2. Ember

2

EMBER

" T rust me, Em. I'd rather not have to do this," Cole said, his voice dripping false sympathy.

"Then don't," I suggested, hating how small my voice sounded. I didn't do small. I was the girl who once organized an office-wide protest when they tried to replace the broken vending machine that sometimes gave free sodas. I once orchestrated a two-year-long petty prank involving ping-pong balls and the locker of a guy who broke my best friend’s heart. Small wasn’t my style.

Yet here I sat in front of Cole's massive mahogany desk, feeling like I was shrinking by the second.

He sighed, standing from his chair as it groaned with relief. Cole was a large man, thick with muscle and well over six feet. Once upon a time, I had swooned over him. Now, it was impossible to look at him the same way. After our breakup, the mask had slipped, revealing the nasty, heartless man who had been there all along.

Outside his office windows, Manhattan sprawled before us like his personal kingdom. With an ego like his, he probably stood there regularly having thoughts like "I own this fucking city" or "This city wishes it could ask to suck my cock! And if it did, I'd turn it down... unless Chicago was watching. Then I'd do it just to make that slutty little city jealous."

Okay, maybe I was just a touch bitter. But I had wasted two years of my life on this man, and now I was dealing with the repercussions of letting my career get tangled up with him, too.

"No," I said carefully. "She doesn't have a single point, Cole. If this were a math test, it would be zero out of a hundred points.”

"What am I supposed to do, exactly? Choose my ex over my fiancée?"

"Sure. Let's do that," I said with forced cheer. "Or, door number two says you can not make it a competition since I have absolutely no romantic interest in you. I'd happily swear as much under oath. I'll take a lie detector test. Hell, I'll skywrite it if that would help your precious Kylie sleep at night."

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned. "Kylie isn't comfortable with you around the office. She says you give her looks."

"Looks?" I blurted. "Is it my fault that I look more closely at snakes than rabbits?"

"What?" Cole asked, voice heavy with exasperation. "You're always making things so... ridiculous. Can't we just have an adult conversation about this?"

"Snakes bite people," I explained with exaggerated patience. "So if a snake was slithering around the office in designer heels and smiling at me, then yeah, I think I deserve some slack if I keep a close eye on it."

"This is exactly why we've reached this point, Em. You can't talk about another employee that way. Technically, she's your superior now, too."

"I'm aware," I said. After all, she was quickly riding the coochie train to the top of the company, and she had purchased an express ticket. "You want us to have an adult conversation about this? Okay. You’re asking me to do something I’m pretty sure is illegal and threatening to fire me if I don’t. Am I understanding correctly?”

“All I need is a little information, Ember. He wouldn’t even need to know it came from you.”

“Right. Somehow infiltrate your business rival’s company, wait until they show me something you can use to sabotage him, report back, and hope nobody is the wiser. You do realize my degree is in business, right? I passed on the espionage classes. Speaking of educated and qualified employees… what is Kylie’s degree in, again?”

Cole clenched his jaw. We both knew Kylie didn't have a college education. She started as an intern and worked her way down below his belt, then up the company ladder, qualifications be damned.

Cole had blonde hair and a beard that made him look a little like Chris Hemsworth. I had always told him his hair looked best short, but he started growing it out when he met her. Kylie was the type of woman who treated a relationship like it was a process of breaking in a wild horse. In her mind, successfully dating somebody was like taming them and seeing how much influence you could exert on your partner.

Bleh. If you asked me, a relationship was about bringing out the best in your partner, not molding them as if they were a ball of clay.

"I'm not saying I need you to be a spy," he said carefully. "I just need you to keep an eye on things at Foster Real Estate. Maybe feed me some information now and then."

"Is that all?" I asked sweetly. "Just casual corporate espionage? No big deal?"

"Em—"

"How about you tell me why I would ever agree to this. Let's start there. Because I'm pretty sure I could lawyer up and go after your ass if you’re actually threatening to fire me over this."

"We don't need to make this dirty," he said, voice dropping to that warning tone I used to find sexy. Now it just made my skin crawl. "But I'm sure I could find a reason to fire you. The incident with Tucker, for example."

"Oh, come on," I complained. "That was funny. And no staplers were harmed in the prank. They were just... stickier. It's hardly a fireable offense."

"What about the time with Lauren?"

I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. Okay. That one had gotten slightly out of hand. I could admit that much. In my defense, she really shouldn't have eaten my clearly labeled lunch three days in a row.

The truth was, I didn't have the patience or the money to pursue legal action. That lack of money was exactly why I knew I would lower my standards and do whatever it took to keep my job, no matter how much it stung.

"I'll consider it," I said with a defeated sigh.

