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“I had other matters to attend to first.”Step.
Four more of those and we’d be nose-to-nose. Not that I was still counting.
“And how was I supposed to know you’d actually show up? Orwhen? How much longer did you expect me to sit around and wait?”
A little muscle in his cheek ticked unhappily. “Watch your tone with me, Miss Sanchez. I’ve spent the last two days cleaning up the mess you made for me on Halloween, and nowthis. I don’t know what your fucking problem is, but I’m in no fucking mood to put up with any more of your bullshit.”
And I spent last Tuesday comforting my six-year-old niece because you wouldn’t give her momonelousy evening off to celebrate her birthday! That’s my fucking problem, you selfish prick!
My eyes thinned into a glare, my shoulders coiling.
Okay, so maybe I did know why I was so irritated. Maybe it wasn’t all that sudden or out of the blue. Because maybe I was sick of sitting back and allowing him to treat my sister like shit. And having to comfort her while she vented, overwhelmed by her workload and Adrien’s ridiculous expectations.
Maybe I resented watching the strain all the extra hours had put on Alba’s marriage. Of how many holidays and birthdays she’d been late to—or missed entirely—because “Adrien needs me to stay just one more hour, two tops,” or “a meeting’s come up last minute and Adrien needs me to attend. I can’t make it to dinner. I’m so, so sorry. Give Olive a kiss for me and tell Ben I’ll make it up to him. I promise.”
I wasn’t sorry. Not about Halloween or the stupid glitter or my disrespectful tone.
I’d spent four years listening to Alba’s stories about this man, starting from when he was still on the operations team, before his daddy handed him the position of CEO on a silver fucking platter. I knew who he was, and I wasn’t sorry about any of it.
“It was you, right?” Adrien said, taking yet another step toward me. He was close enough now that I had to lift my chin to maintain eye contact. “On Halloween. It was you.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A part of me knew there was no point in denying it, but a bigger, much more stubborn part wanted to make this as difficult as possible for him.
He plucked his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and practically shoved it into my face.
Unsurprisingly, it was a picture of me dressed as Waldo. The angle was up higher than anything I’d seen floating around the internet—like it had maybe been taken by a security camera—and was zoomed into my screaming face, right before I’d swung my cane.
I had to bite the inside of my bottom lip to stop the laugh from escaping. I failed.
“You think this is funny?” Adrien growled, the tips of his cheeks tinting a bruised pink. He chucked his phone onto his desk and took one final step forward, right into my personal space. “Do you have any idea what you did? What your little cry for attention fucking cost me?”
My what?“Excuse me?”
“Seven hundred million.”
That wiped the smirk right off my face. I blinked. “Wait… what?”
“Seven. Hundred. Million. Dollars.” He said it slowly, stretching each individual word out into its very own sentence so that I’d have an easier time understanding. “You know those men I’d been talking to before you marched into the lobby and hit me? Investors. From Japan.”
Oh.
Oh, yeah, that I didn’t know.
“You know what happened afteryour little stunt? They fucking pulled out. I’d spentmonthsworking on this deal. They were there to sign the papers. It was fucking done!”
I thought Adrien had looked angry before, but it was nothing compared to the fury rolling off him now. His eyes were entire forests lit on scorching fire.
A part of me wanted to point out that correlation wasn’t necessarily causation and ask if he was sure they hadn’t pulled out because of something else. But this was probably a good time to keep my mouth shut, so that’s exactly what I did.
“I’ve spent the entire fucking weekend dealing with the repercussions of losing the investment, trying to keep the media coverage somewhat under control, and putting out all the other fires you started. And you have the nerve to go through my shit, make a mess of my office, and give me lip instead of an apology? Tolaughlike any of this is even remotely fucking funny? What the fuck is yourproblem?”
I gulped. To be honest, it was slightly less funny when he put it all like that.
He cocked his head. “What’s all this about? What do you want?” I could smell a subtle hint of a warm, spicy cologne on him as he moved closer. It was nothing like the violating stench of the guy from Halloween. “Money? Attention? Was this whole thing just an elaborate scheme to get yourself in the same room as me?”
Wait… wait, what?
