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Emmie’s head snapped around from her computer screen where she’d been deep in thought. Seeing me standing beside her assistant, the frown smoothed out and she stood. “Amara, hi. How are you, sweetie?”
Rachel closed the door behind her just as Emmie surprised me by wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug. For a moment, I lost the ability to speak. My throat closed up, and I found myself seconds away from tears. No way was I going to embarrass myself in front of the coolest person I’d ever met by falling against her sobbing.
Blinking away the sting in my eyes, I cleared my throat. “Um…okay?” I wasn’t even sure right at that moment. This was all a little surreal for me. Honestly, I figured this woman would have forgotten all about me the moment I was out of sight after the weekend at the festival.
Stepping back, Emmie scanned her big green eyes over me as if looking for something important. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was getting the full mom-treatment. Her eyes took in everything I didn’t want her to notice about me, and I could see the clouds already forming in her gaze. When they landed on the fading bruises on my wrist, she pressed her lips firmly together for a moment. “Let’s have a seat,” she muttered distractedly and waved her hand to the two chairs in front of her desk. She surprised me yet again when she took the one beside me and turned to face me. “How long has it been going on, Amara?”
My stomach bottomed out. “Cash and I have only been dating for about four weeks now,” I started, but she shook her head.
“No. That’s not what I meant. I know Cash would never do anything like this.” She touched a gentle hand to my fading bruises. “I’m talking about your stepfather. How long has it been going on?”
Hurt and shame burned my cheeks, and I jerked to my feet. “Cash told you?” Tears stung my eyes all over again. How dare he tell anyone what I confided in him? I thought I could trust him, that I meant more to him than to gossip to his fucking manager about me.
Emmie stepped in front of me before I could reach the door. “No. He doesn’t tell me shit. None of those boys keeps me in the loop about what’s going on in their life at any given moment. They rely on themselves and each other to fix their issues. Which is admirable but causes me nothing but grief and frustration in the long run because the shit I have to fix when it’s all said and done could have been minor compared to what it blows up to be in the end.”
I glared at her, the hurt fading, but my confusion was only skyrocketing. “Then how do you know about Malcolm?”
She grimaced and waved a hand back to the chairs. “Maybe you should sit down. I’d like to explain myself.”
Curiosity had me retracing my steps until I was sitting once again, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her as she cleared her throat. “I should start by saying, when I met you, I saw something in you that reminded me of…well, of me.” That had my head jerking up to meet her gaze. “Let me back up and tell you something about myself. It’s not public knowledge, but my mother was a drug addict. And when she was high, I became her favorite game. How much pain could she inflict on her terrified little girl? What bones could she break this time?”
My stomach churned at the anguish that openly crossed her face, my own bones aching with the remembered pain she was telling me we shared. “Nik and the other Demons, they saved me. Without them, I probably would have ended up dead or in foster care. Which, really, are both equally bad in my eyes.”
“I-I’m sorry that happened to you,” I whispered.
She shrugged it off. “Growing up like that, it’s made me a pretty good judge of character, and sensing when someone else is or has experienced physical abuse has become kind of like a superpower for me.” Her gaze fell to my wrist. “And the moment I met you, I felt it. That’s why I told you if you ever need anything, to come to my office.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t explain why you asked me to come here now.”
She licked her lips almost nervously. “I was curious about you, intrigued. So, I had the security company I work with do a background check.” My eyes got so huge I was sure they were going to pop out of my head. My heart sped up, my hands growing clammy. “It was presumptuous of me and invasive, but I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not sorry I did it.”
“You had no right to invade my privacy like that.” But my tone wasn’t nearly as strong as I wanted it to be. Tears I no longer had any control over were clogging my throat as I pleaded, “Don’t tell Cash what you found out. H-He doesn’t know, and I-I…I don’t know how to tell him.”
“Girl, I haven’t even told my own husband about that file, let alone Cash. This is between you and me.” She sat back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other as she looked straight at me. “I was surprised as fuck when I found out Malcolm McIntire is your stepfather. I thought maybe I got it wrong about you. That my superpower was losing its juice. Those bruises, though, they tell their own story. So, I’m asking you again—how long has it been going on?”
“From the moment I moved in to his house,” I confessed, my voice choked.
She muttered a savage curse under her breath but then gave me a tight smile, as if she was trying to reassure me everything was going to be okay. “And now he’s cut everything off?”
“Did your background check tell you that as well?”
“Seller’s team is always thorough. I know that the Monday after the festival he sent out a warning to any and all people who could possibly offer you a job, threatening them with the usual ruination if you were hired. Blah, blah, blah. The usual pompous jackass who thinks he rules the world speech.” She rolled her eyes. “I know who Malcolm McIntire is and the power slash drama that comes with him.”
I shifted in my chair, my heart trying to beat my lungs to death with how hard it was pounding. Fuck, I just wanted to ge
t out of here. I wanted to go home and hide away from Emmie’s kind, knowing eyes. Her gentle, motherly touch to my still achy wrist. This was all new territory for me, having a woman care about me. “Look, I really don’t know what this is all about. If you just wanted to bring me here to talk smack about my stepdad, I’m all for that, but this is really weird all around.”
“I’m getting to that. Patience, girl.” She grinned, making her nose scrunch up and the stud in her nostril sparkle in the overhead lighting. “The same warning wasn’t issued to me, but even if it were, I really don’t like being told what I can and can’t do. And that goes for pretentious assholes who try to rule the world. I rule my own world, and not even that motherfucker can dictate what I do.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I was understanding her correctly. “Are you…offering me a job?”
“Yes.” A simple answer, but it felt powerful.
“Wait,” I breathed, shaking my head, trying to wrap my mind around everything. I felt like I’d been sucked into the middle of a tornado and tossed into another universe. “Just give me a minute, okay?”
“Take your time.”
I inhaled deeply, trying and failing to calm my racing excitement. This wasn’t real. It was a dream or an alternate reality. I’d wake up back at home soon and be right back in the middle of my old, normal life. One where the one woman I admired the most in the world didn’t give a flying fuck about me. “I don’t even know what kind of job you could possibly offer me, Emmie. I was studying microbiology. My career path was supposed to be in pharmaceutical research, which was what Malcolm had planned out for me from the moment he realized I had a brain he could exploit.”
