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Fuck that. I remembered. I knew the truth.
“What went wrong?” a student asked.
Professor Reid nodded, and I resisted the urge to smack the smarmy smirk from his face. Barely.
That self-satisfied smirk faltered when he cast his gaze over the room and saw the hatred in my eyes. Reading the tension between us, Flynn tightened his embrace. He was no longer rubbing my back in soothing strokes. He’d sensed the shift in me. The shock morphing into blind fury. He clutched me, anchoring me to the seat. He pinned me in place, stopping me from climbing over it and removing the professor limb from limb.
Professor Reid cleared his throat and looked away before boldly meeting my stare once more.
“Good question, because this is where things get complicated.” He changed the slide to show a list of organizations with amounts of money next to each one. “This is an overview of the company’s investments disclosed—twelve months late, I should add—to the regulator when ReimagINC first started trading.”
I gnashed my teeth, my hands balling into fists as I gripped Flynn’s shirt.Twelve months late, I should add.As if he was a fucking saint and dotted every i and crossed every t. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen her. That fire, that passion, the desire to help everyone. She was overwhelmed.
He pressed a button on the remote, and each line was highlighted in one of three colours. A pie chart appeared at the bottom of the screen. He looked so fucking proud of himself, so impressed by his own excellence. Woop-de-fucking-do, he could generate a pie chart in PowerPoint. Cue the screaming crowds and adoring fans.We must bow down to the professor’s talent.Fucking idiot.
“This reflects the industry each investment operated in. The pie chart shows the percentage of investment in each industry overall.”
Another screen with additional colour coding. Oh, fuck me, he’d managed to figure out how to add another colour. The man was a genius. Give him a round of applause ladies and gentlefuckers.
“Six months after it was established, its customer base had doubled. You can see that the industries ReimagINC was investing in were the same, with a similar breakdown across the total portfolio.”
A third slide appeared, and a fourth colour was added. Oh, look at that, he deserved a fucking Nobel Prize.
“Six months after that, you can see a fourth investment portfolio was added—the US mortgage market. But by September 2008, Wall Street and much of the rest of the world had abandoned investments into that sector. Yet ReimagINCpersisted. Rosa Weatherall was singing its praises.”
Flynn froze. Went rigid.
Hearing her name on his lips… my blood boiled. I would fucking kill this bastard. Rip his throat out with my bare hands. Cut his dick off with a rusty knife and watch him bleed. Watch the life fade out of those green eyes.
No one, and I meant fucking no one, was going to disrespect her.
Over my cold dead body.
I raised my gaze, radiating as much hatred his way as I could. My fists went to the table, readying to push myself up.
Flynn clamped his arms around my waist, locking me to his side.
That fucking professor….
Fantasizing driving the spike of my Louboutin’s heel into his eye wasn’t an overreaction.
But my blood ran cold.
There on the screen. An image of her.
She was wearing headphones and speaking into what looked like an old-school radio mic. The headline read “Investment queen touts market recovery.”
My anger fled. My heart shattered once more, broken and bloody pieces of it falling into the hollow in my chest.
God, she was beautiful. I’d always thought she looked just like Jennifer Garner.
A lump lodged in my throat, my chest squeezing tight again.
My eyes burned, tears springing to them.
I blinked, frantically clearing them. I would not let them see me cry—no one in this room. Not the professor, not the students. I would never show them. Never in a million years would I let this fucking motherfucker see me vulnerable.
An anvil sat heavy in my gut. Queasiness stole over me, bile creeping up my throat.
