Broken Truth (19 page)

Taking a deep and satisfying breath, Charlie made her way inside.

The sound of her platform heels clicking noisily across the marble floor attracted the attention of several people who stopped to look at her curiously. She could feel her body temperature slowly starting to increase as the intensity of their stares burnt through her.

In her haste to escape from the resident’s scrutiny, Charlie hurried over to the main desk that an older gentleman was manning. Spotting his nametag pinned neatly to the left breast of his shirt, Charlie softly cleared her throat. “Good evening... Martin,” she greeted with a small smile and a brief nod.

“Good evening, Madam. How may I be of assistance to you?” he asked politely.

“I am here to see Mr Callum Ellis,” she explained, trying to maintain her cool.

She really hoped that Martin would just tell her the number and let her pass without having to call upstairs to check with Callum first. Although, if he did begin to question her, Charlie already had quite an impressive story conjured that she was planning to relay.

“Please can I take your name?”

“Miss Charlotte Harris.”

She watched with bated breath as Martin tapped away at the keyboard in front of him. She saw him raise his eyebrows before returning to his previous professional composure.

“Right,” he replied. “Miss Harris, it would appear that you are on Mr Ellis’ list of approved visitors. If you would like to take the lift on my right, this will take you directly to the correct floor.”

Charlie stood frozen for a moment.

She was sure that she had heard Martin say that she was on Callum’s approved list of visitors. She wasn’t sure why that was considering she had never stepped foot inside his building before. She wondered if it was perhaps a spur of the moment thing he had organised in the event she did ever visit.

“Thank you very much for your help,” Charlie nodded.

Pressing the call button for the lift, she nervously smoothed her hands over her dress. The anxiety was starting to kick into full gear now that she was mere minutes away from the big surprise.

The lift doors suddenly opened wide. Charlie stepped inside and pressed the button for the doors to close once again. The floor rumbled underneath her feet as the lift slowly increased through the floors of the building towards the penthouse.

“Deep breaths,” she mumbled to herself.

The lift slowly came to a stop on the top floor. Charlie immediately stepped forward into the marbled hallway, stopping directly in front of the large double doorway of Callum’s home. Raising her hand, she hesitantly tapped against the strong wood and waited for him to answer.

Charlie’s heart practically exploded at the first signs of the door being unlocked. She held her breath as the large wooden door was casually pulled open before her.

“Can I help you?”

Charlie blew out a relieved breath at the sight of the young woman who had answered the door. She should have anticipated one of his housekeepers would answer instead of him. She knew that he had always relied heavily on having members of staff around the apartment to cater to his every need. It was one thing Charlie hadn’t yet managed to convince him to lose in London.

“I’m here to see, Callum?” she enquired as her eyes discreetly looked over the woman before her.

She figured she must have been in her late twenties perhaps early thirties based on appearance. Her long platinum blonde hair hung in damaged waves against her overly fake tanned skin. Her white tank top appeared extremely tight along with the painted on jeans she wore around her hips.

Charlie shifted in her heels, feeling uncomfortable at the sudden atmosphere. She made a mental note to perhaps speak to Callum later about his choice of staff. But first of all, she was going to thoroughly enjoy the orgasms he was going to give her.

“I’m sorry, but who are you?” the young woman replied, eyeing Charlie suspiciously. 

“Charlotte Harris. I’m Callum’s girlfriend,” she snapped. She was getting slightly pissed off with this conversation and just wanted to find where Callum was. She looked behind the woman to see if she could see inside.

“Well... Well... Well...
Charlie Harris
, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

Charlie heard the venom in her tone and instantly backed away from the woman. “Who are you?” she demanded angrily.

A salacious grin spread across the woman’s face.

“I’m Claire,” she replied, extending her hand to Charlie. “I happen to be Callum’s wife.”

Eighteen

Charlie stiffened as a cold surge flooded and enveloped her body. Physically trembling, she squeezed her eyes shut and wished that everything she had just heard was nothing but a nightmare. It was all just a nightmare that she was going to wake up from in a few minutes and laugh about.

Opening her eyes, Charlie felt the air leaving her lungs at the sight of Claire standing smugly in the doorway of the penthouse.

“W-W-Wife?” Charlie asked in disbelief.

“Wife,” Claire confirmed, lifting her left hand to wiggle a very impressive and expensive looking diamond in her face. “We have been married for almost four years,” she stated with a satisfied smile.

Charlie’s stomach plummeted as she brought her fingers up to her lips. Tears stung painfully at the corners of her eyes, but she held them back with as much dignity she could muster from inside her shattered body.

“I’m so sorry to burst your little fantasy,” Claire replied with a simple shrug. “Now if you don’t mind, my husband should be home with our daughter shortly and I would prefer it if you weren’t here to cause a scene in front of her. The last thing I want is for my daughter’s image of her father to be crushed by his delusional and foolish mistress,” she said, eyeing her with a look of complete disgust.

Charlie couldn’t speak. Her heart was being twisted and squeezed like a dishrag knowing the world she had been living in for the past fifteen months had all been one big lie. All of her plans and dreams were now gone - instantly crushed and burnt away like smoke. Everything she had ever wanted had been destroyed unsympathetically by the woman that was stood before her.

Swallowing the large, dry lump that had formed in her throat, Charlie tried to digest and make sense of what she had just been told.

Callum was married.

Callum had a child.

