CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

H E HADN ’ T TEXTED . It was fine.

That night in DC had been...

I still felt wrecked by it. I couldn’t quite explain it.

Maybe it was the intensity I felt over the event. Over that undecided contract. Or maybe it was him. The fact that it had been his father’s birthday.

Either way, there had been something different in the way we came together each time that night. We had used the chaise and the bed in the exact ways I’d known we would, but there had been a layer to it all that was...it was just different. I couldn’t pinpoint it. When I’d woken up in the morning, he was gone.

Not unprecedented, but it had felt strange and wrong after everything.

I didn’t know why.

It wasn’t different.

It was us.

Maybe I was romanticizing.

That thought brought me up short as I pushed away from my desk and moved to the corner of the office. It was all windows, looking down over the Upper East Side. Beautiful.

I loved the city. Though, I loved London equally. I had dual citizenship, courtesy of my mother, who was an alarmingly excessive London socialite who had children with billionaires as if it had been her retirement plan. She worked. But not in a corporate sense. Her job was to be beautiful, engaging, decorative .

She did it well.

Consequently, I had an older half brother who was an Italian count, and one who owned Andalusians in Spain. They probably knew Hades. Those sorts of men, brooding and preposterous, typically flocked together.

Maybe they entertained socialites on their yachts.

That was the thing that wealthy men could do, which I could never be caught dead doing.

I bit the inside of my cheek. I did not like to think about Hades with other women. But we never spoke about that. I didn’t own his body, whatever I might feel.

And for me... There had never been anyone else.

But I knew that I had benefited greatly from previously established skill the first time we were together. He had been no virgin. Anyway, he had been twenty-one years old. I had no reason to believe he had been anything like faithful to me in the years since.

Faithful?

Faithfulness implied the presence of a relationship. Which we definitely did not have.

I knew that. So the question of why I was preoccupied with Hades while at work was one I should probably sit down and answer. Maybe I should get my bullet journal and make some goals.

Do not think about sexy business rival while trying to get work done.

That seemed like a pretty basic skill that was really logical for anyone who wanted to succeed in business.

I looked at my phone, in spite of myself. There was still no text from Hades.

But there was one from Sarah.

Coming up. Crazy news.

I instantly Googled my name. Which was maybe a weird response to that, but of course when she said there was crazy news, I was instantly concerned that it was about me. Had somebody seen Hades and me at the same hotel in Washington DC? Of course, their go-to assumption would not be that we had been sleeping together. I didn’t think.

I scrolled through endlessly regurgitated articles that popped up when I tried to filter the most recent entries first. None of it seemed to be real news. Just listicles about the best red lipstick worn by powerful women, and my best black suits.

Flattering. I had to admit. But not exactly crazy news.

The door to my office opened, and Sarah thrust her phone into my face.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

“He’s engaged.”

“Who?”

“Hades.”

The room tilted, but I could feel my face freeze. No reaction. My chest felt cold. She couldn’t be right. I had slept with the man three days ago. He hadn’t mentioned a fiancée. He was frequently in the news, but hadn’t been photographed with anyone. It was impossible.

I couldn’t say all of that.

So I just made a weird, inarticulate noise and took the phone from her hand.

Billionaire Hades Achelleos set to wed heiress Jessica Lane in lavish London ceremony.

“I... I don’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t have expected it,” Sarah said. “The man seems like he has ice chips in his veins.”

“It’s just... It can’t be true. The timing is...” She could feel Sarah staring at her. “What I mean is, we are in the middle of competing for this NASA contract. Why would he plan a wedding during that? It seems silly. It seems like he’s just handing me the win.”

“That is true,” said Sarah.

I was going to be sick. I was literally in danger of vomiting on the carpet. He was getting married.

He was getting married.

That bastard was getting married, and he hadn’t even had the common courtesy to tell me?

He wasn’t mine. He never had been. I knew that. I had known this whole time. Okay, maybe I hadn’t known it at first. But I had tried to tell myself that. I had made an attempt to be sure that I kept my feelings disengaged from the whole thing. He wasn’t a prop, he was a human being, so sometimes I might feel things, but that was to be expected. Because I wasn’t a sociopath. But I was...

I sat down in my chair. Was I the other woman?

Was he in love with somebody else, or at least pretending to be, this woman who probably loved him, and he was cheating on her, with me?

That had never occurred to me. I had imagined him perhaps entertaining vapid socialites on his yacht. I had not imagined that... Did he live with her?

“Are you okay?”

I looked up at Sarah. I honestly didn’t know what to say. Except I had to find something. Something that wasn’t the truth. “I’m just shocked.”

I knew that I was acting like a weird robot. But it was that or cry, and confess that I had a terrible secret that it was especially important nobody knew.

