All Chapters of The Turned Table: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Foster's address was folded in my coat pocket, the receipt paper gone soft at the creases from how many times I'd unfolded it in the last hour just to make sure the ink hadn't changed. Come alone. His words kept repeating in my head while I got dressed. My phone buzzed. A text from Rufus. Where are you Bee? Haven't heard from you since this afternoon. I read it twice, thumb hovering over the reply, half a sentence already forming. Then I put the phone face down on the bed without answering, not because I doubted him, but because Foster had asked for exactly one thing and I wasn't going to risk it for any reason. I left anyway. While Driving on the second highway exit, enjoying the cool breeze of the evening. The sounds of car honks filling the air. A pair of headlights appeared in my rearview mirror, bright enough to catch my attention. Matching my speed and every lane change. My hands went tight on the wheel, knuckles pale under the dashboard light. Then a different car turn

Foster's face went blank while he listened, and for a moment I wondered if he had stopped breathing. He held the phone so tightly against his ear that his knuckles had gone white, his gaze fixed beyond my shoulder as though he could see through the walls and whatever waited on the other end of the call. I couldn't hear the voice speaking to him, but I could see the effect it was having. The color drained slowly from his face, leaving his skin gray beneath the weak yellow light of the room, and by the time the call ended, his hands were trembling. He lowered the phone without saying anything. For several seconds, he simply stared at the dark screen.Then he tried to set it down but his fingers failed him.The phone slipped from his hand and fell with a thud to the floor, the sound startled me back to my senses."Who was that?". I blinked, trying to read his face.Foster didn't answer.I watched him reach for the phone again, but instead of picking it up, he left it where it had fallen

"The accounts are still active," Dana said. "Someone's been managing it. Recently. Within the last month."I thought I'd misheard her.I stared at her across the desk and went over for a proper view. “What do you mean?”."That one." She turned the laptop toward me, and we bent over it together, tracing the recent transactions line by line. One payment routed through the same intermediary company that had funded Foster's original file."How is money connected to a five-year-old conspiracy still moving right now?". I whispered.Dana didn't have an answer. Instead she pulled up the dates side by side, and I felt the temperature of the room seem to drop a few degrees looking at them."Bee. The transfers to Foster started before Priscilla's name shows up anywhere in this" she said.I'd spent five years telling myself a simple story. Priscilla wanted Stephen and wanted me gone. Priscilla built the lie that ended my marriage, but looking at those dates now, that story had a hole in it I hadn'

I didn't pull my hand away.His large, warm palm covered mine completely against the floor. I could feel the rough texture of his skin and the heavy, fast beat of his pulse. Or maybe it was my own pulse. My heart was hitting my ribs so hard I couldn't tell the difference anymore.I looked up. The calm, perfectly controlled Rufus Cross was gone.His grey eyes were dark. Hungry. He was looking at my mouth like a starving man. The air between us suddenly felt too thick to breathe. I could smell the clean, sharp scent of his cologne mixed with the pure heat of his body clouding my senses.Every rule I had made for myself over the last five years told me to move back and keep a long distance . I was a mother. I had survived a broken heart. I wasn't supposed to do this.But my body wouldn't listen. I didn't want to move away. I just wanted him.He leaned in. He was so close that his breath brushed against my cheek. it made me shiver slightly."Tell me to stop," he whispered. His voice was

Third Person POVRufus didn't back away. He held Stephen's glare with steady, unyielding focus, his broad shoulders squared against the subtle intimidation Stephen was trying to project. The silence between them stretched, thick, heavy, and suffocating, carrying the weight of a twelve-year friendship that was rapidly fracturing into irreparable, sharp pieces."My intentions are to make sure she finds out the truth about what happened to her marriage," Rufus said slowly, every single word measured, deliberate, and cold. "And to make sure nobody—not Priscilla, not the executive board, and certainly not you—ever hurts her, corners her, or threatens her stability again.""And after that?" Stephen pressed, taking another step into Rufus’s space, his voice vibrating with a sharp, bitter jealousy that he had no legal, moral, or emotional right to feel, yet could not suppress. "When the files are sorted out and the truth is laid bare in front of everyone? What then, Rufus? You think you're ju