doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  I worked to control my expression. My words. I tightened my features and sharpened my gaze. “Everyone gives a fuck about money,” I said. “Even the people that say they don’t, especially the people that say they don’t.”

  Nothing about his expression moved, he wasn’t betraying an ounce of feeling, that I was doing anything resembling what he was doing to me. “I’m not people. And what I need, can’t be bought with money. Can’t be bought with anything.”

  “And what is it that you need?” the words came out as little more than a whisper. As somewhat of a plead, betraying my desire to know more of him, to find his loose threads and unravel them until he was in pieces in front of me, until I could dissect him like he was doing to me.

  But he didn’t speak. He just stared at me, challenging me to probe more. Doing that would be showing more than I already had. Betraying that victimhood he had roused within me.

  “You’re not curious about other aspects of the job?” I asked, deducing his silence, his presence meant that he was taking me up on the offer to protect my life.

  To ruin it.

  He shook his head once.

  “Don’t want to know why two people have tried to kill me in the same amount of weeks?” I continued.

  “Tried,” he said. “And failed. That’s all I need to know. And the fact that everyone after the fact will fail too. My job isn’t specifics. That’s what police are for. To protect and serve. Gonna protect you. Won’t fuckin’ serve you, though.”

  I clenched my thighs together. “Contrary to what many of the people in my employ might say, I am not a tyrant,” I said, welcoming my old tone with relief. “I simply require people to do their jobs.”

  “Since my job is keepin’ you alive, I’ll be fuckin’ doin’ my job, Boots.”

  I sucked in a harsh breath.

  “We’ll have to do something about that,” I said, forcing myself to sit slowly back into my chair. As if I weren’t doing it because I didn’t trust my feet underneath me.

  He didn’t move, though I nodded at the seat in front of him. “About what, Boots?”

  I met his gaze and weathered it. “That,” I said through pursed lips. “My employees refer to me as Ms. Crofton.”

  To my face at least. I knew there were plenty of other names they said behind my back. No one had been brave enough to address me in any other way. Until Wolf Eyes.

  “I haven’t remarked on this...nickname before primarily because each of our previous interactions have been under...somewhat strained circumstances.”

  Something moved in his eyes. “You’re callin’ two men trying to kill you and me trying to kill those men ‘strained circumstances’?”

  I pursed my lips. “I am. Do you have another description that serves better?” I made sure I had the appropriate bite to my voice as to respond to the slight teasing in his own.

  I must’ve imagined that, of course I made it my business to read people. Small facial tics. Inflections. Stance. All giveaways to a current state of mind and a permanent state of character.

  But I was getting nothing from him.

  And there was somehow everything in that nothing.

  He didn’t respond to my sharp words, not even a shake of his head. It was meant to unnerve me.

  It worked.

  I didn’t let it show.

  “My point was, from this moment on, you are in my employ and the way in which you address me will reflect that.” I paused and waited for a response. I got none. I itched to stare him down, not blink first, but I knew he would stand there all day. And as much as I was quite content to stare at him for the remaining nine hours of my workday, I couldn’t afford to do that.

  My time was precious.

  Priceless.

  Therefore it was accounted for every moment of the day, down to the minute.

  “Are we clear?” I asked, for the first time in my life, proverbially blinking first.

  His expression didn’t move. “Crystal clear, Boots.”

  And before I could say anything else, primarily reprimand him, he turned on his heel and walked out.

  Him

  Fuck, she was beautiful.

  Hard, but beautiful.

  He didn’t find women beautiful until her. They were all too soft, too weak, to unbroken for him to notice. If he noticed them, then he’d have to come to terms with how absolutely broken he was. How beyond redemption. He didn’t invite introspection, for survival purposes. Therefore he didn’t invite women into his life.

  She wasn’t beyond redemption. But she was broken. And beautiful.

  A fucking enigma.

  Her skin was ivory, everything that had happened to her in the past two weeks should’ve shredded it, but instead it bounced right off that façade that she’d almost perfected.

  Almost.

  He saw through it.

  Only because he saw through everyone. He was trained to do it. He was trained to figure out a human being’s exact weakness and use it to tear them apart.

  He’d relished that. Figuring out how people ticked so he could destroy them. At first, it was okay because those people were the enemy. Those people were monsters creating pain and havoc and threatening his country. He was doing his job tearing them apart.

  But then he liked it too much. Then he began to look just like the monsters he was so sure he was protecting his country from.

  Then shit got bad.

  Bad enough that when he came back here, to the place he’d given his soul to protect, he didn’t fit. Anywhere. Certainly not back into his old life.

  No way was he whole enough to create an entire new one.

  He couldn’t do the only thing he was good at—killing. The only thing left inside his hollowed-out shell so he had no purpose, apart from prowling around the city, if only to quiet the monsters rattling against the bars of his mind, desperate to get out.

  It led him to her.

  And he let the monsters out before he knew what he was doing.

  Twice.

  He had promised himself that he wouldn’t follow her.

