Page 123 of Reckless Love

At the mansion I once shared with Raul, I let myself in. Despite the minimal staff who’ve been keeping the place from cobwebs and dust, the air is stale. I stare up at the high ceiling of the front foyer, and then I look around, taking in the neutral brown-and-cream décor. It’s like I’m seeing the place for the first time. Why did we choose this giant house? Nothing about this place is what I’d want. Whose idea was it? Did I ever love it?

The emotional haze I’ve been living in since I found out I was pregnant has well and truly cleared. There’s no fog of indifference.

Taking the stairs up to the second level, I enter Raul’s office—the one I never go in. While I’ve always suspected that this is where he keeps the really incriminating stuff he does, I’ve never tested my theory. The office downstairs is for daylight, but this one? It’s the one he goes to in the dead of night.

I don’t even try to hide my prying. Without a care, I open drawers, read through papers, unlock anything I can find a key for. But I don’t completely understand what I’m seeing and reading. I’ve been so detached from his business decisions and deals that I can’t pinpoint what’s legitimate and what’s shady.

“Ava?” Stephen calls from downstairs.

I go to the door of the office. “Up here!” I yell down, and then I go back to looking for something, anything that can save me.

“What are you doing?” he asks from the doorway.

“How’d you find me?”

“I track your phone. I have since you were my client.”

I stop with contract papers in my hands, and I stare at him across the space of the oversized office. “Do you track all your clients after they stop paying you?”

“Only when I’m in love with them.” He eyes the tornado of documents around the room. “Not exactly subtle.”

“How bad was the meeting?” I ask, almost afraid to voice the question.

He takes a USB key out of his pocket, and he waggles it at me. “Not sure what I’ve got, but she gave me the Santos folder. She said it would be enough to take him down.”

“God,” I breathe out. “What must you have on my mother to get the whole folder?” My mother has always doled out information in half measures, saving whatever she wants for some rainy-day surprise.

“For everything I’ve got on her, she’s got an equal amount on me.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Look, Ava, I want to be honest.” He meets my gaze across the room. “If we go after your mother like you want…” He swallows. “I can’t promise I won’t suffer consequences. Maybe big ones. We got what we need. Maybe we stop here.”

“We can’t know until we see what she’s given us.” I circle Raul’s desk and take Stephen’s hand to lead him to my home office down the hall. “You’re the one who says we have some power here.”

“Yeah, well…” He releases a deep sigh. “I may have just used all mine to get this.”

In my office, I fire up the desktop I haven’t touched since the accident, and as soon as it’s ready, I plug in the USB. Stephen drags a chair over to sit beside me, and as I click through the files, we talk through what we’re seeing. My mother didn’t just collect evidence on him before we got married. She’s been accumulating information on him this whole time—bribes and intimidation he committed against the union organization, workers who claimed mistreatment that he paid off. There’s also evidence proving negligence for several workers who died over a number of years in the warehouse. It looks like Raul somehow turned those instances into “accidental” deaths, even though my mother’s evidence seems to prove otherwise. None of the workers who died ever made the papers or were spoken about in our circles.

It’s almost like my mother was building a case against Raul using all the evidence she could accumulate.

“Did she do this a lot?” I ask.

“All the time,” he admits. “I broke laws to get her documents, photos, whatever else she needed as leverage. She’s got files like this on a lot of people. Information is currency.”

My mother has copies of NDAs that families signed to receive payoffs from Raul, and for those he couldn’t pay off, there’s a clear trail of intimidation in photos, testimonials, and even a few video clips of what people experienced at the hands of Raul or the executives at the company.

Not a single person got anything resembling justice in all the years Raul has been operating The Nile.

If any of this was passed between workers, I can see why the unionization happened, why the strike happened. They didn’t just need better pay; they needed protection.

“This is a lot,” I whisper. “How did I not know any of this?”

“You didn’t want to know,” Stephen says.

My stomach swoops at how true that statement is. Raul and I lived in the same house, but our lives never intermingled. When they did, it was at fundraisers or work events, and the people attending those were often executives and investors. To me, and I’m embarrassed to think it let alone admit it, his workers didn’t exist. Not in a real way.

And if it wasn’t for my siblings, I’m not sure I’d have turned out any better as the head of my company. My mother’s influence runs deep in me, and I’m ashamed of that truth. I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by good people. Or I was until I got involved with Raul.

“It’s so clear my mother knew exactly who I was marrying. Years of terrible behavior that he either intimidated people to minimize, or he paid people off to stop them from pressing charges. People died. She knew the house she was putting me in. The house I’d be raising my son in.” I sit back in my chair, and I cover my face with my hands for a few deep breaths. Stephen runs his large palm along my thigh in a soothing motion. When I ease my hands down my face, I purse my lips. “I think I’m a bad person.”

“You’re not a bad person,” Stephen says. “You’re single-minded sometimes.”