On the Sly : The Grange Complex Book 2
On the Sly: Chapter 18

Ellie

I went to the office the next day, feeling like I had been run over by a truck. My head was hurting and my body was aching. In one night everything had fallen apart. Mack had been playing me, probably since the moment he saw me. He knew all along who Adrian was and what kind of business he was into. I felt sick to my stomach, knowing that I let myself believe there was something special going on between us.

There was a possibility that he was discussing work with Adrian and I was making the wrong assumptions. After all, he seemed decent, so caring and protective. I didn’t want to be fooled by his handsome face and amazing body. He was meeting with very dodgy people in the middle of the night in an abandoned lot, which didn’t look good. We had great sex, fooled around, but that was it. I wasn’t planning to keep up with his nonsense.

After the morning meeting, I took some painkillers and finally switched on my phone. I didn’t want to think about that creepy voicemail, but I had to eventually deal with it. I was scared to get tangled up with another scandal, but Phil wouldn’t have hired me if he had known who I was. He didn’t even look at my paperwork when I came in for my interview. I heard him once saying to Jordan that he only wanted sexy women working at the paper, which made him a complete wanker.

I switched on my desktop and went on Google. Now, I was just about to do something that I promised myself that I would never do: spy on Andrew again. I typed his name into a search engine trying to breathe at the same time. Several new pictures popped up and I couldn’t believe that I waited this long to replace out what he had been up to. His new woman was five foot nine and looked like a model. There were several pictures of him and my father at some parties, posing together, looking very cosy together.

It looked like Andrew had officially become my father’s client. They’d started working together as soon as I left Glasgow. There were some snippets of information about me, but nothing important. One of the gossip sites suggested that I moved abroad. Andrew was divorced, his ex-wife kept the house, and he had to spend a fortune on the child maintenance. I was taking all the information in slowly, while my heart fluttered between my ribs.

None of this was fair. Andrew was happy and he got everything he wanted, whereas I was sad and alone, patching up my shattered heart.

Mack didn’t mean anything anymore. Now I finally began to understand why he wanted me to stay away from Adrian, why he kept following me. Adrian had money and Mack was under pressure. He just lost his job and he and Claire were probably in financial trouble. It was clear that Adrian offered him an opportunity to make quick cash and Mack took it.

I stayed at my desk thinking about all the possibilities, trying to get on with my work. Whoever was blackmailing me, knew my every step and I needed to deal with it fast. I thought about all the people that turned their backs on me, and I knew that eventually they were going to pay. Eventually my father would see for himself that Andrew was using him, but then it would be too late. Nice and polite Ellie was gone, but she still remembered that day when everything imploded. The day when I became a home wrecker.

Andrew was kissing me, his wet mouth moving down my neck. We were in his enormous house, in his bedroom. I felt thrilled that his wife had moved out and I had him all to myself. The lonely days were over. I moaned when he bit the sensitive skin on my arm gently, then kissed me, moving his tongue inside my mouth.

“Ellie … do you know how much it turns me on having you here, in my bed?” he pulled away and asked. Those dark eyes were hypnotic and I was lost in him as he looked down at me. He started tracing his hand down my side, smiling wickedly and slipping his fingers under the hem of my knickers. I sucked in a breath; tingles ravaged my body.

I groaned with approval when his thumb massaged my sex. I was in my bra, and he was still fully dressed. I picked out my best underwear, especially for him. Today he promised that we would celebrate that he was finally free. I was beaming with love, and I couldn’t wait to tell all my friends about him. Andrew stopped driving me insane with his touch, jumped off the bed and got rid of his clothes. I had never seen anyone undress so fast.

Andrew Hamilton was a handsome man, tall and broad in his shoulders. There’d been a spark between us instantly, but at first I didn’t allow myself to even think about him that way. He was my father’s potential client. A year later, I was in his house, his bedroom.

“What the fuck is going on here, Andrew?”

The voice startled both of us. I turned around, my heart nearly stopping. Andrew covered his crotch. The blood drained from his face. Theresa, his ex-wife stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips, looking from me to Andrew.

“Darling, she’s no one to me,” he started saying, and I looked at him in disbelief, wondering why he insisted on lying now, when she was standing right here looking at us. She didn’t care for him anymore, so he might as well tell her the truth.

I brought the sheet over my chest, fighting for the last bit of modesty. I had never met up with her face-to-face before, but looking at her that day, I couldn’t deny that she was stunning,

“Andrew, this is your chance. Tell her what you have been telling me, you know, about the court case, about the divorce papers, about why she won’t let you see the kids,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her with anger. From all his previous stories I understood that she had treated him like shit and apparently married him for his money.

“Shut up, Ellie, and stop talking rubbish,” he snapped at me. My jaw dropped and for a second I thought that he was joking. “What are you doing here, Theresa? You were supposed to be in Berlin. What? Are you spying on me now?”

“This is unbelievable. I thought you’d changed. I thought that I could give you another chance, but this … this is just so beyond.”

“Oh, shut up. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s just sex. She doesn’t mean anything to me. Ellie is Jonathan Grant daughter, Theresa. You know that this whole thing was about business,” he said walking up to her all of a sudden.

My jaw dropped. I couldn’t bloody believe it. Surely, he was playing a role; he didn’t mean any of this. For months he had been saying that he would be getting divorced and today was the start of it.

