by Amelia Wilde
It’s after five o’clock, almost time for me to snatch my purse out of my desk and get the hell out of here, when I find it.
The emails from the tech department are by far the most numerous, and they’re mostly indecipherable messages interspersed with pieces of data that only someone with a technology fetish could even begin to understand. It makes for mind-numbing reading. Worst of all, they outsource some of their processing tasks to vendors off-site, and some of those are in foreign countries.
So far, the countries I’ve managed to identify are almost entirely unrelated, although there’s something to be said for relaying data through a third party. Headquarters doesn’t think that’s what’s happening. Based on the way the information is being used, they’re fairly sure it’s a direct handoff. Otherwise, we’d see similarities popping up along the chain.
Then, at the end of another similarly boring email, a single word catches my eye.
Beijing.
“Are you heading home for the night, Viv?”
It’s Stephanie, one of the other chief executive assistants, poking her head in through the office door. She has her purse slung over her shoulder and a new coat of lipstick on. I glance back at my screen. It’s almost five-thirty.
“The time got away from me,” I say with a laugh, and switch off my screen. “Thanks for the warning—I might have sat here all night!”
“What a waste of a day!” She gives me a little wave and heads for the elevators.
I switch the screen back on, carefully to eject the flash drive properly, and drop it into my purse.
On the street outside, I wave down a cab and tell him to get to my apartment as fast as he can.
I have work to do.
Back at my apartment, I throw on a pair of shorts and a tank top and park myself on the couch with my laptop. I’m going to figure this out. My heart beats fast. This is a break, and I know it. I just need to figure it out.
I keep searching through the emails from the tech department. They don’t always come from the same address, but they have some features in common. I start scribbling them down on a stray notepad that was shoved down in the bottom of my purse. Then I jot down things I’m going to need to check out to make this stick. It might be common for people in that department to use different addresses for outside vendors—I don’t know. I don’t even know how many people work there.
My mind is humming with it, buzzing with it, and I’m almost there. I can feel it. I need—
The knock at the door jolts me out of my flow.
I stop typing and hold my breath. There are no windows near my apartment door, so if I pretend I’m not here, they’ll leave me alone.
The knock comes again. “Vivienne?”
All the irritation I’ve been swallowing down all day rushes up from my chest, and I slap the cover of the laptop down and toss it a little too harshly, along with the notepad, onto my coffee table. Dominic was having a bad day yesterday, and he was an ass, and for once in my life, I want to focus on my job. I want to be left alone.
It has nothing to do with the ache in my heart from the harsh tone he used with me.
I yank open the doorway and glare up at him. He’s clearly come straight from the office. “What is it?”
He looks at me, eyes wide. “I’m sorry if you’re having a bad day.”
“My day is fine. Yesterday wasn’t so fine.” I take in a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “I don’t want to talk about this now, Dominic. I have work to do.”
Shit. I didn’t mean to say that—I definitely didn’t mean to say that.
“We can talk tomorrow.” I start to close the door, but he puts his hand up against it.
“You have work? That’s why you can’t talk to me?”
“I don’t want to talk to you. That’s the main idea.”
“Do you have a second job?”
Jesus. “No.”
“Then talk to me, Vivienne. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. It was out of line, and I shouldn’t have taken out my heat stroke on you.”
He’s trying to be funny, and I’m not in the mood. “Tomorrow, Dominic.”
He presses his lips into a thin line. “Now, Vivienne.”
“I’m busy.”
“Doing what? There’s no way you have work from Overhiser. Not tonight. He’s been checked out for hours.”
“I’ve taken on a couple of side jobs.” The lie is stupid, pointless, but I’m angry and I want him to leave.
“What side jobs?”
“I don’t have to tell you that.”
“What the hell, Vivienne?” His frustration is boiling over. “You’re lying to me.”
Right then, I have a choice.
And I choose to double down.
36
Dominic
Vivienne stands up tall, fire flaming in her green eyes, her jaw set tight. “I’m not lying to you.”
“Is it that you’re pissed at me over one thing I said, or do you actually have some other job that you’ve not mentioned—at any point—since we started seeing each other?”
“Can’t it be both?”
I step into her apartment, and she backs up only enough to let me through the door. This isn’t the kind of argument that should be had in the middle of the hallway. Still, she’s not going to invite me in—that much is clear.
“I don’t know why you won’t tell me the truth.”
“I did tell you the truth. I don’t want to talk to you, and I have work to do, and you’re interrupting it.”
“You can’t take a break for five minutes so I can apologize to you?”
“You’ve done that. Now you can leave.” Her hands are trembling. I’m torn between wanting to wrap her in my arms and turn around and walk back out the door.
I look over her shoulder. Whatever work she’s been doing has clearly been on the laptop that’s shoved onto the coffee table.
