Page 58 of Discretion at Its Finest

I don’t think it was jealousy that crawled up my spine. No… it was anger. Tired, soul-crushing anger wrapped in confusion.

How could he be all of that… tender, attentive, present, for someone else’s child… but couldn’t bother to be half of it for Eugene?

“Genevieve.” A voice cut clean through my thoughts.

I turned quickly. Alexander stood a few feet away, a folder tucked under his arm, his brows drawn in mild concern. He always looked that way when something wasn’t going according to schedule.

Which, apparently, included me.

“You’re needed in the conference room,” he said. “The investor prep meeting is starting. They’re waiting on your notes for the PR portion.”

Right. The meeting. The board. The press strategy. The world I was supposed to be functioning in instead of replaying things I had no right to feel.

I nodded and followed him, my feet somehow moving while my brain stayed rooted in the last two minutes in that hallway.

By the time we reached the conference room, half the board was already seated. Papers shuffled. Men murmured. Graphs displayed with projected numbers that meant everything for the company.

Alexander set a packet in front of me.

“Focus on the messaging strategy,” he murmured. “Mr. Kaufman wants clean, confident talking points for investor reassurance.”

My mind could barely string thoughts together, but I nodded anyway.

The door opened again and the air shifted as Reid walked in, dark expression carved from stone, suit tailored to perfection, his presence commanding enough to straighten the room without him needing to ask.

He took his seat at the head of the table, conveniently beside me, before flipping open a file with controlled precision.

He hadn’t looked at me yet.

“Let’s begin,” he said, cutting through the silence.

The meeting moved around me. Numbers, projections, investor phrases I’d memorized a decade ago—but none of it landed. My mind kept drifting, kept wandering, a mix of emotions swelling inside of me. Anger, frustration, guilt, none of them backing down.

And of course Reid noticed, his eyes flickering to my fumbling hands every so often.

When the discussion shifted to PR, my section, Alexander subtly nudged my packet toward me as a reminder. I blinked down at the page. Words swam in my vision as the lettersrearranged themselves. I heard Reid inhale, slow, before he spoke.

“Genevieve,” he said, in that low, tempting voice… It was the voice that kept me up at night. “You’re up.”

I swallowed. My mouth refused to speak. “…Right… where do I begin.”

I flipped through to the first page, ready to speak when I felt it—the slightest brush of a shoe against my ankle.

Then I felt his hand sliding over my knee. I paused.

He finally looked at me. His eyes filled with false intrigue, completely unbothered, composed… while his fingers slipped higher beneath the hem of my skirt like he was simply adjusting his cufflink.

This was another one of his humiliation rituals he had in store for me. It had to be. However, it was less of a PR stunt showing up with your brother’s fiancée and more of an HR violation, touching an employee under the table in a meeting.

My pulse pounded painfully in my ears, and he gave my thigh the faintest squeeze. It said what he didn’t say aloud.

Focus.

It felt like a command. Heat flooded my cheeks, my lungs tightening as I forced myself to speak, to string together coherent statements while his hand remained on my leg.

“Our projected stabilization timeline… indicates a promising early shift in investor confidence.” My voice steadied by the second sentence, which seemed to have pleased him.

His thumb stroked once along the inside of my thigh.Approval.