A sudden wave of nausea rushed from Charlie’s stomach to her throat. She heaved and choked back the rising bile. Her boyfriend, the man she loved, the man she thought she loved, had been playing her all this time.

He was living two lives all along.

While he was the doting boyfriend catering to her every whim, he was also playing happy families with a wife and child in London.

The realisation finally sent her over the edge, releasing the tears she had fought hard not to shed. She looked down at her hands and rotated them over and over. She felt nothing but dirty as she tried to comprehend that she had been sleeping with a married man all this time.

She was nothing more than a mistress.

She was Callum’s weekend mistress.

Charlie struggled to see clearly as the tears continued to fall helplessly down her cheeks until they splashed onto the marbled surface at her feet. Still unable to speak, she knew that she needed to get out of the building. She stumbled backwards in her heels and fumbled for the lift call button.

“Don’t worry,” Claire called from the doorway. “I’ll be sure to tell Callum that you stopped by. I’m sure he will be glad to hear that his dirty little secret is finally out in the open. Maybe now I can finally go back to having my husband all to myself. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking in allowing this thing between you two to continue for so long.”

Wiping the tears from under her eyes, Charlie clenched her fists. “If you knew about me all this time then why
did
you carry on with your sad and pathetic married life?” Charlie spat in response.

She was amazed by her own sudden outburst towards Claire.

Running purely on her sky high emotions and adrenaline, Charlie found a small surge of courage that she retaliated back with. “You agreed for your husband to have a mistress. The father
of your child was sleeping with another woman every weekend and you agreed to it. Do you know how fucked up that actually sounds? You can’t try and blame me for something that I didn’t know anything about.” Charlie watched as Claire’s posture stiffened in the doorway. “It just begs the question though doesn’t it?”

“What?” Claire snapped.

“Clearly you aren’t giving him everything he wants,” she shrugged. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t be coming to me to get it would he?”

“Listen to you, you stupid, naive whore. You don’t get it do you? You have been sleeping with a married man who has no plan to play a part in your little fairytale story. He doesn’t want to be your knight in shining armour. He wants nothing more than to fuck you for the weekend and then come back to his reality with me,” Claire screamed across the hallway.

Charlie’s heartbeat increased with growing fear. She fumbled around on the wall behind her, wondering why the lift was taking so long.

“And... did you actually think that I didn’t have any contact with Callum during the weekend?” She flinched as Claire continued to scream in her direction. “Let me just clear something up for you. I am your weekend stalker, bitch. Every last fucking phone call from the moment he walks into that apartment until the minute he leaves is all
me
. All of those work phone calls are actually Callum answering to make sure his wife and daughter are ok.”

Charlie’s body trembled as a fresh set of tears rolled down her cheeks. The phone calls had been the one bitter point to their most recent arguments. The need to continuously have his Blackberry on his person was starting to finally make sense. The bastard was keeping his wife sweet while he was fucking her all this time. It was the icing on the cake for Charlie and she knew that she couldn’t take anymore. 

Turning around to look at the numbers on the lift, she saw that it was now steadily rising through the floors. Just a few more minutes and she knew that she would be away from here. She just needed to cut her ties and leave.

“He’ll be back soon. I think you’d better hurry up and leave,” Claire said, watching as the lift doors suddenly opened before Charlie.

Stepping into the empty lift, she pressed for the ground floor and watched gratefully as the sight of Claire vanished from her vision.

Resting against the polished wood of the lift, Charlie lifted her hands to her face and cried. She was back to square one again with everything.

No boyfriend.

No home.

The lift slowly came to a stop and the doors pinged open to reveal the bustling lobby of the apartment building. Keeping her head down, Charlie headed straight for the revolving doors that would lead her out into the fresh air.

“Charlie...?”

She stopped moving, her body tensing at the sound of his voice. Her heart was pounding frantically in her chest as she lifted her head to look at his confused face.

 “I hate you,” Charlie choked out as she instinctively raised her hand ready to slap Callum harshly across the face.

A piercing cry reverberated off of the walls around them, stopping Charlie before she made contact with his skin. Dropping her eyes to Callum’s arms, she gasped as she registered the crying toddler he was holding.

A little girl no more than three years of age was crying softly into the shoulder of her father’s shirt. She saw the instant conflict in Callum’s eyes as to whether he should comfort his crying daughter in front of her or not.

She watched as Callum made his choice and lifted the little girl off of his shoulder so that he could look at her small, distraught face. “Daddy will get you upstairs and into bed in a minute,” Callum spoke softly before placing a kiss reassuringly on his daughter’s forehead.

Charlie’s face crumpled as she observed him soothing and interacting with his little girl. The images she had of Callum one day holding and looking after their child interrupted and clouded her brain.

“How could you do this to me?” Charlie cried. “I can’t believe you were married all this time.”

“Please,” Callum pleaded, his voice breaking with pain. “I can’t discuss this in front of Paige. Give me a few minutes and I can explain everything to you. There was a reason for it and you will understand why I did it. I promise you, Baby. I did everything I did for the both of us.”

Charlie recoiled from his words. “You did this for us? Callum, I can tell you right now that there is no longer anything between us. The moment I met your
Wife
, everything I ever felt for you vanished in a second,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of him. “I hate you!”

She rushed past him and through the main door onto the street. Stumbling towards the row of waiting taxi cabs that were parked just away from the entrance of the building, Charlie quickly slid inside and gave the driver an address.

Safely secured inside the taxi, she watched out of the window as they pulled away from the building that was likely to be firmly stuck in her mind forever.