CROOKED VOWS:The billionaire's thirst for revenge

Chapter5

Ethan's pov

“Man, we haven't caught up in forever. I thought you were on a business trip abroad or something,” Peter Hills, one of my few close friends and associates, said before finding the stool next to me and letting the ambiance of the bar sink in.

I slowly spun my shot of whisky in my grasp and replied with a short grin.

“I'm actually not sorry about that; my girlfriend's been taking all of my free time.”

The first thing Peter did was burst into laughter, but after I didn't join in following a minute or two, he became serious.

“No way!” He said in disbelief.

I grinned wider.

Then I fished out my phone from my pocket, the screen lighting up upon facial recognition, and across it was the awkward smile of the woman I was currently dating.

Peter studied her face for the longest time, until I could hear his breathing change patterns.

“Is this who I think it is?”

“Yes, Rachel Clair.”

“She's that man's daughter, isn't she?”

I waited a moment to respond, but he got anxious and asked again, “Isn't she?”

I nodded. “Yep, she's cute, right?”

In contrast to my calm demeanor, my friend's face had to become pale.

“What are you planning to do, Ethan? I don't think she even has anything to do with what happened back then.”

My chest instantly hardened at the time his words took me to. It curdled my stomach and brought a roaring headache to my head.

“That's the pitiful world we live in; innocent people are always getting dragged into things that don't concern them. But you can't expect to cut down the tree without harming its branches. Life is just pathetic like that.”

“Now don't get all philosophical on me. What happened to going to therapy or whatever?”

I scoffed, “Yeah, nothing better than spending hours talking to someone that is paid to care. It didn't work yesterday, and I don't think anything is going to change tomorrow, Peter."

“That's because you haven't given it a chance, a real chance yet… Therapy has helped many people; it's not as cold and unfeeling as you make it out to be.”

“I don't need therapy, Pete; I need to get even,” I said, then gulped down my drink at once, letting it burn my throat satisfactorily.

He looked at me like I was out of it, and maybe I was.

Perhaps I had stopped being sane since that day, but I put on a tailored suit and a clean smile, and everyone thought I was all right.

Well, everyone except her.

Before she showed up I already knew who she was; the banquet had been held with an open invitation for her sake. Knowing the quality of men that would be there and her family's desperation to sell her off, I knew she would show up, and she did.

Her pictures didn't do her any justice at all; she wasn't trying too hard, but she caught my eye anyways.

In fact, she wasn't trying at all.

I thought, like all the other women in the banquet, she would come rushing over to me.

But while I could see her making eyes at me from across the banquet hall, she never came towards me.

My plan was failing fast too.

She wasn't exactly the shy type either; she interacted with other people but kept her distance from me.

I thought about the most natural way to approach her, and then it presented itself through that shameless windbag.

Now that I had helped her, I thought she would swoon and be all over me because of the Prince Charming act.

She still wasn't.

She was heavily divided when I asked her to pretend to be my girlfriend for the night but seemed to agree for her own personal reasons.

Then she got drunk, and that would have been enough for me to completely lose interest in someone.

But the kind of interest I had in her was not the type that would be lost so easily.

“I'm going to marry her,” I said, not as a suggestion but as a declaration.

Now my friend was really looking at me like I had lost it.

“Aren't you taking this too far? Marriage? Man, you can't really think of doing this… Try to sit down and ask yourself if you really want this.”

Before I could answer his question, my phone began to ring.

He cringed when he saw how many hearts were behind her name; I laughed before answering the call.

“Hi—”

“Ethan, I need you… There's someone… Oh my God…”

Between everything she said was heavy breathing.

“Ethan, please… My phone is about to die. I'm in a coffee shop, and I don't think they'll enter, but the shop is about to close in about 10 minutes, and—"

The call ended.

“I have to go,” I said.

“But you don't even know where she is. Shouldn't you at least—”

“I know,” I told him almost quietly as I shoved my phone back into my pocket, and his face lost a little bit more color after that.

“You're tracking her too?”

I smirked.

“Well, I can't have my prey off the hook.”

There was no more time to waste; the coffee shop was 15 minutes away, but I got there in seven minutes just as a barista was politely asking how to leave.

She saw me and got up, rushing over with tears in her eyes. She hugged me. My body stiffened reflexively but relaxed in a second.

I let her cry it out for a bit, then told her that we should leave.

She shook her head.

“We can't do that; it's not safe… I think there are more of them than I thought. I'm sorry for calling you here. I didn't know.”

I settled her crying once more, and this time I looked her in her eyes and asked seriously with the aim of getting a concise answer.

“Tell me, who's after you?”