up,” she said and her eyes brimmed with angry tears as she placed her mug back down. “As much as you’re not a cheat, he is. You’re just a shit friend.”

“He’s not a cheat,” I argued, pushing her hand away. “You are. You just want a reason to excuse your shitty actions. And some jewellery isn’t going to prove anything.”

“But this will,” she said and got out her phone from her bag.

I looked around at the busy cafe. It was the end of the lunch rush and, our flat being in the centre of town, I’d likely run into someone. People from Drakon were often in here.

Roc sat in what would normally be classed as a large arm-chair, but he made it look as if it was for a doll’s house. He lifted his chin in question, ready to come over.

I shook my head.

Mia practically shoved the phone in my face, regaining my attention.

On the screen, on a bloody loop, was Dom grabbing me by the waist and hauling me back into the house.

I took a deep breath. “What do you want? Because, if it’s him, he doesn’t want you.”

“And what, he wants you?” she laughed. “I bet he’s already bored of you by now.”

This bitch wanted to play.

Now it was my turn to lean back in the chair with a smile. “I don’t know what Issy and Dom told you about my family, but do you know the Castillo name? Do you know the Belov name?”

She became very still, looking up at me through her blonde waves.

“Our families are linked to prestigious companies across the world now,” I told her, enjoying her anxious toe-tapping. “But do you know where that money came from originally? We own ports across four continents. We don’t just run little security companies and bakeries, we definitely don’t just run social media accounts,” I jibed at her job. “Oh no, Mia, we ship firearms, drugs. Sometimes we ship people we don’t particularly like to the bottom of the ocean, sweetie.”

She locked her phone and placed it on her lap.

“Are you a strong swimmer, Mia?”

Her eye twitched.

“Do you want to be one of those people I don’t particularly like?”

She shook her head an inch.

“Name your price, then fuck off.”

“Ghost,” she blurted. “I want Ghost. I’ll—I’ll tell Issy if I don’t have him by the end of the month.”

The one thing Dom loved the most. When his cat had been diagnosed with epilepsy, Issy said he was close to tears.

I’d only seen him cry the night my dad died.

“No deal,” I said, then stood and snatched my earrings from the table. “Tell whoever you want, but I warn you that if you do, you will want to invest in a life jacket.”