He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 199

Chapter 199

+15 Bonus

Chapter 199

Mason’s POV

I arrived at the café twenty minutes early….

She arrived, scanning the area. I recognised her from the photograph I had found…. the industry event three years ago, the one that had appeared in a trade publication and had been the only publicly available image attached to a name that had come up in the research I had been doing across the past several days.

She was older than the photograph….

She saw me.

Stopped.

Read my face for several seconds before she moved again…. She walked to the table.

Remained standing

“I almost didn’t come,” she said.

“I knew you would,” I said.

She looked at me.

“What do you want?”

I had prepared the envelope the day before

The amount wrapped in the envelope was enough to communicate seriousness without being so large that it communicated desperation.

I slid it across the table.

She looked at it….

Then at me

Then back at it.

The evaluation running….. not greed, something more considered.

“Sit down,” I said.

She sat

“I know what happened between you and Maya some years ago” I said.

Something moved in her expression.

“I know what Maya did to you, and that’s the reason both of you are no longer in good terms…” I held her gaze. And I know you haven’t forgiven her.”

She looked at me with the flat, honest assessment of someone who was not going to perform equanimity about

something she had not moved paste

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Chapter 199

415 Batus

“Forgiven her?” she said.

A sound escaped her

Not a laugh exactly… “I still hate her…… ” she said.

The words came out plainly. Without drama.

“Perfect,” I said.

She looked at me.

At the huge wrapped envelope, the shape to which it was wrapped gave it away….

Look at me again.

“I can give you a chance and an opportunity to get back what you lost and also for you to get your revenge.” I said slowly without cutting eye contact. “Your hatred for her is currency which I’m willing to pay you, so that you can bring down Maya, and plant a seed of doubt that will crumble her relationship with Alex.”

“You want to destroy their relationship” she said….

Not a question.

“I want the truth to come between them,” I said.

She held my gaze.

“What truth?”

I leaned forward slightly.

.

“I want you to unravel the old wound that Maya inflicted on you…. show it to the world and to Alex, let them see her for what she did to you…. and how she played innocent… truth although bitter has a way of setting one free…. ” I said.

She looked at the table.

She was quiet.

Looking at the envelope.

Looking at her hands.

Looking at the table.

“You want to use my history with her to make him doubt her,” she said.

“I want to give him information he doesn’t have,” I said. “What he does with it is his decision.”

“That’s a very careful way of saying yes,” she said.

I held her gaze.

She looked at the huge envelope for a long time.

She was deciding.

I let her decide.

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415 Bus

Chapter 199

The café continued around us. The server moved between tables. The retired man at the window read something on his phone. The self-employed woman with the laptop typed with the focused energy of someone meeting a deadline.

Ordinary life.

Continuing.

Her hand moved.

Reached across the table

Found the envelope.

Picked it up.

“I’ll do my thing and tell my story,” she said. “But I’m telling what’s true. I’m not adding anything.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” I said

She looked at me….

She stood.

Tucked the envelope into her bag.

Looked at me one more time….

“If this comes back to me,” she said, “I’ll tell them everything. Including this café.”

“It won’t come back to you…. more over you were simply telling the truth, and getting the satisfaction of a revenge which you couldn’t get before now” I said

You m

She held my

for a moment.

Then she left

I sat at the table.

Watched her through the window….

The first piece.

In place

Not violence.

Not fabricated photographs.

Not anonymous blog posts

A real person, with real history, carrying real information, who had agreed to place it in the right room at the right moment.

Information that was true

Information that was true and that had been selected because its truth, delivered in a specific context, would produce a specific doubt.

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Chapter 199

+15 Bonus

Real doubt…

The harder kind.

The kind that didn’t collapse when Alex looked into it, because looking into it would confirm rather than deny.

I picked up my coffee. Smiled.

Drank it.

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