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I was not proposing marriage. Just a short arrangement. A month. That was it. A month to fuck her out of my system and get my brain focused back on what was important. Business. Family. That was all I had room for in my life. But even billionaire bosses deserved a vacation once in a while.
Sofia DiFalco was mine.
CHAPTER FOUR
SOFIA
Igot canned. I couldn’t fucking believe it.
Brown water poured from the spout, and I hustled to turn it off before it could fill the tub. Dammit. I really wanted a bath. I rubbed my hands together, trying to get my circulation going. Despite the two pairs of pants, a long-sleeved thermal shirt, and an enormous, hooded sweatshirt on top of that depicting a grumpy faced cat, I was still freezing.
“Fuck this day, already,” I growled, my potty mouth getting the better of me as usual.
It was bad enough I had to fork out seventy-three dollars for an Uber that morning, which made my walk of shame not only embarrassing but detrimental to my budget, but when I got home, my boss called. She sounded frantic, which was not unusual, and angry, which was.
“Sofia! Why didn’t you answer my calls on your cell?”
“Hello, Missy. Um, because my cell died. Why? What’s wrong?”
Typically, my week was Monday through Friday. Weekends were my own since Missy often spent them at her family home in the Hamptons during the summer and the Long Island Sound during the winter months. She and her brother were an odd pair. I never really liked being around him and was grateful it hadn’t happened very often. If Missy was flighty, then Matthew was straight up creepy.
So I was grateful for the fact Missy usually reserved time with her brother for the weekends at one of their estates. And that was when I worked on my book and visited my family. I only worked if she really needed me, and last night she insisted I go to the party but gave no indication she needed me after. I had no idea what she was talking about when she called to fire me.
“I can’t believe it. How could you do this to me?”
“Missy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I’d replied to her hysterics with an eye roll. She was pretty much the worst drama queen I knew. Something that was definitely going in my book.
“Matthew is just livid. Now, he’s talking about cutting off my allowance. I’m sorry, Sof.”
“Sorry for what, Missy. What are you saying?” I asked, completely bewildered.
“I just can’t have you work for me anymore.”
She hadn’t made much sense, but then again, she rarely did. Coming from one of the wealthiest families on the East Coast, I’d imagined that was a rich people problem. But the reality was she fired me.
I understood that quite clearly. She’d uttered something about loyalty and the bonds of womanhood or some such thing, then she hung up. To say I was put out would be mild. Truth was, I was pissed.
I didn’t know what bonds of womanhood I had destroyed, but if I was fired, then that meant I needed a new job, and soon. I walked over to the radiator, testing it with my hands. Nope. Still cold, despite Mr. Crawford, my landlord, insisting he fixed the issue with the heat.
I grabbed a wooden spoon and started banging on the cold hunk of metal, cursing it out while I did. Maybe that was why I hadn’t heard anyone knocking on the door. At least, not until they came crashing through it.
“Aghhh!”
“Zaika, are you okay?”
I clapped my hands over my mouth as six and a half feet of furious Russian came racing towards me. His hands dragged me towards him, and he ran them over my lumpy ensemble as if checking me for breaks and fractures. I stood stone still for a moment until sanity returned. Then I slapped at his fingers, and backed up as far as I could, which was all of two feet before the wall stopped me.
“I’m fine! Oh my God, what are you doing here?”
My cheeks were burning, and I could only imagine what I looked like. He dragged his gaze up my body and when it finally met mine—bam. I felt it hit me with all the force of a Mack truck. Attraction sizzled between us, and I had to wonder if maybe I wasn’t hallucinating.
“Boss, is she okay?” a large man wielding a gun asked, and I screamed.
“She is fine. Sofia, this man is my head of security. Why were you banging that spoon?” he asked, dismissing my little freak out.
“What? Oh! Nothing, I was just trying to make the radiator work. But how did you find out where I lived? And who told you my name?”