“Andrew, what are you talking about? Just tell her everything you told me,” I said, getting upset, my voice vibrating.

“See? She’s even doing it now, trying to get my attention.” He laughed, pointing at me. “You and the kids, you guys mean everything to me. I’ll change; I promise you.”

Theresa darted her eyes at me, shaking her head. She didn’t even look that surprised.

“I’m sorry to break this to you, sweetie, but Andrew has been doing this for years, promising other women that he’ll leave me for them. He doesn’t love you and he never will. It’s sad, but that’s the truth,” she said. Surely, she was just spiteful that she caught us. Andrew wouldn’t do that to me, not after all the promises.

“I love my wife, Ellie,” he said then and those words were hurtful. I told myself that he was still playing a game, that he was pretending.

“See? Don’t hope for anything,” Theresa said to me. “He has always been like that. You were probably his fourth woman on the side this year. Our marriage has been dead since the moment I found out that he fucked my best friend a couple of years ago, but I kept it between us, for the sake of our kids. Now I guess I’m finally over it, ready to divorce him.”

Mack

“Are you all right?” Claire asked me for the fourth time while we were going through the files on Johnny Hodges. I couldn’t answer her, because deep down I knew that I wasn’t all right. The past twenty-four hours were difficult. Yeah, I was making progress in the case, but my whole life felt like it was falling apart all over again.

“I can’t believe that we missed him all this time,” I shouted, getting up, feeling exhausted all of a sudden. Claire sighed and put her palm on my shoulder.

“Don’t stress about it. We have him; we just need concrete proof. You need to dig deeper, establish links and the connection between Lurkin and Hodges,” she said.

My heart hadn’t stopped banging since I came back from that meeting with Lurkin. After days of discussing it, he finally introduced me to people that he trusted. I learnt that he was hiding drugs in meat products and using standard delivery vans to distribute it. Lurkin used his food business as a cover up.

Lurkin was careful, though. He didn’t share all his secrets with me, but I managed to figure out enough from his instructions and by speaking to others. Whatever I did during my probation had worked out pretty good, because now he trusted me.

He was playing a game with me trying to impress me, hoping that maybe I would become more obedient if he could intimidate me. I wasn’t expecting to see three Irish brothers in this part of Scotland. I knew them well, from the police files, but I was stunned to learn that they were involved in business with him.

During that short and very abrupt meeting, Lurkin laid out the rules. The three Irish brothers were there to demonstrate to me what would happen if I broke any of these rules. Inside the package that they handed to me was someone’s hand.

“Here on these streets, I’m no longer your neighbour, Mack. I’m offering you something spectacular, because I see potential in you. This package was necessary,” Lurkin said after I managed to recover from shock, shaking away the nausea.

“Mack, you have to stop being like that. You’re scaring me. We are halfway there.” Claire’s voice pulled me back into the real world. I couldn’t stop thinking about that package and the Irish brothers. Lurkin was more dangerous than Claire and I suspected.

I shoved aside the picture of Andrew Hamilton, dragging my hand through my hair and trying to breathe steadily. On top of that, his being Ellie’s ex-lover was bothering me. We hadn’t spoken since that night in the hotel. I should have recognised her from the papers. Fuck, I had been so foolish, thinking that it was all right to fuck a stranger.

“Sorry, I lost focus for a second,” I replied.

“You know … I think that maybe we should speak to Ellie, get her involved. After all, she was close to Hamilton.”

“No way. This is the last thing that I need right now,” I shouted, losing my temper again. Ellie had managed to make me forget about my wounds; she managed to do something that other women could not. There was no way that I was leading Ellie back to that asshole Hamilton. She had been through enough.

“You care for her, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want her in this, right?”

I was on my feet before I knew it, pacing around the room to keep myself in line, but the darkness was creeping in.

“She’s no one to me, Claire. I lost the only woman that I ever loved and that’s the bottom line,” I said, raising my voice.

Claire exhaled, shoving paperwork together. For years no one had ever gotten close to Hodges. The ex-wife, the kids, they were his protection, but it looked like he couldn’t keep them either. He was in danger of fucking up his cover.

Claire chewed on her lips, looking at me with resentment. She wasn’t happy with me and the way I worked, but she had no idea that I was taking this very personally. I wanted to get my hands on Hodges before anyone could touch him. She had no idea what I was planning.

“All right. We will do this your way, but I’m not covering for you, Tobias. If you fuck up, don’t come crawling back,” she said, probably because she was sensing that I wanted to do things my way, and Claire liked procedures and always followed the rules.

Ellie was the key to everything, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. This was my war, my way of doing things. I needed to keep her out of it, for now.

“Fine, fine, don’t nag. Everything is ready for tonight. The boys upstairs will get the updates once I get on the road,” I assured her. She wasn’t too happy with me. We both went through a lot and tonight we’d be right in the middle of a large drop. Lurkin was getting greedy and Claire knew that all it took was one mistake and we would be found out.

“Charlotte will get justice. Don’t worry about that. Just stay focused,” she added quietly before she left the room. A tingle of shame crawled up my back when I realised that she was right. My wife’s memory was with me forever and everyone that was involved in her death was already dead. It was just a matter of time.