The Longer The Fall, Aviva Gat [top 10 books to read txt] 📗

so he brushed any untoward thoughts aside and dropped the jacket off at a goodwill. At least he thought he had brushed his doubts aside. He did however keep the Smith and Sons Landscaping card in his desk. Something nagged at him when he least expected it. When he came home late and Madeline had to rush out for an emergency meeting or when her campaign events dragged on longer than expected.

Maybe he was paranoid, he told himself, Madeline was a good wife and a good mother. She was a good partner and all that should be enough for him. She hadn’t traveled back to New York for a while after that. She had won her senate race and quit her consulting job. The only place she ever flew to was Washington DC and back. But then a few years later she was going back to New York for a speaking engagement. Brandon remembered his old doubts from her previous trip and felt he had the tools to do something. It didn’t matter that his tools were designed more for destruction than building, he felt he had to use them. He used his years of programming and cyber security experience to spy on Madeline when she was away. It wasn’t difficult to hack into the Langham’s closed circuit security system, which had cameras showing the main entrance, the lobby, the elevator bay on every floor and a loading station out back. He couldn’t access film from Madeline’s previous trip to New York, but he could access real time footage during all of Madeline’s future trips. He told himself he was doing it to prove his paranoia was unfounded, it was just a way for him to exercise his programming abilities which he didn’t get to use much as CyTech’s CEO once the company became big.

Whenever he knew Madeline would be coming and going from the hotel, he would watch her. Usually she was alone, but sometimes she was with Jane. Then, one time he saw Madeline arrive at the Langham wearing her beautiful red suit that made her look fearsome and sexy. He watched her approach and greet the doorman and then another figure caught his eye. The figure was hard to miss, dark skin, broad shoulders; Brandon had a feeling he had seen that man before. He still had the Smith and Sons Landscaping card in his desk and dug through his drawer, pushing away pens, paperclips and other slips of paper until he found it. He navigated to the company’s website and saw that the company was now owned by Hunter Williams, who was pictured on the homepage wearing a short sleeved blue plaid shirt. Was it the same shirt Brandon saw on the man in front of the Langham? Was he being really paranoid now? He snapped an image from the Langham’s security footage of Madeline and the man walking into the Langham and thought about what he should do.

He continued watching the security footage. He saw his wife and Hunter sitting at the hotel bar. Later he watched his wife go to the elevator bay alone and Hunter leave the hotel. There was no interaction between the two, but something inside him still itched. Was this all a big coincidence?

Brandon anonymously sent the image to the email on Smith and Sons Landscaping’s website with the subject: I’m on to you. It was probably the most aggressive thing that Brandon had ever done. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen next, so he waited. Using his hacking abilities, he knew his email was opened and the attachment downloaded several times, but he never received a response. Maybe Hunter thought it was spam, maybe the image meant nothing to him. Brandon didn’t know and he didn’t follow up. He didn’t think he would ever see the image again until it showed up on his kitchen table with the note requesting $1 million otherwise news of Madeline’s infidelity would be released.

When he saw it, Brandon acted surprised—he was surprised, here his own image, which he thought was maybe nothing, was being used as proof that his wife cheated. He knew the image had to have come from Hunter—no one else but he had it—but Brandon decided to keep his mouth shut. He wanted to see what Madeline would do. Would she confess her infidelity? Or did she think that Brandon was just another dumb person she could play around with? He’d show her. He’d push her to confess or watch her being punished publicly as her career was ruined.

Brandon was ready the next time Madeline went to New York. He watched her at the Langham. Saw her and Hunter go up the elevator together and exit on Madeline’s floor. He snapped a picture of them embracing in front of Madeline’s door. This was what made him really angry. So angry that he wanted to watch Madeline squirm, so he had the picture sent to the house and pretended it was part of the blackmail.

He wasn’t sure what to do next as Madeline had still kept her cool. He started to feel defeated by her, like maybe he was as dumb as she treated him to be. He felt betrayed, lonely, like a failure. Why couldn’t he break her? After all these years, why didn’t he know her well enough to get under her skin? And then Madeline asked him to have dinner with Hunter and Rhonda.

Chapter 43

“So where do we go from here?” Hunter asked Brandon as the two sat alone waiting for their wives in the bathroom.

“After everything, why hasn’t Madeline just told me the truth?” Brandon asked this rhetorically, not expecting that his wife’s ex-boyfriend from years ago might have an answer.

“You aren’t playing on her level,” Hunter said. “She feels safe with you, you aren’t going to challenge her.”

“I challenge her,” Brandon defended himself. “Of course I challenge her, all