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“I know what’ll make you feel better,” Becca declared, flopping onto the edge of my bed with such force that I bounced upward. “It’s all-night happy hour at Spin. And 50 cent wings.”
“Great, so I can be hungover for the second day of my internship?”
“So you can decompress from your first day, and care less on your second day,” she corrected me. “Come on. You know it’s an awesome idea.”
A couple of beers wouldn’t hurt me. I rolled off the bed and Becca cheered.
Five
Maxim
Knowing that I would have Ruth Miracle as my plaything for the next few months actually made it hard to sleep at night for the first couple of weeks.
I felt like a child waiting for Christmas morning.
Only this wasn’t Christmas morning. This was a day of reckoning. An opportunity to finally get back at the man who had nearly cost me everything. It was much more than a grudge, as my brother accused me of having. Gerald Miracle had actively tried to sabotage my fledgling company. I’d looked up to him as a mentor, and he had tried to bring everything down. I never understood why he’d done it. If he had helped me the way he said he would at the beginning of our business relationship, he would’ve been a rich man.
Just like me.
It was a Volkov family argument that I’d unsuccessfully spat at my brother.
“That man threw it all away,” I had raged at Alexei, well into a bottle of vodka at my penthouse. “He tried to throw away this family’s dreams — and your hard work along with it too.”
“And yet here you are, successful in spite of the man,” he responded. “Can’t you just let it go?”
It was something I couldn’t just forget.
Fuck, no.
And now, with Ruth Miracle right here, interning for my company for the next few months, it was like the universe smiling down at me, telling me it was finally my time. Things like this didn’t just happen by coincidence. I was going to play with her until she couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted her to go running home to Daddy to tell him just exactly who it was who had destroyed her dreams.
Just as he had nearly destroyed mine.
Until that point, I was focused on having fun. Making Ruth stutter and blush and stew as I sent her on menial tasks I usually entrusted to someone else, like more espresso, lunch orders, and dry cleaning pickups. I loved seeing her golden eyes sparkle with fury, watched her swallow her words as I created tasks for her. Setting out glasses and pitchers of water before board meetings. Ordering fruit baskets. Answering my phone when I just couldn’t be bothered. Renewing my various memberships.
I gave my secretary personal days just to shovel more minutiae onto Ruth’s plate, and watched her shrink more and more at the next indignity as the days under my employ wore on.
But something happened that I didn’t anticipate. Instead of crumbling under the pressure, instead of pouting and weeping like I expected her to at the load of soul-crushing tasks, Ruth simply got sassier with me. It was a far cry from her shyness over first meeting me. And it was addictive. It made me work hard to hunt down more things to do to her to get her to snap and give me a dose of that attitude I was getting addicted to.
“Ruth Miracle! Get in here!”
“If I can call you Max, you can call me Ruth,” she called back crossly, walking into the office while flipping pages in her notebook. “What is it?”
“I’m going to need you at a business dinner tonight,” I said, relishing the moment when her eyes flicked up and saw me in my dress shirt, shoes, boxer briefs, and nothing else, the representative from the tailor on her hands and knees in front of me, holding a measuring tape.
“At a — what?” Ruth’s cheeks heated brighter and faster than ever before as she couldn’t help but stare. I never skipped leg day, but I knew my toned calves and quads weren’t what was holding her complete attention.
“A business dinner,” I said crisply. “Keep up. It’s formal attire. I’ve called my tailor. They’ll be able to set you up with something suitable to wear. They have a partnership with a boutique, and will arrange for an appropriate dress.?
??
Ruth spluttered. I knew it would make her angry. “I have plenty of suitable things to wear. I show up looking nice enough every day here, don’t I?”
“Your business casual leaves much to be desired,” I told her dismissively.
She huffed. “I’ll borrow something from my roommate. She’s in an orchestra. She has plenty of fancy clothes.”
“I said formal, not fancy.” I frowned. “Wait. Roommate?” That just wouldn’t do.
