doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  I didn’t have the energy to fend him off, so I braced for it.

  Vaughn lifted his hand as if to touch me, then it hovered midair. He looked behind me, narrowed his eyes into a cold death glare. “You’re meant to be fucking protecting her. What is this?”

  Jacob had been situated behind my desk as soon as I sat down.

  He was yet to speak a word to me this morning.

  “Vaughn,” I warned.

  His eyes snapped back to me. “No, don’t try and talk me down,” he hissed. “I don’t care how scary he is, I’m not going to bite my tongue. He needs a dressing down, and one I definitely will not enjoy. I mean...” He trailed off, his eyes watering. “Jesus, Char,” he whispered, voice broken. “What happened?”

  “What happened was Kershaw got desperate,” I said, satisfaction in my tone. I wasn’t glad for the beating, that was for sure. But I now realized, with the clarity my office offered, that beating me up wasn’t trying to make me look weak, it was trying to hide how vulnerable he was becoming.

  I should’ve seen it sooner.

  Classic male move.

  “No, what happened is he’s trying to show you what he’ll do if you don’t rethink walking out of the deal,” he snapped.

  “He didn’t do this to make me reconsider the merger,” I said. “The merger is dead, buried and decomposed. He did this to send a message. He’s doing this to try and take me down. Make me look weak. Put a kink in the armor.” I pushed from the desk. “He will fail. I don’t wear armor. I wear couture.”

  I sharpened my gaze at Vaughn. “Now, you’ve got work to do that isn’t getting done in here.”

  My dismissal was clear. My words as cold as they had been with Molly this morning. Distance from people who cared about me was integral if I was going to win.

  Vaughn’s jaw tightened.

  I waited for him to argue.

  Instead, he nodded tightly and walked out.

  “You’re going to take him down,” Jacob said from behind me.

  I didn’t look back as I sat back down, pain ricocheting through my body as I did so.

  “I know.”

  17

  I kept myself in my office all day, for obvious reasons.

  Luck didn’t strike me last night, but it did today. I didn’t have any meetings, so I could stay in my office without it seeming unusual. If I had meetings, I wouldn’t have canceled them, because changing a single thing about my day, about how I did business was letting Kershaw think he’d won.

  No one changed how I did business.

  I would have to face my employees and business associates at some point. I ached to hide out in my apartment for however long it took me to heal. But hiding wasn’t my style. The only thing that was worse than showing all the world my wounds was hiding them. It was the strongest play from a seemingly weak hand.

  I wasn’t going to stay in this position for long.

  Jacob had been in the office the entire day.

  He didn’t speak. He sat stiff, reading Shantaram, glancing at me every few moments.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” Vaughn announced after he knocked and walked into the room.

  “If it’s Molly, then tell her that I’m fine and take her to some horrible vegan café to appease her,” I replied, glancing back down. The truth was, I couldn’t face seeing my sister. Not after this morning. She’d texted to check in hourly. I dutifully texted back.

  “It’s not Molly,” he said. “It’s a rather attractive detective who doesn’t seem to take no for an answer. Which is my favorite kind of man,” he added playfully.

  Ah, so luck was not on my side anymore.

  Only fools relied on luck anyway.

  “Send him in,” I sighed.

  Vaughn paused. “Really? You’re not going to sic Rambo on him?”

  I glanced up to Vaughn, raising my brow.

  “I’ll just send him in,” he said.

  He walked away.

  Jacob put his book down. “Detective?”

  I locked eyes with him. “He handled my cases. And your dead bodies. Very efficient. And very curious about my unlikely savior.”

  Jacob stiffened, but he didn’t have a chance to reply since the man himself walked through the door.

  “Ms. Crofton,” Detective Maloney greeted, looking down at his phone, looking up at me, “sorry that was—” he cut himself off abruptly as his eyes landed on me.

