Ruin Me (Savage Bosses)

Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

M adison

The enameled glass and wood door from my past loomed like a giant before me. The quiet stillness of the suburban neighborhood did nothing to dispel my dread or the roiling ball of acid and anxiety in my gut. Although this was a safe space for many years of my life, today it reminded me of another time I exposed my vulnerability to a member of the Luxe family that nearly destroyed me.

I breathed deep and raised my hand to ring the doorbell. Before my finger made contact, it opened, revealing Mal’s surprised face. I stepped back.

“Mal? What are you doing here?”

He glanced behind him, then at me. “Just catching up.” Without another glance at me, he raised his hand. “I’ll see you around, Ife. Madison.” He got into his car and drove away as if his presence was normal.

I turned my attention to the person I was here to see.

Ife stood still, hugging herself with eyes almost as red as mine. Had she poured her heart out about me and her dad? I had a hard time believing she would because I’d never heard of her and Mal having anything deeper than an acquaintanceship.

“Why are you here, Mads? Your theft not complete until you snatch my childhood home, too?”

I swallowed the barb, accepting it as my punishment. I deserved her anger and would endure however she needed to lash out. Her response was my penance from the years I’d coveted her father’s love.

“Can we have this discussion inside? Or would you rather give your neighbors a real-life Telenovela episode?” I glanced around the houses surrounding the Luxe home. Although the street was silent, there were many stay-at-home parents living in this subdivision who would relish witnessing and gossiping about their neighbors’ drama.

Ife stood aside and allowed me to enter.

The last time I was here was after Kent punished me for the first time. Despite his reservations, he’d brought me here to the place he’d shared so much with his wife. I’d tested him then, knowing if he kept his life with Oye to himself, only sharing anecdotes of their lives together, he would never be fully mine. And he’d passed. He’d let me inside, and the memories of my times in their household were full of bittersweet moments. I understood his need to keep her memory enshrined in the house and never asked him to put me before his remembrances again.

However, as the past again enfolded me with sounds of Ife’s and my running through the rooms to admonishments of no running in the house, as we grew older and our antics changed to plotting ways to gain the attention of Ife’s crushes, and the dreams we shared of being in each other’s lives as aunties to each other’s kids, it was Ife’s turn to either slam the door on our history or allow our story to continue.

Please don’t let our relationship end here.

“Please try to understand. Ife, you’re my best friend.”

“Am I?”

“Ife… Why would you question what you mean to me?”

“Then tell me how long you’ve felt this way about my dad? You’ve only been back a few weeks. There’s no way you fell for him in such a short time. So? How long?”

I avoided her gaze, unable to admit I’d been in love with Kent for half my life.

“As I thought,” she sneered, her judgmental gaze stripped me bare and pushed me against a burning pyre. “I was nothing but a convenient tool for you to get close to my father.” Ife’s eyes glimmered.

“What? You can’t believe our years of friendship boil down to me using you. For so much of my life you’ve been my only family. I love you so much.”

“You love me so much you want to replace my mother?” A tear slipped down her cheek as she stared at me with heartbreak in her eyes.

“What? No! I never saw myself as?—”

“No? So, tell me how this works Mads? What do I call you?”

“Mads. Madison. What you’ve always called me. That won’t change.”

“Maybe not… But you can’t expect things to be the same between us. I saw you fucking my dad.”

“I know, and I never wanted you to see us like that. I-I didn’t know how to tell you, and that’s my fault, but you have to believe me when I say you are important to me.”

Ife stared at me in stony silence, the muscle in her jaw ticked the same way Kent’s did. She broke off eye contact to gaze at the ceiling and she took a deep breath. “Do you have a rule with my dad never to discuss me?”

“Well, no…”

“And you expect me to trust you?”

“I don’t understand why you’d think you can’t.”

“You can’t be this na?ve Mads.” At my vacant look, she scoffed. “So when Dad and I have a fight, do I become pillow talk? What does the conversation look like? Are all the secrets we’ve shared over the years now currency for you to prove to my dad he can trust you? Do you take my side when I’m with you and his when you’re with him? Do I have to live each day wondering when you’ll spill the things I’ve told you in the past, when I was at my worst or most vulnerable?”

“Ife, I would never betray something you’ve told me in confidence. I never have and never will.” I reached my hand out to her but she slapped it down.