  That he would forget her.

  If only to protect her from destruction.

  But he had broken every single promise he made himself so what was another one?

  So he followed her.

  Every single day.

  She fascinated him. She was unlike anything he’d ever witnessed, and he’d witnessed a lot—most of it horrible. She wasn’t horrible, she was fucking magnificent. He did his research, because that was what he did, he collected information just like he collected black marks against his soul.

  She had created a billion-dollar empire from nothing in just shy of a decade.

  He couldn’t find shit on her life before, most likely it was the reason for that hardness behind her eyes. The reason why she’d survived in a world that ate up people and spat them out, and then they were trodden on by stronger, more ruthless and soulless people on the way to the top.

  The top.

  Exactly where she was positioned.

  About to merge with one shady motherfucker. He knew about this man because in his previous life, this man was fucking notorious. But he helped Uncle Sam with the things that they couldn’t officially sign their name to, so he was on their side.

  It was war, after all, they were fighting monsters. And they needed monsters of their own. Of course they never told the general public that. No. Publicity needed loyal and moral soldiers.

  Morals didn’t win wars.

  Monsters did.

  He knew what kind of fucker this guy was.

  It made his skin crawl thinking of her getting wrapped up in that. She could handle it, no doubt. Because she’d handled everything up to this point, but he didn’t want her to.

  And he was sure that this was the reason for two separate skilled assassins trying to take her out.

  They would’ve succeeded, had he not been there, stalking her because his fucked-up brain couldn’t let her go.

 
That haunted him. The vision of her empty eyes staring up at him the first night in the alley. So that’s what had him doing the stupidest fucking thing in the world and going up to her ivory towers and taking the fucking job that would have her close to him every fucking day.

  Closer to destruction.

  He was playing with fire.

  But everything about him had been ice cold for as long as he could remember, so he was relishing the heat.

  “Jacob?” the voice on the other end of the phone uttered in disbelief. “Bro, we thought you fuckin’ died. You dropped off the face of the fucking earth.”

  His hands tightened around the phone with the familiarity of the voice. The concern. He hadn’t talked to someone who knew him in what felt like a lifetime.

  “Need some info,” he bit out, not responding to the greeting. Technically he was alive, his organs were all working. But your heart could beat and you could still be dead inside.

  Luckily, he’d called the right person, Nate was not one to ask for details when no one offered them. He was a cold mother fucker and he only let a certain amount of people in. And once you’d committed sins with someone, you were connected for life.

  Nate had committed almost as many as he had.

  “Tell me what you need.”

  Jacob told him.

  He might’ve told Charlotte he wasn’t going to investigate shit, but he lied.

  Because he didn’t have a conscience to ail him.

  Plus the sooner he eradicated the threat from her life, the sooner he could leave it.

  5

  Charlotte

  I hadn’t expected him to come back, despite the fact he’d given his word and he seemed like a man of his word.

  After yesterday, his exit seemed so cold, so final, I thought maybe he saw the world that I was asking him to be in—the cage I was asking him to be in—and he ran.

  I should’ve known better.

  He was not one to run.

  So he was at the curb outside my building at six sharp. I stopped full on as Ralph opened the door to my car, and the man whose eyes watched my nightmares appeared in front of us.

  Instantly, Ralph was on alert, his hand going inside his suit, and eyes to the man who had melted out of the early morning shadows.

  “It’s okay, Ralph,” I said, recovering quicker than I expected, holding my hand up but my eyes staying on icy eyes. “Um, this is my new employee...” I trailed off.

  I realized I hadn’t gotten his name.

  How in the hell had I gotten this far, gotten in this deep with a man and not even knowing his name? I’d employed him yesterday. I knew everything about a person before I employed them, including the person they lost their virginity to and the teacher in college they’d bribed into giving them an A.

  But I knew nothing.

  Not where he lived.

  Not where he was from.

  How old he was.

  If he even had a college degree.

  Not his fucking name.

  “Jacob,” he said, the voice smooth over the rough morning air.

  His eyes flickered to Ralph, who was eyeing him with a wariness that told me he knew what this man was.

  A threat.

  The man himself was a threat.

  Jacob.

  That was his name.

  It didn’t suit the man in front of me.

  It was too bland. Too normal.

  There was nothing bland, nothing normal about him.

  Jacob was who he used to be, I suddenly thought. Just like Lottie was who I used to be. We’re given one name to carry us through our lives, as if we were only going to be one person. As if life didn’t kill the person we were before with every new tragedy. Every new sunrise. A name could only survive so much. But we were stuck with it, no matter the fact that sometimes the world turned us into something that could never resemble the person we had been before.

  So we were stuck with the name of the dead. The ghost.

  But he wasn’t a ghost.

  He was corporal. His scent imprinted to my very bones as he strode forward, moving slightly in front of me, his eyes on Ralph’s hand, which is still inside his jacket—most likely clutching the Glock that he always wore in a shoulder holster—not extending his hand or softening his features.

