Page 13 of Between Love & Ruin

“Did you tell them about my plans?”

She shakes her head in a no, and I release an exasperated sigh.

Why did I hire her again?

“I have a proposition, and I am glad both the legal and the finance teams are here for it,” I start. “For our new venture that we are working on establishing with Carter & Co. Architects, I am thinking of launching the first project starting with the same book that caused all this. The entertainment industry desperately needs a revamp, and I think this book-turned-movie will be that change everyone’s looking for.”

I pass the book that I have been carrying with me for some reason. I can’t stop reading it during my free time, which is what keeps pissing off Myra, but something about Ms. Hayes’ writing calls me towards her. It feels like she has written down what I felt.

“You are so confident about it without enough reasoning or numbers, and this isn’t really how you work, Dominic,” Myra says, and she isn’t entirely wrong.

“Sometimes you have to make decisions based on instinct,” I reason. “That’s how most business gets done.”

“We can do some research on this,” the legal head says, and I nod. “After all, you are the boss.”

“Glad some of you all remember that.”

I pass a harsh glare towards Myra, who slightly cowers in her seat. I am not a big fan of having to flaunt my authority to people I work with. I believe in treating everyone the same way.

But I don’t like it when people take that for granted.

For the outside world, I am a dick, a person they can’t cross. But for people working with me, I try to soften up as much as I can.

Unless they cross me too.

Myra,” I say, buttoning my suit jacket as I stand up. “Find out everything there is to know about Sienna Hayes by the end of the day.”

I don’t wait for her reply as I leave.

I need to get to the depth of this person.

Maybe then the itch will go away.

Sienna Hayes

Iloathe surprises, and funnily enough, life continues to throw one of those my way every few years.

Like when I was a kid on a vacation to my aunt and uncle’s and I got a “surprise” that my parents were no more.

And then in my high school, I found out that the guy I had been crushing on for months and months liked me too. But only after we graduated and moved to different places. To make the surprise sweeter, my entire friend circle knew the whole time and simply chose not to tell me

And then came my boyfriend, who continues to surprise me with his true personality every single day.

It’s not that I don’t love him. It’s just that he makes it so incredibly hard for me to admit out loud sometimes that I love him.

And now, Aisha has texted me that she has a surprise for me and asked me to wait till six in the evening for her call.

Now I can’t shake off the anxiety no matter how much I want to.

Can’t people just tell the point of the call? Texts were made for a reason after all.

Ever since that video of the guy with my book went viral, the group chat with my cousin and my publishing team has been flooded with screams, excitement and what not. I had to mute both the groups for me to be able to focus on writing my next one.

I also had the itch to google who the guy was, and it turns out Dominic Wolfe is a big deal in the entertainment industry.

They call him the “king of media”, and he is also very vocal about his love for literature, which is surprising. Again.

You don’t see that many men vocally talking about books, and that too romance novels.