I take a deep breath and try to lower my voice. “We’ve talked about everything for the past few weeks.” I’m trying to appeal to the fact that a week ago she trusted me to take her past what I know was a sensitive boundary for her. “You trust me, Vivienne.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but she can’t help leaning toward me.
“Tell me the truth.”
Those are the wrong words to say. Vivienne’s jaw clenches. “I’m not doing this.”
“You’re definitely not having a productive conversation with me, no.”
“How many times are you going to make me say it?” Now her voice is the one spiraling out of control. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
I should let this go. I should throw my hands up and walk out of here, and I should try again when she’s in the mood to talk, when she’s not busy working—on whatever the hell work that she could possibly have.
But what she’s saying rings false. It’s Tuesday night, and Overhiser has been gone for hours. The man leaves as early as humanly possible, so there’s plenty of time in the afternoon to finish everything for the rest of the week. It’s not like I have experience being a chief executive assistant, but Vivienne hasn’t been secretive about the fact that her boss leaves early in the afternoon.
I want to know the truth.
And my heart is pounding, so hard it feels like it might leap out of my chest.
And it’s been a long day, a long week, a long time since I had a vacation, and that’s my fault, but all of it is boiling up, boiling over. I want a moment of real honesty with her that I can point to and say that that was when I knew—that was when I knew for sure—that she wasn’t part of any of the bullshit that’s been going on.
“What’s your other job, Vivienne?”
She breathes in hard through her nose. “I’m. Done.”
“Done with what?”
“This.” She snaps her hand between us. “If you can’t respect what I want, if you can’t—”
“What you want? I’m asking a simple question. It’s frankly more tha
n a little strange that someone would come home in the middle of the week and pick up more work. And I’d get that, except you wanted an afternoon off yesterday to drag me to some children’s amusement park.”
I’m out of control, and there’s no going back. I can tell that the words are hurting her, have wounded her in a way that maybe I didn’t anticipate. And since I’m already over the cliff—
“You’re lying to me, Vivienne, you’re lying about something, and I’m not going to have it. I’m not going to let you take my focus off what really matters if you’re not going to be honest with me.”
“What really matters?” She spits the words, but her voice is barely above a whisper. “What really matters, like your business? Like your money?” Her mouth twists in disgust. “You’re like all the rest of them, Dominic.”
It’s a body blow, and she knows it, knows it from the glancing conversations we’ve had about my dad, about my mom, about the fact that I built his business back up into something from the scraps he left for me to pick up—these conversations that have never gone very far because the sore spots are still too raw.
“You’re right.”
The words coming out of my mouth surprise even me, and Vivienne’s lips part, her forehead furrowing. “What—”
“You’re right.” Another surge of anger, another tidal wave crashing over me. “I’m like all the rest of the rich men you’ve been dating all this time—” Dripping with sarcasm, I’m dripping in rage. “—and you’re like all the women I’ve dated, scrabbling for a man’s money because they don’t want to make it for themselves. You’re right.” I raise both hands in the air in a cruel parody of surrender. “You’re right, and I’m wrong, and you know what, Vivienne Davis? We’re done. We’re over.”
I turn my back on her and she sucks in a pained breath. My hand is on the doorknob, my chest is exploding with my rage, and I turn back. “I’m not going to fire you,” I spit at her. “I’m not going to fire you—so we’re clear—because I don’t need a lawsuit and some media frenzy from the kind of woman you are. So keep your job. That’s all you’re going to have from me from now until the end of time.”
Then I’m stalking down the hallway, jaw clenched so tight I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to open my mouth again, not sure that I’ll ever want to. I’m in the elevator when my phone rings in my pocket.
“What?”
“Dominic—”
Her voice sounds panicked, sounds stretched to its breaking point, but I can’t. I can’t right now. Maybe not ever.
“No, Vivienne. I’m done. We’re done.”
I hang up the phone.
I take in a breath.
I let it back out.
I’m done.
37
Vivienne
I toss my phone onto the couch and it bounces off the cushions and onto a piece of hardwood flooring not covered by the rug. I didn’t throw it particularly hard, but when it makes contact, there’s a crack that makes my heart sink even farther down past my toes.
“Shit.” I run my hands through my hair and leap toward it. It’s way too late. I kneel at the edge of the area rug in my living room and pick it up. The glass screen is shattered. My knees in the carpet, the cracks in the screen spider-webbing out from near the corner—kneeling in Dominic’s apartment, sheer joy on his face, my career like a broken phone—pushes me over the edge from a bizarre panicked calm to a sobbing mess.
The first heaving cry takes me by surprise, but not the rest of them. My heart is shattered, too, and the ache in my chest is so strong. Am I having a heart attack?
No. This is a bad breakup.
It’s the worst kind of breakup, because we were working in secrecy and now I can’t tell anyone about it. I can’t even tell Margo, because I never told Margo I was sleeping with the billionaire who owns the company which I’m working undercover at in the first place.