Cole's smile was predatory, even though I knew he was trying to look gracious. "That's all I ask."

Except it wasn't. The subtext to this conversation was that I was done at Northman Group, whether I accepted this job or not. Saying "yes" would just be a way to collect a few more paychecks while I tried to find new employment.

The phone on Cole's desk rang. He tapped the button, opening up the speaker line.

"Mr. Northman, Kylie is here to see you. She brought flowers."

Barf. He hates flowers.

Cole smiled. "Uh, just tell her to wait there for a minute."

He lifted his eyes to me like I was a shitstain on his brand-new carpet. "You need to go."

I gave Cole a sarcastic salute, stood, and happily left his office.

I smiled at his secretary on the way out and purposefully detoured in the direction that would bring me right past Kylie.

Yes, there was a time when I would have made sure to slip out without her seeing. I would have happily avoided causing a potential fight in their perfect little relationship. But today, I learned I was probably going to lose my job, even though I was damn good at it. If strolling past Kylie on my way out of Cole’s office made his day just a little worse, I could live with that.

"Hi, Kylie," I said, smiling and reaching for a handshake.

She was the type of woman who smiled to your face and poisoned your drinking water, so she flashed pearly whites and extended a limp hand toward me. I took her stupidly well-moisturized skin in mine, shook it around a little, and nodded toward the flowers she carried.

"Flowers, huh?" I asked.

Kylie was twenty-two, gorgeous, blonde, and she did things like "hot yoga."

I was thirty-three, pretty in the right lighting (so long as you squinted a little), brown-haired, and sometimes walked by "hot yoga" studios. I liked animals that were so ugly they were cute, rainy days, finding out exactly how casually I could manage to dress without getting in trouble, and peanut butter jelly sandwiches.

Kylie probably didn't even eat bread.

As far as I was concerned, that fact alone solidified her as an alien presence I could never relate to.

Bread was life. If I had to choose between men and bread, I would take bread. Every time.

"Everything okay?" Kylie asked. She was wearing a fake smile as she tilted her head. "You looked like you went to outer space for a second. And you shouldn't frown like that, Sweetie! You'll make that wrinkle worse." She gave the spot between my eyebrows a little boop.

I flinched.

I took a therapeutic moment to plot Kylie’s hypothetical murder, including how I would dispose of the body and get away with it. If my time watching crime drama and movies taught me anything, it was that body disposal was probably the most important step to successfully getting away with murder.

"There's a smile!" Kylie said, voice just oozing patronizing tones. She leaned closer. "If I age even half as gracefully as you, I'll be happy. And if not, that's why they invented plastic surgery! Right?”

"I need to go," I said. Before I start stabbing you with pens, I didn't say. "Oh, by the way. Good call on the flowers. I told you he loves those."

"Thanks for the tip, girl!" Kylie said, her fake smile fading just a little too fast as she turned and walked toward Cole's office.

"Guh," I breathed. Don't ask me what "guh" means, either. It was just the sound that came out of me as I walked back to my desk.

My office bestie, Kora, saw me coming and rushed over.

Kora was one of those aggressively pretty people who somehow made business casual look like runway fashion. Today she wore a cream-colored sweater dress that probably cost more than my rent, her dark curls artfully messy in that way that definitely took an hour to perfect. Most people assumed we were an odd match as friends—her being all polished elegance and me being... well, me. But beneath her intimidating exterior was the kind of woman who would help you bury a body while cracking jokes about proper excavation techniques. Which, given my recent murderous thoughts about Kylie, might actually come in handy.

"So?" she whispered. "How did it go?" She paused, eyes flicking up and down my body, taking in my disheveled state and defeated posture.

"I... see," she said. "So we're doing ice cream tonight?"

"Ice cream," I agreed. "And lots of plotting. We're gonna plot so hard."

"Ooh," Kora said, rubbing her hands together. "I love plotting. Revenge? Glow-up? Or... wait. Did you say plot or pot? Because I’ve never tried it, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. Wait… do you mean pot, like planting flowers? Because I’m down for that, too.”

“Plotting,” I said, smiling my best evil smile. “But we are going to get our hands dirty. That’s for sure.”

Kora’s smile was uncertain but eager. “Right… So I’m still not sure if we’re going to be working with plants, but I’m loving the energy either way!”

"Good," I said. "Because I’m going to do several stupid things all at once. But I think stupid works like negative numbers. As long as you combine the right amount of stupids, you wind up with a smart.”

Kora frowned and tapped her chin. “I… don’t know if it works that way, Em.”

“Well, we’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

I would show Cole exactly who he was messing with. And if this Orion Foster guy was half the tyrant people said he was? Well, maybe he deserved whatever was coming to him, too.