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That takes her aback. Then her chin rises. “We’ll see about that.”
She waltzes from the room with the bearing of a queen.
I let her go back to her desk, but I watch her until she’s out of sight. Watch the fabric of her skirt move against her legs. Watch her hips sway.
Fuck me.
The harder she tries, the more I want to break her down. The more I want to push her. The more I want to see how far she’ll go. How far she’ll bend.
Because I want to bend her over my desk and fuck her.
It’s a problem. I won’t be the only one, either. The entire office will want to fuck her. And I have a strict no-office-fucking rule. Company policy doesn’t prohibit anyone else from asking her on a date outside of working hours, and I’m sure more than a few of the assholes on my trading floor will try.
In general, emotional attachments with women are bad investments.
They come with an unacceptable level of risk.
I learned that from my mother.
I don’t remember the day she left. My brother Emerson told me that she took Sinclair with her to buy bread at the grocery store.
Sinclair came back six months later. Our mother never did.
I flip open the first of the folders Bristol brought and find the report laid out exactly how I want it. Unstapled. Cover memo on the top. The sheets still retain some of the heat from the copier, but the part of me that has no business even speaking to Bristol Anderson thinks it might be her heat on these pages.
I can practically smell her, that delicious citrus scent.
Quiet chatter drifts in the office. The copy machine hums distantly. The elevatordings.It’s not as quiet as a library, but it’s hushed. I like things calm and controlled. By a capable secretary, ideally.
With my coffee and hard copy reports, I can focus on the merger again.
The acquisition,a small voice whispers.
David doesn’t mind being swallowed by a rich fucking Goliath,I remind myself grimly.
The offer comes right on the heels of a major success for Summit.
It was the kind of investment that flies under the radar for a couple years. An innovation in billing systems that would sound incredibly boring to most people, but flash doesn’t necessarily make the most money. Substance does. When we sold that for big bucks to a Korean conglomerate, everyone in the industry talked about it.
Everyone made offers to invest, but naturally, the bid from Hughes Financial Services was highest. They’re the biggest and the best—and they want the company I built.
The merger is good for all of us, but something’s been holding me back from signing. I want to look at the final report. Go over the numbers again. And again. They’re waiting for me in the hard copy file. I know what they say already. I’ve memorized every word, every number.
But it’s not about the ink on the page. I learned that from Eddie. It’s about what isn’t there. It’s not about the punches someone throws. It’s about the pause in between them. The way they telegraph their next moves. The way they show you their weaknesses.
I don’t have weaknesses. It’s not a statement of pride. It’s simply a fact. Any weakness was beaten out of me a long time ago. A rough childhood stripped me of human frailty. I was basically feral when Eddie found me at the warehouse—throwing punch after punch, fighting people two times my weight, getting up when a smarter person would stay down.
He taught me how to fight, but I already knew how to survive.
“Hello?” Bristol’s voice, floating in from the vacant secretary’s desk in the anteroom of my office, is low and urgent. The panic in her voice is a stark contrast to the smooth corporate flow that was here previously. This call is something serious. “Mia, slow down. I can’t understand—what?”
A heavy pause. I’m not even pretending to look at the report.
I can tell this isn’t a work call from how frantic she sounds. And the fact that I know no one named Mia. This is personal.
A personal call would be the first strike against this temp, except something tells me that this is a big deal. Something no one should ignore.
Her voice is shaking now. “Are they there right now or did they leave?”