  “You hired more security, Ms. Crofton?” Ralph asked, not taking his eyes from Jacob.

  There was something behind his words. Perhaps hurt. Because me hiring someone else to do the job he’d done for years was an insult to this loyal and fiercely protective man. It was telling him I didn’t trust him to do his job.

  Which wasn’t true. I trusted him as much as I could any person. He was exceptional at his job—he wouldn’t have remained in the position if he wasn’t. But he was advancing in years, and he was not tasked with providing serious security, nor did I want to subject him to dangers that would take him from his wife or grandchildren.

  He’d fought enough in his life

  He’d paid his dues.

  I would not be the one to try to charge him more.

  I wasn’t going to say this. Charlotte Crofton didn’t think like that. Nor did she hesitate on the feelings of her employees when she was making decisions.

  “Yes, with everything going on, I thought it would be somewhat sensible to expand the security you already provide,” I said smoothly, as close as I would come to the truth.

  Most people wouldn’t even get an explanation.

  Something flickered in Ralph’s eyes as he inspected Jacob. As if he could see what he was.

  I suspected he could.

  Which was why it took him another three seconds to take his hand from his jacket, the gun inside it and straighten his spine.

  “Ah, very well, Ms. Crofton,” he said. “I am going to have to agree, anything that will reduce the chance of harm coming to you, I will approve of.”

  I pursed my lips, the warmth in his tone hit me somewhere that it shouldn’t. The true concern like that of a father.

  Pain speared the area where my heart used to be.

  “I didn’t do so for your approval,” I said, moving forward toward the car. “I did it because I cannot have any more attempts made on my life when I’ve got a business to run.” My voice was sharp and the edges of it cut me more than it did anyone else.

  I paused halfway inside the door, making a point not to look at Ralph because I couldn’t face the disappointment or hurt that might lay on his face.

  Instead, I focused on pensive wolf eyes.

  Jacob.

  “You will sit in the front with Ralph, of course. He can get you up to speed with my schedule. The two of you can coordinate.”

  I didn’t pause for his response, I just slid into the cool leather interior, flinching when the door shut beside me.

  I closed the partition between the driver’s seat and the back of the town car. I never usually did so. Ralph and I didn’t speak in the mornings. He knew my stance on small talk. But we did enjoy companionable silence. I’d catch his twinkling eyes in the mirror whenever I looked up from my phone and it was nice.

  But no way could I face those eyes now. Especially since I likely stole the twinkle.

  I heard the driver’s door slam shut.

  I expected the front passenger’s to do so too, my eyes glued to my phone.

  Instead, city noises rushed in as the door across from me opened and shut and the air turned from air-conditioned and leathery to stifling and full of him.

  My gaze hit him as the car took off from the curb.

  “I told you to sit in the front,” I bit out.

  “And my job is to protect you,” he replied, looking forward. “Not to sit in the front seat.”

  “Your job is to do as I say,” I said, voice ice.

  “You’re used to that. I’d hazard a guess you could get most people to bend to your will.” His eyes cut to mine. “I don’t bend, ‘cause I’m already broken. And I ain’t here to submit to your will, Boots.”
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br />   I gritted my teeth. “We talked about that name.”

  He didn’t reply. He just stared forward.

  He was ignoring me. No one ignored me. Ever. And if they did, they’d be fired before they could blink.

  I blinked rapidly three times, staring at his profile, his powerful body sitting across from mine. Jeans worn, boots worn, soul worn. Heat erupted in my body and I had an almost uncontrollable urge to jump across the distance between us.

  I was unfamiliar with the feeling. With passion. I was passionate about my job, of course. But with a cold sort of determination. Not with this fire. I didn’t know what to do with it.

  Him.

  I should fire him.

  There were plenty of deadly men around the world who I could pay for protection from the people trying to kill me. Men that didn’t serve as a danger to my previously stable mind while they protected me.

  Instead, I looked back down at my phone, focusing on the emails I was responding to with a fierce concentration I didn’t need.

  I ignored him.

  Or tried to.

  I had thrown myself into work as soon as I’d arrived at the office. Which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was the man who accompanied me into the elevator.

  “You don’t need to come inside the building,” I said as the floor numbers went up. “I’m assuming my workplace is safe and not containing people who want to kill me.” I paused, thinking of my employees. “Or at least it’s not full of people with enough gumption to actually try.”

  Something in his jaw ticked. “Did you just say gumption?”

  Heat flamed in my cheeks, the closest thing to a blush I had ever had. My Midwestern roots had been drummed out of me with sheer will and hours of practice to get rid of my accent. I’d been so sure I’d buried all parts of myself that was connected to that past.

  A decade and I hadn’t so much as let my accent peek out. Minutes with this man and he’d yanked out a piece of me that I was sure was decayed and rotting.

  I gritted my teeth, straightened my back.

  “You’re not needed in the offices,” I said curtly by way of response. I looked straight forward, at the numbers, not moving fast enough. I’d always loved being on the top floor, a literal symbol of where I was sitting.