  He froze as he took stock of the visual injuries, of which there was a substantial amount. My makeup did a good enough job, but not better than the man that beat me.

  Interestingly, he didn’t adopt the mask that law enforcement officers needed to learn to perfect living with horror every day. His face morphed into something resembling fury.

  “Jesus,” he gritted out, striding across the room to stand right in front of my desk.

  “Forgive me if I don’t stand to greet you,” I said in response.

  “Who did this?” he demanded.

  “It’s not important.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Of course it’s important. Someone does that, it’s not only important, it’s a crime. Why didn’t you report this?”

  “Because even if I did, you wouldn’t catch the person who was responsible,” I replied, voice even, not glancing to Jacob, who I knew was watching this exchange intently, noting the personal way in which the detective was addressing me. I wondered if he was jealous. He didn’t strike me as a jealous person, but then again, I hadn’t considered myself one until I’d drawn up a legal document forbidding Jacob to take anyone to bed but me.

  “Reporting it would have been a waste of time, for both you and me. And my time is expensive, yours is better served elsewhere.”

  The detective flattened his palms on my desk. “No, someone is targeting an innocent woman, someone who obviously isn’t going to stop until they’ve got her in a coffin. My time is served making sure as shit that doesn’t happen.”

  I raised my brow. “We both know I’m far from innocent,” I replied. “And I work in a business that is dominated by men, violence is inevitable. I stepped into the ring, so to speak, I’m not going to flinch from a couple of blows.”

  “This is business, not a fucking Fight Club,” he hissed. “You’re not meant to get beaten to a pulp as a result of business.”

  “Nothing happens as it’s meant to in life, Detective,” I replied. “I’m sure you’ve learned that tenfold over your impressive career.”

  He blinked, then his face evened. “Should’ve known you would’ve looked into me.”

  Of course I did. One of the first things I’d done the morning after the alley—the morning that seemed a lifetime ago—I’d done extensive checks on his background, family, and vulnerability to bribes. He knew sensitive information about one of the most powerful CEOs in New York. It was worth a hefty price. And he didn’t get paid well, even as a detective. Not when he was supporting his mother in Long Island and had a brother in college who routinely asked him for money. He was well regarded as a detective. Closed a high number of cases, in New York standards, when forty percent of murders in the city went unsolved. So the fact that the two I was attached to had no leads wasn’t uncommon, but it was obviously bothering the detective, hence his presence in my office.

  His eyes flickered to Jacob, who I knew he hadn’t been ignoring—he was a man trained to acknowledge threats, and there was no ignoring the fact that Jacob was a human threat—but he had obviously been somewhat taken aback by my appearance.

  “Who is this?” he asked, running his gaze over Jacob with a wary glint.

  I didn’t miss the way his hand went to the butt of his weapon, likely out of instinct.

  Yes, he saw the threat in Jacob.

  “This is my personal security,” I replied.

  “Doesn’t look like he’s been very successful,” he bit out.

  I didn’t expect the blow to land on Jacob, since he was Jacob, but I was surprised with the physical and palpable response
. His fists clenched, jaw wired, and the impassive look was all but wiped from his face.

  “The fact that I’m here to warn you against getting in some kind of brawl inside my office proves the fact he’s very successful at his job,” I said, keeping my voice even.

  Detective Maloney eyed him for a long time then returned his gaze to me. “Do I want to know what I’d find if I demand his name, run it through the system?” he asked, nodding to Jacob.

  “Nothing,” I said, voice tight. “You’d find nothing. And I encourage you to settle with nothing. You’re a detective in New York, you know how this works. You’re a good cop, good person, so it doesn’t sit well with you. But you don’t have the power or means to change it. I have both. I like you, Detective Maloney. Which is why I haven’t used my power or means to stop you from looking into things that I am seeing to myself.” I paused. “If you keep doing so, I will be forced to forget the fact I like you.”

  He stiffened. “Are you threatening an officer, Ms. Crofton?”

