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I remember that this is Eloise fucking LeBlanc.
Liar. Backstabber.
The enemy.
Her lip quivers. Her hips roll oh-so-subtly again as her eyes lock with mine. But the moment is over. Shattered. Broken.
My face hardens as I drop my hands and Eloise gasps quietly as she slips to the ground. Her face heats as she scrambles a step back from me, hugging herself as her eyes snap to mine again.
“Maybe this is how you operated at your last job,” I growl quietly, “or how you managed to catch Massimo. But don’t ever try that shit with me again.”
Her eyes widen in fury as her mouth drops open in shock.
“You insufferable, egotistical, ass?—”
“Sir,” I snap, silencing her. My lips curl into a snarl as I move a step toward her. “It’s yes, sir, or no, sir, and nothing fucking more. Is that clear?”
Her lips purse tight and there’s hellfire in her eyes as they stab into me like twin blades.
“Is. That. Clear. Eloise.”
“Yes,” she says coldly. Suddenly, the room no longer feels sweltering. It’s as if someone’s opened a window in winter to let the heat out and the chill in.
“I mean, yes sir,” she sneers before she turns, grabs her blouse, jacket, and heels from a nearby box, and storms off.
10
ELOISE
Holy fuck.
It’s close to midnight when the Uber drops me off outside our penthouse after yet another exhausting day at work. My feet are on fire. My legs hurt. I’m cross-eyed from staring at a screen, not to mention archived legal files in eleven-point font all day and well into the night.
I’m not an idiot. I know how things work, how the new person gets “hazed” or jerked around—how they get all the shitty work no one else wants dumped on them, like an initiation thing.
But that’s not what’s going on here. These are shots fired across the bow. These are power moves, done expressly to show me “my place” by Alistair, making sure I’m fully aware of his opinion when it comes to me working at Crown and Black. As if that was unclear before.
I finally got a chance to go fix all of my paperwork with HR, switching my name from Carveli to LeBlanc. When I got back to my desk, the files had literally doubled. It got to the point today where I couldn’t even swivel my chair left or right in my shitty, tiny cubicle because of all the boxes. I swear, if I sneezed, one of those towers was going to crash down on me and bury me alive in busywork.
But I stayed, working until the screen in front of me was blurry and the janitor asked if I was okay. It’s only then that I realized I was the very last person on the floor.
Trust me, if you’re there past the aides and junior associates, you’re working late.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going whine to King Asshole about anything. Fuck him. It’s not my fault that Massimo made him hire me in exchange for billable hours. And if he thinks he can overwork me into quitting, he’s dead wrong.
I mean, I’d rather be at Crown and Black bleeding from the eyeballs and fingertips than at home with Massimo, anyway.
…Especially after today.
My cheeks burn hotly as my memory flashes to the records room in the basement, and I pause outside the building, chewing on my lip as it all comes flooding back. The bitterness of our words. The anger in his eyes.
…The raw heat in his hands and his body when he caught me as I fell. The single second of being this close to kissing him that seemed to last an eternity before it scattered like dust in a breeze.
I quickly shake my head as I go into the lobby. Whatever the hell that was, it’s most certainly never, ever happening again. I won’t let it. Because it’s screwing with me, badly.
Two of my husband’s guards escort me up to Massimo’s gaudy penthouse, which looks like it could be used for photoshoots for Cocaine Life or Douchebag Weekly. The whole place is strip-club chrome, neon blue, and white marble, and looks like it was decorated by a martial arts instructor in the 80s.
I hate it.
