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“Of course, Ms. McKay. Is there anything else I can get you?”
“One more of these in about fifteen minutes. No, ten minutes. Wait,” she said, giving Tamara a smile as her fuzzy brain recalculated. “Definitely fifteen minutes.”
“Of course,” Tamara said without emotion, and disappeared.
Hartley held the glass aloft, looking through the red liquid that distorted the view of the planes lined up at the gates below. In the distance was the private airport hangar.
Just over a year ago, she’d flown into that airport on one of Monty’s private planes. She’d been a confident, purposed woman. She’d had a partner in crime, albeit a fiery-tempered one. Someone who asked her opinion and respected her ideas. Someone who let her call him Monty when he allowed nobody else to even entertain the idea. And someone who gave and demanded in bed the way nobody ever had.
Someone who then tore her heart out with his teeth and shook it until it shattered into diamonds at her feet. Then he’d crushed those diamonds into dust, revealing them as fake.
“Wow, I’m dramatic when I’m drunk,” she informed no one. The cosmo magnified a small plane pulling out of the hangar in the distance, and she picked up her phone and took a picture of the effect.
She teed up a text to her Sigma sisters with the caption,Celebrating!
“Why not celebrate?” she murmured, taking a sip of the sweet, citrusy drink. “How often does a woman transform into a complete failure?”
Just then a figure stepped in front of her, the light silhouetting the angry stance of the woman’s body.
“Excuse me—” Hartley began, but swallowed the rest of her words when she realized who it was.
“Calm down,” said the familiar, cool voice.
“Yuki,” she greeted, sitting up from her semi-slouched position.Fuck, she thought, feeling every ounce of the drinks she’d already consumed.
Yuki turned the chair beside Hartley’s to face her, then dropped into it. Her crisp, Givenchy suit and round, mirrored sunglasses made Hartley feel rumpled and out of her element, something she hated.
“What brings you here?” she asked, feeling immediately stupid at the inane question. There was only one reason the former owner of Cavendish seek her out for a face-to-face.
“Rumor has it you’re orchestrating a shit show at the club,” Yuki replied, removing the sunglasses. “I thought I’d better check in.”
“I wouldn’t say shit show,” Hartley demurred, bemused at how easily lies bubbled to the surface.
“Don’t fuck with me,” Yuki replied, turning her head to give a humorless smile and a sharp wave of her elegant fingers. No doubt shooing the helpful Tamara away. “I entrusted you with my baby, and you’re driving her into the ground. Why?”
“We just had a successful engagement. I wouldn’t call that—”
Yuki cut her off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m…only partly bullshitting you,” Hartley offered, trying to straighten her rumpled suit jacket.
“Do I look like I want to hear bullshit?” Yuki asked, her face as rigid and cold as it had always been. If anyone had been Hartley’s mentor for flying a bitch flag, it was Yuki. For all the good it had done.
“I guess…no,” she relented.
Yuki stared, then settled deeper into her seat with a sigh. “I burned every bridge in my life and spent the last year rebuilding them. Looking at you, I would guess you’re in mid-flame.”
“Mid-flame,” Hartley repeated, sitting back in her chair. “I feel like I’m trying to put out fires, but every bucket of water has gas in it.”
Yuki lifted an eyebrow but didn’t speak.
“Sorry. I know you don’t respect self-pity,” Hartley mumbled, grimacing because it sounded so self-pitying.
“You struck me once as someone who wouldn’t let anything come between her and success,” Yuki said. “That was why I sold to you instead of other buyers.”
“This is just a minor setback.” Hartley rallied at Yuki’s words, though her own sounded hollow.Fake it till you make it, right?
“A dead body in a shallow grave is a minor setback?” Yuki asked, tenting her fingers. “Please explain.”