The idea of what that would do to my reputation...

They would make me out to be some kind of barracuda. Someone who was sleeping with the competition in order to... I don’t know...steal secrets from him? Engage in corporate espionage? Ruin his life? It would be unflattering.

I knew that, because I knew how the media wrote about women. I had seen them do it to my own mother, time and time again. Granted, it wasn’t exactly a fabrication when they wrote those things about my mother. But I already knew that I would be tarred with the same brush. Easily. Quickly.

I trusted Sarah. But I could not bring myself to speak about what happened between Hades and myself out loud. Just the idea of it filled my mouth with a metallic tang.

“He is... He is the most vile man that I have ever met, and I hope that woman doesn’t sign a prenup. I hope that when they divorce, and they will, she’ll get everything. And I really hope they don’t have children.”

“Wow,” said Sarah.

“You don’t understand,” I said, rage beginning to flood my chest. “He is... He is the single most vile human being that I have ever had the misfortune of knowing.”

“You used vile twice.”

“Well, it fits.”

I pushed up from my chair and I began to pace the room. I couldn’t sit still anymore. I was electrified with outrage. And thank God for it. It was saving me from the very real threat of shedding tears, which I refused to do.

“He would be a terrible father,” I said.

The words fell out of my mouth like lead bullets.

“I actually thought you would find this funny,” said Sarah. “The very idea of the man engaging in something quite as traditional as the institution of marriage.”

“It isn’t funny,” I said. “Because she’s a real woman. She’s a real woman who has been... Tricked by him.”

“You don’t know that. She is a socialite. It’s entirely possible that this is something of a marriage of convenience.”

But what if it wasn’t? What if she loved him. And he had spent last Thursday with me tied to a bed.

I told myself that was why I was upset. It certainly wasn’t because he was stopping things with me without saying a single word.

Why would he? He didn’t owe me anything.

That was my official stance.

“I have work to do,” I said.

“Okay,” said Sarah, frowning.

“See you later.”

“You were just with him, weren’t you?”

I looked up. Sarah was gazing at me now with no small amount of questions in her eyes.

“I wasn’t with him,” I said. “We just saw each other at the NASA event. Which you know already.”

“Yes. You’re right. I do. I’m going to call you later, Florence.”

Sarah left me then, to my dark thoughts, which were teeming around inside of me like tussling eels. I tried to work for an hour. And then I did something... That I never did. I called my driver, and I gave him the address of Hades’ office.

The entire drive there was a blur. I wasn’t being discreet. But it was fine. I was allowed to go to his office. After all, we were business rivals. There were occasions when we might have to speak.

I walked into the office building, and the woman at the desk looked at me wide-eyed. “Ms. Clare,” she said.

“Hi, yes,” I said, trying to sound official. “I have a meeting with Mr. Achelleos.”

“I don’t have you written down.”

“He’ll see me,” I said.

Because of who I was she let me in. Let me go up to the top floor. Elevators. I was always waiting in elevators, and that didn’t really bother me normally. They were my safe private space to expel the energy that I couldn’t risk letting out in public. But I didn’t want to let any of it out in here. I wanted to unleash all of it on him.

The elevator doors opened and I got halfway down the hall toward his office before I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what I was coming here to do.

It didn’t matter, though, because once I set my mind to something, I was certain about it. I couldn’t afford to be anything else.

I walked into the room without knocking. He was standing at the window, facing away from me. “You should know better than to come here.”

He didn’t turn. Of course, the secretary had let him know that I was on my way up. But he hadn’t locked the door. I did, because I didn’t want anyone walking in on this discussion.

He turned toward me, and he had the nerve to look perfect. His dark hair swept back perfectly, his suit tailored perfectly. He looked well rested. He looked like a man who was on top of his game in every way. A man whose life was going exactly how he wanted it to.

I hated him then. More than I ever had.

“How dare you?”

“I’m sorry, what do I dare today?”

“Do not play dumb, Hades. It doesn’t suit you. You’re many things, but you’re not dumb. You must know the news of your impending nuptials broke today.”

He waved his hand. “Oh. That.”

“That?” I was speechless. Which never happened to me.

“Yes. What of it?”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“How is it relevant to you? When have we ever updated one another on changes in our personal lives.”

“You might have told me that Washington DC was the last time. I asked when I was going to see you.”

Well. I should have actually planned a speech, because I hated everything that came out of my mouth just then. Because it sounded hurt more than angry. And hurt on my own behalf, and not poor Jessica Lane’s, who was marrying a bastard that had been cheating on her. Which was what I was supposed to be mad about. His making me the other woman against my will.

“I don’t know why it has to be the last time,” he said.

“What... Planet to do you live on?”