I laugh bitterly through a sob. How would I even explain that to another person? He’s my boss, but that’s not the real problem, because he’s not really my boss—
The howl that rises in my chest is so dramatic, so over the top, that I stifle it with both hands as another arc of pain singes from my ribs to my toes.
Then I stand up, leaving the broken phone on the carpet.
I take a deep breath.
The first ten deep breaths fail to have any effect whatsoever, but I keep at it, doggedly, determinedly, for twenty minutes before I can stop sobbing.
Get a hold of yourself, Vivienne.
I say it over and over in my mind, and finally am reduced to saying it out loud until I’ve swallowed enough sobs that they’re held at bay in my chest, a heavy point below my sternum, and not pouring out of my mouth.
Okay.
Okay.
One more breath, and I take a seat on the couch and run through what I know. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, and it hasn’t seemed to help, but maybe the millionth time is the charm.
Dominic knows more than he’s letting on.
He knows—now, thanks to me—that I have some kind of second job apart from Wilder Enterprises.
Dominic is done with me.
The tears threaten to come again—another failed exercise. No matter what I do, I can’t think of a way through this, or out of it, without coming clean to Dominic.
And I can’t come clean to him about what my job is without blowing the cover on the whole investigation. Even if I thought I could trust him with the information, if word ever got out that I compromised myself to someone who’s directly involved like he is, I’d never work undercover again. My career would effectively be over.
But he knows something is up, and that’s the ballgame. A man like Dominic isn’t going to stay around to be played. I’m sure other women in his life have done the same thing.
Which is probably why there haven’t been many other women, from what I understand, because weighed against what’s really important…
This is pointless, and I get up from the couch again, frustrated at my own inability to get out of this spiral of thought.
I pick up the phone from the floor. The screen might be cracked, but it still works, in its way. The first person I dial is Milton Jeffries, clearing my throat as the call connects.
“Do you have an update?”
“I broke my phone. Can you have someone from the department courier a new one over?”
Milton sighs. “That’s all?”
“I’m on the verge of a break, Milton. Give me a little more time.”
“Sending someone now.”
At least he doesn’t feel like chatting. My voice hitched on the word break, and if we go on much longer, I’ll be forced to say some phrase like Wilder Enterprises and that would make me look like such a strong and capable employee if I broke down crying on the phone to my boss.
No.
I lift my chin, sitting down in front of the computer again, opening the screen.
Where was I?
My throat aches with the effort of holding all of this in, but the fact of the matter—the fact of the matter, I say to myself in my harshest internal tone—is that I want my career to be incredible, and I don’t need to be with Dominic Wilder to do it. In fact, it would be best for both of us if I was without him.
This scene didn’t play out how I wanted, but in a way, it’s for the best. His attention can be where it needs to be, and my attention can be focused on tracking down the person who’s trying to undermine him.
“I wish him the best. I really do,” I say out loud in my empty apartment, like I’m trying to convince Margo that this isn’t a big deal after all.
It takes forty-five minutes, during which time the courier arrives with a new phone and takes away the shattered one, for me to figure out what the emails are trying to tell me, what the emails have been hiding all along.
I stare down at the notepad where I’ve been scribbling details.
There’s nowhere else to go from here.
But I�
��m going to bide my time. Making an unscheduled visit to Wilder Enterprises right now might upset the balance of everything.
And I don’t want to run into Dominic.
I pick up the new phone, slip it into my purse, and then get my real phone from the bedroom.
Margo answers on the first ring.
“You’d better be calling to invite me to dinner, Miss Missing-In-Action.”
“I know.” At least the sincerity in my voice, the sadness, is real. “I am. I’m starving and I want to see my best friend.”
“Woah,” she laughs. “Don’t get too emotional, amiga. We’ve only been apart for a couple of weeks.”
“It’s too long,” I cry, and Margo laughs harder.
“Sushi?”
“Perfect.”
“Meet me outside your building in half an hour.”
I hang up, strip off my clothes, and throw myself into the shower.
All the water in the world can’t rinse away this piercing heartbreak, but it’s all I’ve got…for now.
38
Dominic
Craig knows something is up as soon as I get into the car, but one glance in the rearview mirror and he thinks better of asking what it is. I bark at him to take me to the penthouse.
Once I’m inside, I have no earthly idea what to do with myself.
Over and over, I reach for my phone to message her, to call her back, to tell her that all of this was some kind of terrible mistake. That it happened because I’m tired. That it happened because I canceled my vacation and when I got back to the office some kind of crazy undercover shit storm was happening, and the FBI didn’t want me to get involved in discovering who the culprit is. That the heat in the city gets to me when it’s oppressive like this.
There are a thousand reasons for this to have happened, and all of them are stupid, senseless.
I’m in the penthouse ten minutes, pacing around and getting absolutely nowhere, before I text Craig to come back around.