AS LEANDRO RACED home, weaving through traffic, his suspicion only grew. It grew so fast that by the time he pulled into his driveway, he’d have bet a million dollars that he’d find a copy of that video on Thiago’s phone. Thiago was the only one who’d been against his relationship with Ashlynn from the very beginning. Leandro never would’ve thought his friend would stoop to something so underhanded, but it made too much sense for him to ignore his gut feeling. If someone else from the WFC had been at the restaurant, Leandro would’ve seen them.
Thiago had motive and opportunity, but there was more. Ashlynn had mentioned that someone had sent Darcy a photo of them dancing in Miami. Thiago had been in that club in Miami with them. All he would’ve had to do was pull out his phone and snap a picture. At the time Leandro had been too focused on Ashlynn to care who’d sent the damned thing. But this was too far. This was fucking with their lives. Ashlynn had lost her job. Then she’d turned around and fucked up their relationship, and Leandro wasn’t going to rest until he knew who was responsible.
He was so angry that when he walked into the house he had tunnel vision. He took the stairs two at a time, his gaze on Thiago’s closed bedroom door. It was barely noon, so Thiago would still be in bed nursing a hangover. As usual.
Leandro pushed open the door so hard that it swung back and bounced off the wall. Thiago wasn’t in his bed, but it didn’t matter because Leandro saw his phone on the bedside table. He picked it up, dialed the pass code, and opened the video app. The very first video was Ashlynn and Leandro standing on Le Cirque’s balcony. He pressed play and watched as he told her that she made him a better person, that he loved her. Rage mixed with sadness as he watched, causing pressure to squeeze his chest, making him want to roar and let it all out.
That moment had been for them and them alone. He clenched his teeth near the end, where he said dirty things to her and squeezed her ass. No one except Ashlynn was supposed to hear those words. Not Thiago. Not Craig Darcy. A sick feeling churned in his stomach as he realized the video could be all over the Internet by now. Strangers could be listening to him say those words to her, watching him touch her. He deleted the video and scrolled through Thiago’s photos until he found the one from the club in Miami. He wasn’t even surprised it was there, and then he deleted it too.
“Leo?” Thiago stood framed in the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand, his gaze jumping from Leandro to the phone in his hand. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Leandro’s teeth were clenched so tightly that his jaw ached. “You took a video of Ashlynn and me and sent it to Craig Darcy.”
Thiago’s eyes went wide for a second, but then he grinned and shrugged, walking into the room and sitting on the edge of the bed as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I did what I had to do. You didn’t leave me much choice.” He set his coffee mug down on the bedside table and leaned back against a pillow.
“What the hell does that mean?” Leandro asked, struggling not to yell.
“It means you were letting that girl lead you around by your dick. You weren’t yourself with her around. She was bad for you, and you couldn’t see it.”
“Goddammit, Thiago!” Leandro broke, throwing the phone across the room so hard it hit the wall with a loud cracking sound. Thiago sat up, as if just now realizing how angry Leandro was. “She was good for me, but you hated her from the beginning. What did she ever do to you?”
“She took you away from everything you loved.” Thiago stood and started counting off on his fingers. “You stopped racing, you stopped going out, the guys never see you anymore. She turned you into an old man. Even your mom could see it. She hates her.”
“My mom hates her because she doesn’t come from money, not because she’s bad for me.” His mother had never given a damn about what was good for him.
Thiago shook his head like it didn’t matter. “Whatever. In time you’ll see that I’m right and I did you a favor. When you’re balls deep in another lingerie model, you’ll thank me.”
A chill prickled up Leandro’s spine, tightening his skin. It was like he was seeing Thiago for the first time, seeing him as he really was. This wasn’t the man who was like a brother to him. This was a stranger. Or maybe it wasn’t Thiago who had changed. Maybe Leandro had changed so much that he no longer fit into the life he’d left behind.
Had he ever been like Thiago? Shallow and so self-absorbed he couldn’t see how he ruined lives? The thought nearly staggered him, sobering him from his anger. The life Thiago described sounded awful, meaningless, and petty. Leandro didn’t want it. He wanted Ashlynn. He wanted late nights on the couch eating popcorn and watching old movies. He wanted to take her to that tiny restaurant in Paris that he loved. He wanted to create a new life for himself. With her.
