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It was almost five in the morning when sheer exhaustion made her fall asleep, only for her buzzing alarm clock to wake her up an hour and a half later. Her head pounded like the devil, and sleep beckoned like an addictive drug.
But when she turned to her side, Fredericka became wide-awake in the next second.
The other side of the bed was empty, and she sat up, looking around her, searching but finding no sign of the billionaire.
“Sergei?”
She felt silly saying his name out loud, but what was sillier was the way she actuallyhopedhe would answer back.
But only silence answered her.
Getting up, Fredericka stepped out of her bedroom, and the little hope she had left of seeing Sergei disappeared when she still didn’t see any sign of the billionaire.
He really was gone.
The thought made her feel heavy with emotions she couldn’t and didn’t want to name, and she forcibly reminded herself that there wasn’t any reason for her to feel bad in any way.He’s just a friend, dammit.
A friend, the way Alyx and Anneke were her friends.
The other girls slept over her place, too, and there were also times when she completely missed them the morning after. That hadn’t made her cry, so the billionaire leaving her before she woke up shouldn’t bother her either.
Right?
Fredericka nodded determinedly to herself.I’m not bothered. I’m not bothered. I’m not bothered. She repeated this line over and over in the shower and on her way out. She chanted it to herself while buying herself a croissant and coffee, but by the time she made it to the office, her mental pep talk had done her no good.
She still felt like she had been dumped.
“Good morning, Ms. Spears,” Selena, Fawkes & Rogers’ nineteen-year-old receptionist, greeted her with a frosty smile.
“Morning, Selena.” She forced herself to smile politely even as she privately wondered why it was that all the women these days seemed to hate her. First, there was Sergei Grachyov’s secretary, and now it was the law firm’s receptionist, who hadn’t ever bothered to greet her in the past.
She was about to walk past reception when Selena called out to her, saying, “You have a delivery.”
Halting mid-step, Fredericka turned to face the receptionist, more surprised than anything by Selena’s disgruntled tone. “What is it?” she asked, and her confusion deepened when the younger woman’s gaze slowly moved over her from head to toe.
A moment later, and Selena flipped her hair over her shoulder, as if saying that she didn’t find Fredericka any kind of threat. “I had it sent to your office,” the receptionist murmured offhandedly. “It was taking too much space, I couldn’t work.”
“Oh. Okay.” Turning around again, Fredericka wondered what kind of work Selena was talking about that it would require the entire counter space. As far as she knew, all Selena had to do was take care of the logbook and answer calls.
When she made it to her floor, Fredericka was bewildered by the looks that went her way. In Fawkes & Rogers, connections meant everything, and since Fredericka had none to speak of, her stellar performance in the courtroom had meant little to the law firm’s senior partners. She was still a nonentity as far as they were concerned, and she had never figured in anyone’s radar—-
Until now.
“Good morning, Attorney Spears.”
“Good morning, Attorney Fawkes.” Fredericka managed to keep her voice steady even as she wondered if she had somehow stepped into another dimension. In every meeting, the senior partner had always referred to her as Attorney Smith, and no one had ever found the courage to correct him.
As she made her way to her office, the same thing happened over and over, with other lawyers going out their way to talk to her.
By her count, she had been waylaid fifteen times—-
Fourteen times more than the people who remembered to greet her on her birthday last year,Fredericka thought disbelievingly. And at that time, only the janitor had remembered to greet her.
When she finally reached her office, she quickly closed the door and shook her head to herself. That was incredibly weird—-
And then she saw it.
An elegant arrangement of white roses on her desk, its long stems visible within the crystal vase, and a pristine white envelope tucked between the flowers.
