Chapter Twenty-Three. The Last Conversation

Ethan's security team tracked Elena's phone in eleven minutes.

She had not even turned it off which means Elena was either not as smart as I thought she was or she wanted to be found.

Elena was at a hotel three kilometer from the house in a ground-floor room with the light on.

I told Grace and my father to go to the hospital. I told the security guard driving me to take me to the hotel first.

He looked unsure. I gave him a look and he stopped looking uncertain.

I knocked on the door.

There was silence, some movement and then the door opened.

Elena looked at me. She did not look surprised.

She stepped back. Let me in.

The room was small with a bag on the bed that was half packed with her phone on the table.

We stood looking at each other for a moment, two women who had known each other since we were fifteen years old who had shared everything and who had sat on each other's beds talking about the future.

I did not feel nostalgic, I felt cold.

"The article, that was you " I said to Elena.

She did not deny it.

"He gave me no choice, " she said.

But I knew that Elena always has a choice she just always chooses wrong.

She looked away. Then she said that he told her if she did not send him what she found he would release the photos from the wedding photos she did not know he had taken.

I said to Elena that she leaked Ethan's secret to save herself while Ethan was walking into a trap that her address sent him to.

Elena said that she did not know about the trap and that he told her the address was real, and giving it to me would help.

I told Elena that he lied to her the way he lied to Daven the way he lies to everyone he uses.

Elena was quiet so I asked her what she found in the house when she was alone with Ethan's documents, which she sent him.

Elena sat down on the edge of the bed. Said that she sent him details of the deal from seven years ago, names, account numbers, and a paper trail that Ethan's team had clearly been trying to keep buried.

I looked at Elena, the woman I had grown up with, this woman who had held my hand through everything and then turned around and used every soft place she knew about me against me.

Why? “I asked. Not for my uncle, not for Daven. For yourself. Why Elena? What did you want so badly that this was worth it?

Elena said that I always had everything, a family that loved me, a future that was waiting for me and people who chose me without me even having to ask and that she just wanted something that was mine. just once. even if she had to take it.

The room was very quiet. I thought about fifteen years of friendship about everything I would have given Elena if she had just asked, about how much damage had been done because she had decided to take it instead.

The photograph he has on you, “I said.  “Whatever leverage he used tonight, give me everything she has on him. I will make sure those photographs disappear and my lawyer will make sure you're protected from what she sent him tonight.”

Elena stared at me. 

“Why would you do that?”  She said,

“Because unlike you, “I do not take what doesn’t belong to me. And because I need what you know more than I need to watch you fall.”

Elena was quiet for a time. 

Then she reached under the mattress and pulled out a small envelope.

She said that everything she has is in there, dates, places, names of the people he works with.

There’s something else Elena said. Something I heard  him say on the phone two days ago was. He was talking about Ethan and he said that when Voss is finished he wants the girl dealt with permanently.

I took the envelope. I realised that the girl he was talking about was me.

This had stopped being about shares and companies and inheritance a time ago my uncle wanted me gone.