  I met his hostile stare evenly. “No. I don’t threaten anyone.” I paused long and hard. “New York is an ugly city, Detective. You have four open cases right now. People who have little means or power are in need of your services. I’d encourage you to focus your considerable skills there.”

  His attractive face wrinkled with fury and he clenched his fists at his sides, looking between Jacob and I. I knew that he was wrestling with his moral compass, his obvious need for justice and abhorrence for corruption. I was corrupted, and he hadn’t seen that at the start. But absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I didn’t deign to be special or different than my male counterparts.

  I deigned to be better.

  “No one is above the law, Ms. Crofton,” he bit out.

  I smiled and glanced out my window. “Take a look, Detective,” I invited. “Everyone who has this view is above the law.”

  His practiced gaze was still on me when I looked back. “No, eventually, everyone comes tumbling down,” he said. And then he turned on his heel and walked out.

  The third person today who had compassionate intentions toward me that I’d treated with such coldness. It must’ve been a record.

  Not for the cold tone.

  But for the amount of compassion I’d never received in such a concentrated dose.

  Without suffering, there could be no compassion.

  “I can take care of him.”

  The words jerked me out of the pointless philosophical thoughts.

  I turned to Jacob.

  His face was cold, measured, dangerous.

  “No,” I said. “He’s a good man.”

  “Good men die just like the bad ones,” he replied.

  I nodded. “I expect so. But I would request you not harm the detective.”

  His eyes were ice. “He could get in the way of what you’re doing.” He nodded to the laptop screen. Jacob was the only one who knew the exact details of my takedown of Kershaw. Unprecedented. Even when I did let Vaughn in on hostile takeovers, he never got it all.

  Jacob had all of me, personally.

  And he had all of my business.

  Because the two were not separate.

  And it turned out that Jacob had valuable ideas on how to destroy Kershaw, my way. Which didn’t involve blood or death.

  I glanced back to my laptop. “He could,” I agreed. “And if it gets to the point where he threatens it, we’ll reevaluate. But I’m not in the habit of assassinating anyone who gets in the way of what I want. Call me old fashioned.”

  Jacob’s jaw twitched. “Boots, the old fashioned way is killing everyone that gets in your way.”

  I fought a smile at the strange and attractive lightness in Jacob’s tone. The dry joke unpinned by a very real threat.

  “Well, let’s hope the killing is done with,” I responded after a beat.

  All lightness left Jacob. “The killing is never done with.”

  It took weeks for me to heal.

  Physically at least.

  I’d healed the second the water had run over me when Jacob put me in the shower. I’d healed in a way that I let the scars of the event sink past my skin and hide themselves safely in my bones. Turned them into something I’d avoid, deny, until my mission was done, at least.

  And it was—almost done, that was.

  It was driving Vaughn crazy, me seemingly not doing anything as a form of retribution. He wasn’t used to me being immobile in matters of revenge. Of fighting back. He’d been on the front lines with me and knew I never hesitated to strike strong and fast.

  But this was different.

  It didn’t sit well with me, keeping secrets from Vaughn, when he was the one person left in the company I could trust. But letting him in on what I was doing would put him at risk. I wouldn’t do that.

  I wasn’t about to put anyone I cared about at risk.

  Which was why I was at Molly’s apartment, trying to convince her to take the company jet anywhere remote, away from the danger I was part of. That I was creating.

  “I’m not leaving you,” she said, folding her arms. “I don’t run away from anything, not that Thai prince who tried to trick me into marrying him, not those cops who tried to forcibly remove me from the heritage building I chained myself to last year, and certainly not from my sister who is only just recovering from being beaten to a pulp inside her apartment,” she gritted out, voice steel.

  I sighed, knowing that tone, that was the tone she adopted when she declared she was going vegan, that she wasn’t letting me give her a car service so she didn’t have to take the subway or that she was chaining herself to that heritage building in The Projects.