“How do I know that?” She shook her head, her disillusionment and hurt sliced through me. “I don’t know anything anymore.” She turned her back and walked deeper into the house, not stopping until she reached the kitchen. “If you’ve said what you had to say, you can leave now.” She pulled open the fridge and took a bottle of cola before slamming the door and leaning against the stainless steel surface.

I stood before her, bloodied from her accusations and hurt feelings, wanting to discard my pain to help her through hers. “I haven’t, actually, but you’re not ready to hear me out so I’ll leave. Before I do, there was a topic I wanted to ask you about.”

Ife slammed her bottle onto the island countertop in front of her, and froth spilled over the mouth onto her hand. She snagged a towel to wipe the moisture dry.

“Not related to my relationship with your father. I promise.” Her silent glare compelled me to continue. “I came here because you asked me to help rehab your father’s image. Although Carol exposed herself as the murderer, there are shareholders of your dad’s company trying to unseat him. I think someone will reach out to you. We need to know if they’re the mastermind or who they’re working with. Will you join me to expose them?”

Ife grabbed her drink and pushed past me, a calculating look overcoming her features. I’d seen that look too many times to let it go. When her brows furrowed in this way while she chewed her lip, nothing good came of it. Too many times, I wasn’t able to talk her down from a scheme destined to get her in hot water. And too many times I sat beside her when shit flew everywhere, hitting us in the face with consequences and regrets.

This time felt different. This time she shut me out.

I followed, earnest in my desire to protect Kent. “Ife, you know the sacrifices he made for the company. It would kill him if the people plotting his demise succeeded. I know it would mean the world to him if you overlooked our recent strife for his sake.”

We entered the formal living room Oye used only for special occasions. White Queen Ann furnishings sat on a Persian rug while delicate porcelain figurines stared in their frozen pose. The room was the least welcoming in the house. Ife sat on the sofa, stretched an arm across the seat back, and sipped from her bottle.

“How do you know someone will reach out to me?” Ife asked, crossing her legs and idly dangling her foot up and down.

Her interest, though mildly expressed, gave me all the encouragement I needed.

“There’s someone who knows you and your father aren’t on good terms right now. There’s a chance he’ll use the discord between you to either get your shares or your vote.”

“Oh? How’d the gossip mill become privy to my fight with my father?” Ife tilted her head.

“If you think I spread the rumor, you’re wrong. Hal saw how you left the penthouse.”

“Hal’s worked as the company’s lawyer for years. He knows how to keep a secret, so why would he say anything?”

I swallowed and dipped my head, unable to maintain our stare. “Your father and he had a disagreement about me that landed Hal in the hospital.”

“So you haven’t just come between me and my father. You’re also causing him issues at work.”

“Doesn’t your father deserve love?”

“Not from you.”

“I get it, Ife. You don’t approve.” I held all my pleading inside. The many ways I wanted to beg her to forgive me and let me back inside her circle, however, I wasn’t here for me, I reminded myself. “Now can we get back to ensuring your dad remains the CEO and president of Luxe Locations?”

She narrowed her eyes at me, pain and anger mixed together and adding a sheen to the warm brown eyes that once beheld me with compassion and love. “Hal already approached me.”

“He did? What did he say?” I sat beside her, my knee bent on the sofa facing her.

Ife glared at how close I came to almost touching her, then she shrugged off the mild disgust and rose to sit in a side chair. “He said he had a way to make my father see reason. Then he offered to buy my shares.”

Dread filled me as I asked, “You didn’t sell them to him, did you?”

She sneered at me and rolled her eyes. “I told him I’d think about it.”

“Thank you, Ife. You have no idea how much?—”

“I don’t need your thanks. And I didn’t agree for my father’s sake. I’m still mulling over how siding with him benefits me.”

“But… If you do this your father will never understand. He’ll feel so betrayed?—”

“Maybe then he’ll understand what the sentiment feels like.”

I rose from the couch and kneeled at her feet. “Please, Ife. He could survive many things, but not a betrayal from his daughter.”

She folded her arms and looked away, making it clear my begging and pleading offended her. Ife maintained her position for a full minute before sighing. “Mads, you sit there pretending like you aren’t the one with all the power here.”

“Me? How? I don’t own any shares, nor do I have influence over the other shareholders.”

“But you have sway over two important ones, don’t you? And for you to get those votes aligned, you only have to do one thing.”

Her implication horrified and broke my heart in the same blow. “You’re willing to leverage your shares if I leave your father?” I forced the words past my dry lips.

“Now you get it. If you want to know if there’s someone pulling Hal’s strings, you have to promise to walk away from us. Forever.”