AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I like to study my opponents and understand what makes them tick, and I guess my attitude has bled pretty heavily into my way of dealing with personal matters, too.
When I see a thing that I want, I don't stop until it's mine, and when I want to know something, I don’t relent until I learn everything about it.
Last Saturday, there was nothing I wanted more than find out who Carina was, how to find her, and, more importantly, what made her run away like that from me.
I don't want for it to ever happen again, and I'll do my best to make her see she doesn't need to.
In the end, I didn't even need to wait for Malcolm to provide me the guest list of the gala to find out who she was, though I can't say I wasn't over the moon when he helpfully indicated that her name also appeared on the new structure of Avalon's board of directors.
I knew I had heard that appellation before —Ice Queen.
I mentioned it to Tasha and Didi yet again, and after some back and forth, they knew in which direction to point me.
I didn’t like it one bit.
They didn’t know Carina per se, but they had heard some stories of a certain ex of Jonathan Withmore that had earned such a nickname courtesy of the Press.
So that’s why it was so familiar to me.
I'm not one to read such distasteful material, but as a corporate lawyer, more often than I like, I have to sit through brunches, power lunches, and dinners, and I sadly can't say that all of my companions are above gossiping and cackling about the goings-on amongst Boston's bluest bloods.
An internet search later, I knew more than I would have wished about how Carina became the Ice Queen of Boston.
I had initially fooled myself into thinking it was only because she commands the respect of her peers in the boardroom and doesn't let people walk all over her, and while apparently, her reputation as head of Preston International confirms this, sadly, it's not the only, nor the main reason, why she got stuck with the stupid nickname in the first place.
I should have known, though.
I never ran in the same crowds as Withmore. He is but an acquaintance to me and one I never cared to deepen.
I never liked his ways and his smarmy look, and I knew enough from friends of friends about his antics to suspect that any connection between him and Carina could not have been promising, but what I read left me speechless, pissed off like never at those fucking bloodthirsty journalists, wanting to knock Withmore’s teeth off and full of questions for Carina.
The stories about their relationship are all the same.
They were together one year, a likely future power couple, and then on the verge of their wedding Carina abruptly and, according to the tabloids and Withmore's pathetic statements, cruelly broke things off.
As soon as she gave back the engagement ring, the magazines were apparently informed, and it was all over the news.
It was almost physically painful to read of the public humiliation she had to suffer.
Continuous statements painting her in horrible lights as if she were nothing more than a cold and manipulative socialite started to sprout up all over the place. As far as I could see, they mostly came from her own closest circle of friends and from that bastard Withmore himself.
I really can’t understand how the public opinion could side with him. A grown man serving a twenty-year-old girl for breakfast to the gossipmongers like that, but they did.
I can’t imagine what her life was like then and what such a universal disdainful condemnation did to her.
I still don’t know why she ran away from me like that, but now I know that whatever made her do it has to do with the poor excuse of a man she almost married.
Fuck, the mere thought makes me sick.
I can’t think of her with another, especially if he didn’t treat her right.
I didn’t want to pry, but I needed to understand, so I did my research and read if there was anything about her in the magazines from more recent years.
I found nothing.
At first, I was happy thinking the Press had left her alone, but then I realized how unlikely it would be for someone so prominent to just drop out of the gossip radar. God knows not even I can escape those motherfuckers completely, no matter how low a profile I try to always keep, and yet outside of the business sphere, there was nothing online about her following those stormy months after her breakup with the asshole.
It has to be that either she has becomethatgood at hiding her private life or that she has not let many people close to her since she dated that loser.
