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“To what? Stop by?” I argued. “Try to catch me? He didn’t fucking text or call. He used work and do what waseasy.Am I not worth more than easy?”
His eyes went bug wide. “Yes, yes, you absolutely are. I thought—I thought there was more to it.”
I shook my head. “He got so angry with me for lying to him—assumed I was a liar so fast. I get it, that situation was crazy. The guy walked right in before we opened. It was the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. I get confusion and a whole lot of reactions, but heimmediatelythought I was lying because I’m a liar.”
Elijah frowned. “I don’t think that’s fair of him.”
“I don’t either because I’ve never lied. I’ve always told him there’s more to me or what’s going and I couldn’t tell him.” I snorted. “There’s tons I don’t know about him. I don’t know his fucking address. I don’t know what kind of car he drives.” I nodded when Elijah’s eyes flashed shock. “That’s what I’m saying. None of this was normal dating or—he just started announcing we were things.
“And I wanted that too. I wanted to be that with—I’d never had that option and I wasn’t—I liked him. I have feelings for him, but I didn’t like what was happening, and no one was listening to me that I didn’t like it. I didn’t want things like that.” I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. “I get you all did it because you want me happy, but you weren’t listening to me and that hurt too.
“I was telling you to help me. I was saying it was too much and to stop and none of you listened. And then his desires were that he wished he picked someone with better morals and then yelled at me that I wasn’t even trying. All I do is try. I’m not the bad guy here. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t want to be with him if he’s going to treat me like that and I get to say that.”
“You do, you absolutely do,” he whispered, trying to hug me to him, shocked when I didn’t let him and simply let tears fall down my cheeks. “I’m sorry, Angela. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
I bobbed my head, feeling like a child, but in a lot of ways, I was. Emotionally I wasn’t—I didn’t have the capacity to act emotionally like an adult a lot, and I needed to accept that to grow. The twins had helped me see that and that it was okay.
I was only a jerk if I lied about it or ignored the problem. That was pretty fair to me.
“I’m asking for your help,” I whispered. “I’ll break it off with him but protect me. He doesn’t need to be who we deal with from ISLE. Or you deal with him. I don’t want him at shit. I don’t want him at home base. I can’t handle—I need help. Please.”
“Yes, absolutely. I will inform everyone that we’re—I will handle it all.” He sighed when I let him hug me then. “Please just stop crying, child.”
“Only if you’re nicer to Kiera.” I bit back a smile when he sighed. “You hurt her by being so dismissive, Elijah. She’s not a kid with a crush. You can thank her for her interest, but tell her that you don’t feel the same. She’s our MVP too, more than my best friend. She gets way too much shit and—”
“That we agree on, and I think we need to change management of the Berlin club,” he said, wincing at whatever was on my face when I glanced up at him. “She is a rockstar. I did not mean that—she’s too young and will get hurt now that people are pushing back. I have an idea and I’m working on some things. Let me see what pans out, but I will make it clear toeveryonethis is because Kiera is exceptional.”
“Fine but make it damn clear that she is getting more support or something, not taken over.”
“No, not at all. I was thinking we all need a layer of extra help. Each VP has three directors under us and to clarify better what’s under us.” He sighed when I couldn’t hide my confusion. “No one was taking care of over five hundred properties, and Lewis is pulling more and more out from records. We’re going to have back taxes and more to handle.”
“I’m sorry that I—”
“No, you are not taking responsibility for this one,” he said firmly. “We messed up. Rita thought Arthur was handling it and he thought she was. Natalia admitted she thought I had it covered as legal, and I said I would look into something once and I probably did. I think we should restructure a bit and make departments clearer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, failing them as the big boss.
“You take too much on yourself, child,” he sighed. “You did such a good job that Germany is now the fourth-largest GDP in the world and we run it. And a business that has a bigger footprint than alotof countries. Restructuring and shaking things up are normal. The mistake is that it’s overdue and that’s not on you. It’s on the seasoned, ancient VPs that promised you we had it while you were in the field.”
I settled with that for several moments before sighing. “Thank you.” I felt worlds better after he said that.
We had one place left to go before we could leave this small town and I never had to return. I made the mistake of thinking it would be the easy part as we got in the car, and that was the moment I jinxed us.
“This bill—there’s a mistake here,” I told the woman behind the counter of the facility my grandmother had been staying at until she died.
“There’s no mistake, I checked it myself,” she told me, not even looking up from what she was doing.
“Well, then you’reblindbecause there’s an extra eighty-four thousand dollars on here that makes no fucking sense,” I snapped. “What the fuck kind of miscellaneous fees are those? You want a raise?”
“Watch your language,” she sneered.
“You can’t just tack on an obscene amount of money and not explain why,” I told her.
She let out a huge, dramatic sigh as a few people tried to hide chuckles behind her. “It’s to cover all of the extras we had to handle to get her cremated and everything boxed up. We had to deep clean the room and—”
“Right, but all of that was included in the steep monthly fee that was already paid, and there was none of that extra when her husband died,” I reminded her. “So again, you cannot just addeight-four thousand dollarsand give me attitude like I’m quibbling over pocket change.”
I almost reached over the counter and decked her when I felt her desire to have me arrested for making a scene. What an absolute monster to use someone’s death to try and get extra money like this.