“As far as you and I go, my marriage changes nothing.”

He really believed that. He really... He really thought that the wedding was nothing. Like getting a wife was like getting a pair of new shoes. That it had nothing to do with me because the encounters we had were so separate from his actual life. Because I was so separate from his actual life.

I knew that he didn’t love me. I had never claimed to love him. Not since I was a virginal teenage girl. And even then, I had only ever claimed it in my diary.

Right now I was definitely acting like a woman scorned. It was one thing, though, to know we weren’t in love. I never thought we were. It was another to realize what little regard he held me in. He didn’t see me as a person. While I had at least seen him as my equal, as my nemesis, he had seen me as a plaything.

Of all things, that had never occurred to me.

“I hate you,” I said. “I hate you and I never want to see you again.”

“You came to my office, agape . If you did not wish to see me, that was perhaps a bad first move.”

I found myself striding across the space, without even thinking. I walked up to him and I shoved at his shoulder.

He caught my wrist and pulled me forward. My stomach twisted.

I knew. I knew how this would end.

The way that it always did.

“After this, I don’t want to see you. We will no longer conduct meetings in the same space. We will contend with NASA in a different way.”

“Fine by me,” he said. After this. Because we both knew.

Perhaps that was why DC had been so intense. He had known. But I hadn’t. I deserved this. I deserved the chance to make him feel what I felt. To pour all of my intensity out onto him.

I deserved this chance to know that this was the last time.

I wrenched the knot on his tie and flung it down to the ground. I tore his jacket off his shoulders, and then his shirt, violently. I made sure it lost buttons. I made sure that he couldn’t simply put the shirt back on like I had never been here. I would not let him walk away from this unruffled. Because nothing had ever made me angrier than when I walked in to see him looking as beautiful and unstained as ever, as if he hadn’t just unleashed news upon the world that rocked me to my steel core.

But he was no kinder to me. He ripped my blouse away from my body, and my bra, leaving me nothing but my pencil skirt, which he unzipped, so hard I thought he had torn the zipper down through the seam.

Maybe he had.

Right then, I didn’t care. My eyes burned with tears, but I refused to shed them. I refused to show any emotion. Other than anger.

The color mounted in his cheeks, his need apparent. I slipped his belt out from the loops, and he took it from me, gripped my wrists and lifted them up over my head, and before I could react, he slipped the end of the belt through the buckle and tightened it fast around me, binding my hands. I was too shocked to protest, and when he laid me down across the clear edge of his massive corner desk, he pushed my arms up above my head, his expression one of pure, violent need.

“I bet you can’t do this with her,” I said.

A betrayal. Of my jealousy.

I was jealous. I didn’t care about her. I didn’t care if I was the other woman. I cared that I had been wounded. I cared that I could no longer deny that he had been with other women. I cared that perhaps I was not singular to him in the way he was to me.

I cared.

I cared.

I cared.

And I hated him for it.

He didn’t respond to me, not with anything other than a growl. But he tore the skirt away from my body, leaving me in my thigh-high stockings and black high heels.

He took the rest of his clothes off and came back to me, moving his hand to my throat as he kissed me, hard and deep. I wanted to touch him, but he held my hands down still.

He held me fast as he thrust deep inside of me, looked into my eyes as he claimed me, over and over again. I took my bound hands and lifted them up over his head, as his hold tightened on my neck, I held my arms around him, locked together as he took me.

I took him back.

Because I would be certain of one thing.

That he would not forget this. That he would not forget me.

That he would regret the day that he had chosen to take half of what we shared in exchange for that bland, ordinary life. The one I had told myself I might take someday.

He had made the bargain before I did.

And it called to me. Wounded me.

I struggled against his hold, arched my neck upward and bit him, at the side of his throat. Hard enough that I left a dark mark behind.

His lip curled, and he looked feral then. As he went over the edge, and his own loss of control spurred mine.

We cried out, together. Uncaring if anyone heard.

We had wrecked this place. And each other.

For the last time.

For ten years this had been the landscape of my life.

The landscape of us.

It was over now. There was no more us.

He exhaled, hard, then pulled the belt back through the loop, freeing me, freeing himself. He stepped away from me and wordlessly went to collect his clothes.

I had a difficult time doing the same. My skirt was ruined, my shirt was too. I tucked the blouse in as tightly as I could, crossing the edges together. It would be good enough to get me to my car. Especially with my black jacket over the top of it.

It was a mundane thought.

But mundane thoughts were the only things that were going to get me out of this building without having a total mental breakdown.

I didn’t say goodbye to him.

I didn’t say anything.

I’d said all I needed to with my body.

And when I was finally in the back of the car, I put up the barrier between myself and my driver. And I wept.