Chapter 36
Jillian
It’s safe to say I never liked Layana. There is something about a woman, when you look into her eyes and see calculation that I don’t like. I prefer the open books, the countless women who pass through this office full of smiles and sunshine and optimism. I don’t look in their eyes and wonder what they are thinking. I don’t listen to them speak and search for hidden meanings. I don’t wonder, when they leave, where they are going. But that, from day one, is how it has been with Layana. I had hoped she would pass on. Hoped that another woman would catch Brant’s fancy, that he wouldn’t go for her long legs and mess of curls. But, alas, he did. She stayed. And now, here we are. Two women battling over this man. I only want to protect him. She loves him. We have differing views on what loving him entails. I don’t want to think about what she does to keep him. Whatever it is, it’s working. The man won’t take his eyes off her.
I’m sure there are things I could do. To poison their relationship. Expose her lies, put a quiver of death into the perfect existence that he thinks they live. The problem is that she knows the secret. The one that I hug, with the tight grip of a mother bear, to my chest. The one that I have spent years protecting, blood, sweat and tears seeping through the iron bars I have built to keep it in. Destroying their relationship? His trust in her? The secret would burn to the ground along with their love. Be exposed in the open air for whoever wanted to grab its papery truth and run wild. In that secret lies nothing but destruction. And so I sit here. Continue paying the men who keep tabs on Brant at all times. Smile when she enters. Help to hide her lies. Pretend to love her with the same vigor that I love him. And hope that one day she fades out of his life.
I can take care of him. She can only—will only—break him in two.
Excerpt, The Journal of Jillian Sharp.
