by Ellen Lane
“What am I to you?” She demanded, her voice low and dangerous. “Tell me, please, Vladimir, because I’m pretty fucking confused.”
His eyes widened in surprise at the venom in her voice. “What do you mean?”
“That interview” She snapped. “I saw it. Everyone in the state probably saw it. Half the people in the country saw it! They saw you denounce me.”
“Charlotte,” Vladimir’s expression sobered, edging on the severity that she hated so goddamn much. “I was merely explaining-”
“Explaining what?” She returned, her voice trembling. “How we fell all over one another in sorrow? How you used me but you’ll always appreciate me because I’m such a valuable subordinate?”
“Charlotte,” Vladimir raked a hand through his hair, his own ire growing now, “I just don’t think that now is the best time to tell the media about your proclamation.”
“My proclamation?” He probably couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d physically struck her. “Is that what it is now? My proclamation? I stood on your doorstep and poured my tender little heart out to you and you took pity on me, did you?”
Her vision was blurring, and Charlotte knew that she was on the edge of angry tears, but she didn’t care. She had given this man her heart and he crushed it under his foot. Not just to her face, but for the entire country to see. “Charlotte, you came with me to New York and you can’t imagine how much I appreciate that, but we have to go back to Los Angeles, and to put this huge label on something you think you feel-”
“Something I think I feel,” Charlotte parroted flatly, her body numb from shock.
“We’ve spent a few weeks together...very intimately. Then my father got sick and emotions were running high. There’s no telling what will happen when we go back to work in Los Angeles. You might feel differently in a week or a month.”
The tears were falling now. She told him she would wait for him...that she would always be there. “Vladimir I’m telling you that I love you and you just told the entire world that I’m some regretful fling.” She shook her head slowly, disappointed in him - but even more disappointed in herself. “And you don’t even know what you did wrong.”
“Let’s be logical about this,” Vladimir returned sharply, “I know what we need, and right now, discretion is the better policy.”
“No,” Charlotte glared at him, her cheeks wet. “You know what you need...and quite frankly, I don’t fucking care anymore.”
Charlotte turned to the coat closet behind her and yanked it open, pulling out her boots and her purse. She didn’t bother with her luggage - she never wanted to set foot in this house again as long as she lived. “Charlotte.” There was a warning in Vladimir’s voice - but there was also something else. A tinge of hysteria that gave her cruel satisfaction. “Where are you going?”
He moved to block her way before Charlotte could get around him and she reacted instantly. Her palm rang out against his cheek with a loud slap, the sound echoing through the open entryway. In the aftermath, the redhead couldn’t make out his expression - her vision was too blurred with moisture. “If I had done that the first day in your office, we both would have been better off.”
With that, she shoved him out of the way, opening the door and fleeing out into the night.
Charlotte wanted nothing more than to find a dark hole and climb into it. She wanted to sob until all the moisture in her body had dried up and she expired from exhaustion. But she could do none of these things. Not yet.
First, she had to get home, where she belonged.
It was an arduous process. Charlotte hoofed it about two miles beyond the Kensley manor before she finally got to a road where she could catch a cab. The ride to the airport ended up being something astronomical, but she hardly paid attention to numbers on the meter. A one-way ticket back to Los Angeles at such short notice was also hard to come by. Across that, there were several people that seemed to have recognized her from TV.
Though Charlotte had only seen the tail end of Vladimir’s interview, it, and the news segment that had prompted it were being looped, over and over, on most of the TVs in the airport. The redhead did her best to keep her head down until she boarded her plane, and even then, she cringed away from those who still whispered maliciously under the breaths.
By the time she finally got back to LA, she was exhausted, body and soul. Uncaring of the cost by this juncture, she called a car to take her back to her apartment. Charlotte once thought she’d be coming back here with Vladimir by her side. She imagined how delighted Delilah would be when she told her what they were working towards.
But now, all of that was gone.
It was three am by the time she got back, but she had barely put her key in the lock before it was jerked open and Lila stood on the threshold. She took one look at Charlotte’s beaten form and opened her arms to her closest friend, tears in her own eyes. “Welcome home, babe.”
Charlotte collapsed into her embrace.
**
Vladimir stayed out on the kitchen terrace until the sun rose. His phone buzzed multiple times in his pocket - until he grew so frustrated that he chucked the damn thing off the balcony just to watch it smash on the paving stones below.
But the gesture didn’t make him feel any better.
Twilight came, and then the first rosy lines of dawn appeared on the horizon.
Vladimir continued to stare at some undetermined point in the distance, inner turmoil consuming him.
She hit him. Slapped him full force. And the way Charlotte had looked at him...as if he were some kind of monster…
This was a mistake. It was all a huge mistake. They just happened to be two people together who had fallen victim to their lusts. Ultimately, the differences that had first separated them couldn’t be overcome. Charlotte didn’t understand his logic. She would never understand his logic.
And God knew he would never understand hers.