He didn’t want lingerie models and strippers. The very thought of fucking another woman made his stomach turn. It felt wrong. He didn’t want the racing and the nightclubs either. Not without Ashlynn. They’d only been temporary distractions from the emptiness inside.
“I want you out of here, Thiago.” He put his hands on his hips, resisting the urge to throw Thiago out himself.
Thiago raised his hands in an elaborate shrug. “I get that she’s hot, but don’t let good pussy blind you. There’s plenty more out there.”
The sound that came out of Leandro was something between a growl and a roar. It tore out of his chest as he rushed Thiago. His breath came out in a whoosh as Leandro backed him into the wall, knocking over the table and sending the coffee spilling onto the floor. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
“You’re the asshole,” Thiago shot back, pushing against Leandro’s shoulders and bringing his knee up.
Leandro blocked his knee and punched him in the ribs. “You got her fired. She broke up with me because of you.”
“Good! I’m glad she broke up with you. You don’t fucking need her. She’s a bitch.”
Leandro hit him again. Thiago brought his arm up, and Leandro jumped back, narrowly missing a punch to the throat. “Don’t fucking talk about her. You don’t have the right.”
“I’ll talk about her all I want. She’s a whore who was using you.”
Leandro punched him right in his loud mouth. With the catharsis of that hit came clarity. “Fuck you. I want you out of my house. If anyone is using me, it’s you. Twenty thousand here. Ten thousand there. She hasn’t asked me for one thing. But you, you’re just a fucking leech. You don’t want me to be with Ashlynn because you know she sees right through you.”
Thiago sneered, blood turning his teeth red. “I’m your brother, man. You’re really going to throw me out over some pussy? I’ve been here for you, no matter what. Where’s that bitch now? She’s not here. You have a fight in less than a week, and look what she did to you.”
Leandro punched him again. His wrestling coach, who must’ve been downstairs waiting for him, came rushing in and jumped between them, pushing Leandro off before he could get in another hit. “You betrayed me, Thiago. You’re not my brother. I don’t know when it happened, but you changed.”
“You changed,” he shot back.
Leandro couldn’t even deny it, because he had changed. He now saw Thiago for who he really was. Only he suspected it went far deeper than the video to Darcy. Just after Christmas, Thiago, who was always low on cash, had come home driving a brand-new Rolls-Royce Wraith. He’d said it was a Christmas present, and Leandro had assumed Thiago’s family had bought it for him. Now he suspected he knew where it had really come from.
Leandro allowed the coach to hold him back as he pointed to where the broken cell phone lay on the floor. “If I look at that phone, will I find my sex tape? You took it and sold it?”
Thiago didn’t even try to deny it. He shrugged. “Hey, I did you a favor, man. You were on TMZ and Entertainment Tonight Us Weekly put you on the cover. People know about you now because of me.” He hit his chest, looking proud of himself. “You should be fucking thanking me. You tell me I’m a leech, but you’re an ungrateful prick.”
“You ruined their lives. Those women caught so much shit for that.”
Thiago laughed. “Emilia says she’s doing okay. She has a new career in adult entertainment now. Pays a lot better than modeling bikinis.”
Leandro frowned. “You talk to Emilia?” She was the model he’d been casually dating. It had been her hotel room that they’d gone back to, and she’d invited the other women to come there. “Wait . . . did you plan that with her? You planned to record us and sell the video?”
Thiago’s grin confirmed it. “You always were a little slow. Don’t worry, she got her cut and I got mine. Even you came out ahead. Win-win.”
Leandro lunged for him again, but his coach held him back. “Get the fuck out of my house. I don’t want to see you again. You have five minutes.” Leandro left the room, needing to put as much space between him and Thiago as he could before he did something he’d regret.
Stepping outside onto the back patio, he breathed in the dry desert air. Ashlynn was right. He’d been surrounded by wolves his whole life and hadn’t been able to see it. Somehow he’d let the only person who really cared about him slip through his fingers. His hand itched to take the phone from his pocket and call her, to tell her that he’d gotten rid of Thiago so that she would know that someone had paid for her misery.
But he didn’t. She’d asked for space, and in all of this he’d realized that he’d never been very good at listening to her. He’d given her what he’d thought she needed, instead of what she actually wanted. So he could give her space.
He only hoped that somehow that space brought her back to him.