Page 13 of After-Hours Heir

Did they continue to talk now? She didn’t know. Her stomach was a mass of nerves, her body on edge. She felt like she was dying, but she also felt like she was coming alive. Everything with her company was a travesty. It was painful. It was the worst it had ever been. Christos Onassis was seeing to that. He was breaking her life into pieces, and he didn’t even care.

That had been the worst part of all of that. Looking into his eyes and not seeing triumph, not seeing rage, seeing nothing but the bottomless black pit that seemed to exist inside of him.

He was a man without a heart. A man without a soul.

She had never hated another human before.

She hated Christos Onassis.

And she needed something, someone, to take that pain, to take that unending worry, anxiety and sadness, and turn it into something good. This man was the only one that had ever been able to do that, and now she was going to get to touch him.

Even if she didn’t see him, it didn’t matter.

They would see each other eventually, this would only be the beginning.

Everything would be fine.

They would have this night, and they would finally get to experience the reality of this thing between them, and then they could work toward the rest.

Then they wouldn’t need this shield.

Yes. She was certain. She was resolved. She almost told him the truth. That she had never done this before. That she wasa virgin. But she decided to keep that to herself. That, she reasoned, was one of the many gifts of anonymity. She was going to hang onto it.

Kid: Good night.

She typed it quickly because she didn’t know what else to say. And as she went about her evening routine, it wasn’t her work tragedy that dominated her mind.

It was the potential to take her life and make it something more than it had been. Not the business, her.

She had neglected herself all this time, and that was really what this text relationship had shown her.

It was what he had shown her.

That she needed more.

And this was the beginning of more.

She had thought that she had nothing to look forward to except dreading tomorrow.

But now? Now she was anticipating it with an eagerness that took her breath away.

CHAPTER FOUR

SYLVIECOULDN’THELPIT. She spent the entire day watching the clock. She watched, and she waited. She met with the board. They told her that they were in the process of selling to RedMedia. She had smiled, in many ways grateful that she’d had the heads-up. Yes, it was only Christos gloating, but at least this wasn’t her being blindsided. At least. It was perhaps the only consolation.

“I oppose this,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter if you oppose it or not,” said Daniela, one of the directors when she caught Sylvie in the hall after the meeting. “This is the decision that we’ve made. It’s the best thing for the company. It might be the only way we can ensure our survival beyond the past five years. Unless you’re going to personally go online holding one of our books and doing a choreographed dance in hopes of going viral.”

“I would,” Sylvie responded. “Except I don’t think we need to do that. I think what we need to do is to continue to focus on our editorial.”

“That’s naive, Sylvie,” Daniela said. “You must realize that. If you love books, you should work in an industry other than publishing. This isn’t about stories. It’s about profit margins. And we’re fighting for our lives here. We are too small to compete. If we have RedMedia behind us—”

“He isn’t going to do anything to push this company specifically. He is simply going to strip it for parts.”

“Even then, at least they’ll be valuable parts, and we’ll have a hope of getting out of this with some money in our pockets.”

She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage. If all she wanted was money in her pockets she could have gone and worked at a Jamba Juice. Then at least she wouldn’t be working sixteen-hour days and dealing with constant acid reflux and nightmares that disrupted her sleep. Constant feelings of failure and inadequacy.