So why did he feel this gaping emptiness now that she’d gone? Even worse, guilt consumed him for letting her walk away. Who knew how far she had walked? She could still be walking, for all he knew.
Or she could be on her way back to Los Angeles...where he would eventually have to go to face her.
Christ.
Vladimir was tired. He wanted to sleep...but there was a deep gnawing in his gut that went beyond hunger. That went beyond any discomfort that he’d ever felt...it was almost enough to make him physically ill.
It kept him standing there, on the terrace, long after the sun came up. Long after the flight he’d scheduled to take both he and Charlotte back to Los Angeles took off. He was still leaning against the railing when noon rolled around, wondering what the hell was the matter with him.
When the sun was high in the sky, he caught the glint of a Silver Aston Martin coming down the drive. Of all of them, Ethan was the one who most favored fancy cars - and it was his car that approached. He parked in the drive and strode up to the front door to let himself in. Vladimir wondered if he’d come to visit their father, despite just having gone back to the city the previous day.
But Ethan wasn’t looking to go to the hospital.
No sooner had he laid eyes on Vladimir than he was crossing the kitchen to join him on the terrace. He stood about an arm’s-length away from the dark-haired man, his expression carefully neutral. “Vlad...I’ve been calling you. Everyone has. Where’s your phone?”
“Broken.” He grunted, glancing at the mess of metal and plastic on the stones below.
Ethan merely stared for a moment before opening the briefcase he carried with him. “Here.” He extended a single piece of paper to Vladimir. The taller man glanced over his shoulder, arching a brow.
“What’s that?”
Ethan hesitated a moment before answering. “It’s Charlotte’s written resignation. She’s letting us keep the designs pulling out of both projects she’s working on - in LA and St. Petersburg.”
Vladimir felt as if someone had doused him in
ice water. His gut clenched, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
Resignation. She was resigning.
There would be no conversation - no last chance to try to understand one another. When Vladimir did go back to LA, he would see none of Charlotte.
And it hurt.
A pain that went beyond anything physical. Something visceral and deep that made it hard for him to draw a single breath without struggling. “We’re...going to need to tackle this,” Ethan continued lowly, setting the letter on the terrace railing next to Vlad. “Find someone to take her place. Both projects are going to stall without an architect on site.”
The idea of replacing Charlotte somehow seemed even more blasphemous than that of never seeing her again. Almost as if it couldn’t be real. “Vlad...are you listening to me?”
A beat passed before Vladimir answered him, his tone dull. “I’m listening.”
He was listening, but for the first time in his life, he felt no impetus to do. All the worrying, the need to keep moving without rest...it had stopped.
And, for the first time in his life, it occurred to Vladimir Kensley that he had made one hell of a mistake.
Chapter 13 - Illogical
Going through hardships as a child was much different than going through them as an adult. When Charlotte was nine, the death of her mother had devastated her, but she bounced back. Having no home had made her feel broken and vulnerable, but her father had told her to use the pain to make herself stronger.
And so she had.
But Charlotte wasn’t a child anymore. She couldn’t go running to her father with all her problems - and this was a mess that she was going to have to fix herself.
The first few days back in Los Angeles were sheer agony. The first thing she did was cancel all her contracts with Kensley Enterprises. Of course, she wasn’t so petty that she wouldn’t allow them to keep the designs and finish the building, but she wouldn’t be on site. In fact, she wouldn’t go within five miles of the damned thing if she could help it.
Abandoning her contracts meant abandoning the remainder of her salary - most of which was set to be paid upon completion of the structures she worked on.
Which meant that Charlotte was all the way back to square one. She had managed to squirrel away ten, maybe twenty thousand dollars - but that wasn’t enough to start her own firm. In LA, that was barely enough to live on for six months.
Which meant that she had to get a new job.
That, perhaps, was the hardest. It had been difficult enough for Charlotte to find work before the fiasco with Kensley Enterprises - now it seemed as if her name preceded her everywhere she applied. Of course, when she quit the Kensley and Dansk projects so soon after the news scandal, it had only seemed to confirm that the nasty lies about her were true. No one wanted to touch her.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
Charlotte was used to job hunting in vain. Once she had graduated architecture school, she had spent almost a year searching for work before she was hired at a firm - and she could be patient.
The worst part was reliving the last six months...wondering where the hell she had gone wrong.
Delilah, for her part, tried to lift her out of her doldrums. The first night Charlotte arrived back in LA, she let the redhead cry until she had exhausted herself. When she woke, Lila made sure she ate, even though she said she had little appetite.
But it wasn’t just her appetite for food that had gone. Charlotte found she had little interest in anything at all...even her drawing table. It was as if any and all inspiration had simply fled without a trace. On her way back from Russia, her head had been full to bursting with ideas. She was eager to have a pencil and paper in hand.
But that was before New York. Before everything fell apart.
Charlotte hadn’t gotten a letter back from Kensley Enterprises after her resignation. She did her best not to think about it. In reality, she’d gotten lucky. They could have sued her for breaking contract and leaving them high and dry. But, somehow, she couldn’t imagine Vladimir or his father being so petty.