  My sister might’ve been a free spirit, but that didn’t mean her resolve was weak. It was stronger than mine.

  “It’s not running away,” I said, trying one last ditch attempt at arguing with her. “It’s just giving me some peace of mind.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Since when has your mind ever been peaceful?”

  I smiled. “Touché.”

  Her face changed. “What I’m worried about is your safety. Char, are you sure it’s worth doing whatever you’re doing? And despite how it appears and what Vaughn’s been complaining about, I know you’re doing something.”

  Vaughn and Molly were close, closer than me and Vaughn, or maybe in different ways. She let him in, invited him to dinner parties and such. She gave him the warmth I couldn’t offer. She gave the world the warmth I couldn’t offer.

  “It’s worth it,” I replied. “Because without me doing anything, I’m not worth anything.”

  She crossed the room and cupped my face in her paint-stained hands. “Oh, Char, you’re worth everything. Without your empire and your ivory tower. I wish you could see it.”

  She bit her lip.

  “I wanted to save this, for the right moment. Which I guess this is.”

  She let me go to walk across the room, dodging paint cans and palettes effortlessly.

  She reached behind a large, unfinished canvas to pull something out. It was framed.

  Interesting. Molly rarely framed anything. She believed her art should be raw, right within touching distance, if the viewer so wished it. She didn’t want the paint “caged.”

  When she set it down in front of me, I knew why this was caged.

  Because it was me.

  The same way she had captured Jacob in a wolf, she somehow captured me in this. It was a building. One side white, smooth, hard edges. Completely stark and cold. The sky surrounding it was the palest of blues it was almost white. It was split directly down the middle. Stark and jolting, the other half was saturated with color, life, magnificence. Sparks of gold light up the midnight sky beyond it, magic saturated into the tower.

  My breath was stolen from my lungs at seeing how my sister represented me. How she saw me.

  There was reverence, strength, and love in the painting. It was a building, but somehow, it was me. She’d made me into everything I was a
nd wasn’t. Hard, and soft. Cold and warm. Somehow she’d pulled things out of me that I didn’t realize were there, like Jacob had, and she’d put them on a canvas in a way that only Molly could do.

  “Doyenne,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  I turned to look at her profile, she was still looking at the canvas.

  “That’s the name of it,” she continued.

  I looked again. “A prominent woman, respected in her field,” I said, calling up the definition from where I’d stumbled across it in some reading I’d been doing for the names on the cosmetic line.

  “That’s a perfect name,” I said. “For you.”

  She turned to face me, smiling. “It’s not me. It’s you. The painting is you. You’re Doyenne.”

  I blinked at her. I’d had enough people shower me with empty praise, stick me with labels, some kind, most not so much. I was aware of my accomplishments, that they were unlike anyone, man or woman, would add to their lists of things achieved at the ends of their lives.

  Molly had always celebrated and supported each of those achievements. Usually with various over the top, exuberant gestures or parties.

  But the painting, her small smile, whispered words, it hit me unlike any other kind of praise had before. I couldn’t explain it, but this moment seemed poignant. I couldn’t grasp the reason why. It felt nice, but something crawled up my spine. A kind of warning. Maybe it was the simple feeling of happiness that had crept up on me these past months, despite the turmoil of my professional life and the murder attempts, and being beaten within an inch of my life.

  I was unfamiliar with such a feeling. Though Jacob didn’t make me happy. He made me something a lot more, and a lot less.

  He was my constant. Silent, sentinel, marble during daylight hours. When he wasn’t shoving me into empty conference rooms or a bathroom at a restaurant and unleashing his animal.

  When he came home to the penthouse, cooked dinner, fed me in every way he could, he was still cold. He was still...wrong. But he belonged to me in all his wrongness. I was greedy to own him beyond this. Perhaps why I’d stretched this revenge out. Though it was complicated and dangerous.

  I’d found a home in that danger.