Charlotte was listless. Her insomnia returned full force and, without inspiration to draw, she stayed up half the night watching old movies she had no interest in. In her astoundingly dull life, only one thing remained plainly vivid: her memories of Vladimir.
She was stupid to have gotten involved with him. Stupid to think that he could ever understand her, and now, she was even stupider still to dwell on memories that only hurt her. The first time he kissed her...How he’d shown her around St. Petersburg...the way he complimented her in her gray dress.
The dress was still in the Kensley Manor, and, honestly, Charlotte was probably better for it.
One day, about two weeks after she had returned to Los Angeles, Lila came home from work early. As usual, she grabbed the mail on her way in and sifted through it, pausing when she came upon a letter addressed to Charlotte. Glancing at the redhead sprawled on the couch she scanned it quickly before making a face. “Charlotte.”
The elder woman raised her head slightly. “Hi Lila.”
“Hi Lotte.” Biting her lip, Lila rounded the couch to sink down next to her friend. “Lotte, your old company sent you something. They say they’d be willing to rehire you.”
Charlotte showed no visible reaction to this, her eyes sliding closed. “Mm.”
It was insulting for Lila to read further, and she only did it because she knew that Charlotte needed work...and no one wanted to give it to her. In the space of a month, she’d gone from up-and-coming to outcast, and all because of Vladimir fucking Kensley. If she ever saw the man again, Lila would throttle him. “You’d have to take a ten percent pay cut and sign a two year non-compete clause, along with a contract.”
Charlotte exhaled a long breath and Lila found her own chest tight. She hated this. It was like something in her best friend had broken, and there was nothing she could do to fix it.
“Ok.” Charlotte’s words jerked the blonde out of her reverie and her eyes widened.
“Ok what?”
“‘Ok’ I’ll go back to the firm.”
“Charlotte!” Lila all but screeched in outrage. “This is fucking exploitation! There’s no way you can accept this!” Now, she regretted even opening the damn thing!
But Charlotte did accept it. A week later she was back at work - eight hour days, five days a week. Somehow, it wasn’t as bad as she remembered it. She was lucky there was no pressure to come up with her usual designs, as her well had run dry. It was easy enough to draw lines straight up and down on paper - and people liked that sort of thing, even if she found it uninspired.
She wasn’t the top designer at the company - but then, she had never achieved that title before. People had wanted her before because she was unique. An oddity. Now the firm just wanted her back to exploit the buzz around her name.
Either way, she was making money again. She could support herself. Charlotte had dreaded the possibility of having to ask her father for money. The man had already called her and told her that he would provide her with anything she needed during the difficult time in her life, as well as threatening to wring the necks of both Jackson Kensley and his second oldest son...but Charlotte had dissuaded him.
She didn’t blame Jackson, and she wouldn’t want her father’s long-standing relationship with his friend souring because of a misconception. She wished Jackson Kensley nothing but the best and, secretly, seeing news of his improvement due to his chemo treatments was one of the only things that lifted her spirits.
Vladimir returned to Los Angeles about a week after she did - and there was a lot of buzz around him too. After his first official media appearance, they couldn’t seem to get enough of him - even though he had reverted to his old ways. He avoided the cameras whenever possible, and spoke to no one.
Not that Charlotte was watching.
It was strange to know that he was only ten miles away from her - the workaholic back in his element. Charlotte won
dered if he had already written her off as an imperfection in the perfect alignment of his life.
It was the first time she actually cried since that first night back from New York, and then she grew angry about how much the thought of the man still upset her.
Eventually, she promised herself, she would get over him. It hurt now, but maybe three months in the future...or six…. perhaps even a year on, this would all be just a faint memory. A subscript in the tale of her life. Her inspiration would return and, somehow, she would dig herself out of the rut into which she’d slid.
That was what she needed to think about now. Wasting any more time on Vladimir Kensley was a lost cause.
**
“Vlad.”
He spent a lot of time in his office. When Vladimir was working, he didn’t have to think about anything else...and that was how he liked it.
“Vlad.” In truth, Vladimir didn’t even know why he had bothered to keep his hotel reservation. There was a plush armchair in his office, and a long sofa...he could sleep here. It just meant that he could get more done.
“Vladimir.” The third time his name was called, he finally looked up to see who was in the doorway - and dropped his pen in surprise.
It was Ethan.
The last time he’d spoke to Ethan was on the phone, a week ago. Either he or Lucas called weekly to give him updates on their father’s condition. Jackson was almost done with his first round of treatment, and soon, they would be sending him home to rest. Vladimir knew he should be overjoyed, but these days, he found it an effort to just be. The work that he used to revel in now exhausted him...but he still kept up. He had never fallen behind, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“Ethan...what a nice surprise.” Vladimir meant every word, but the statement came out sounding lackluster.
“You sound thrilled.” Ethan’s response was sardonic and he tossed his leather duffel onto the floor before stepping into the office. “I just got in... thought I’d come and pay you a visit.”