by Score, Lucy
“And then there’s La Sophia. They have one hour to issue a public apology and abandon their claim to my patent. I imagine they’ll want that payment they gave you back. So what it all comes down to is you have nothing, Lita. Exactly what you deserve.”
“You fucking cunt. At least I stripped you of that title you were so proud of. At least I have that.” She gritted her teeth.
It still wasn’t enough for her. I could see it in her eyes, shiny with rage.
“Funny story. I didn’t actually resign. I orchestrated a buyout. A very generous one. Oh, and Derek and I are partners now. In his firm and my lab,” I said cheerfully. “So it all worked out really well for me. I should get you a thank you card.”
I could hear her teeth grinding.
“I hate you. I’ve always hated you. You should have been in that car. You should have died, too.” Her nostrils flared.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Did you really want me to die, or was there another game you were playing?”
Her smile was unhinged. “I had cameras set up in his room. I could have gotten a nice payout for a sex tape starring Emily fucking Stanton.”
I was disgusted. This time it was Jane who appeared in the doorway, brandishing a stun gun. Derek hooked her around the waist, but she grabbed on to both sides of the doorway and silently wrestled for freedom.
“Instead, your meal ticket died because a bartender I didn’t know took care of me like a friend should have.”
“You always land on your goddamn feet, and I am so fucking sick of it! When is it my turn?” she raged.
“Never. Because you’re not good enough.”
She slapped me. Hard. The sound of flesh connecting to flesh echoed off the glass.
“Aw, is that the best you can do?” I asked.
On a howl of rage, she charged me, raking her nails down my arm and throwing an elbow in my jaw. I saw stars, but it was enough. I’d finally drawn a line I wouldn’t allow her to cross.
I wound up and plowed my fist into that pretty, pretty nose of hers.
She went down like a bag of hammers.
“Damn, that hurts without gloves,” I muttered, shaking out my hand.
The office flooded with people. Derek and Jane ran in, followed closely by building security.
Derek stepped over Lita and gathered me in his arms.
“Are you hugging me or stopping me from hitting her again?” I asked over the commotion.
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Both. Are you all right?”
He nudged my chin up and looked at the blooming mark on my jaw. His hands slid down my arms, and he frowned fiercely at the bleeding scratches.
“I’m pretty freaking great, Price.”
“In that case, I think we need to schedule a meeting,” he said.
“About what?”
“About the prospect of a joint venture.”
“We’re already fifty-fifty partners.”
He squeezed my arms. “Marriage, Emily. I want to marry you.”
“Did Jane deprive your brain of oxygen too long?”
“Yes.”
I grinned up at him and brushed a kiss over his mouth. “I’m willing to discuss the potential benefits of a… merger sometime in the future. But first, I want the biggest pitcher of Bloody Marys available to mankind.”
“I’m never going to get to use this stun gun,” Jane whined, standing over Lita’s wailing form.
His smile faded. “Emily, there’s something else you need to know. Lita wasn’t working alone.”
I stopped him with a hand to his chest. “I know. I’ll deal with it later.”
The washroom door opened, and Lona, the unflappable journalist, stepped out. “Is it safe to come out?” she asked, eyeing Lita who was screeching about lawsuits through the hands that covered her bleeding face.
“Lona, I’d almost forgotten you were in there,” I said cheerfully. “Oh, and your recorder was on this whole time. How embarrassing.” I handed it to her.
“Florida is two-party consent,” Lita snapped as security hauled her to her feet. Beautiful, big drops of blood dripped onto the white crepe of her dress. “You can’t record me without my knowledge. Miss Goody Two Shoes should have known that,” she said snidely.
“Well, we can’t. But the SEC can if they suspect fraud is being committed. Have you met Agent Busto?” I asked.
On cue, one of the men who had entered with security stepped up. He had a shaved head and a neck nearly the same circumference. “Ms. Smith?” he said with all the charm of a grumpy Steve when Frank the macaw refused to shut up. “The SEC has a few questions for you about your dealings with La Sophia.”
50
Derek
“I think your job here is done,” I said, tucking Emily under my arm as Lita was escorted from the building by the SEC and security.
“Ha. Literally.” Her laugh sounded a little brittle around the edges. “She’s probably not going to get any jail time,” she predicted.
“Maybe not,” I agreed. “But she’s also not going to walk into another cushy seven-figure job either. I’ll make sure of that.”
“What the hell happened to Lita?” Trey Stanton, in pink shorts and flip-flops, stormed up to Emily. “What did you do to her?”
I felt her stiffen under my arm and stepped between them. “You’ve handled enough today,” I told her. “Let me take this one.”
Emily’s gaze slid over me to her brother and then back to me.
“He’s all yours,” she said. “Jane? Help me load up?”
“But, but, but. Stun gun.” Jane pouted.
Emily slung her arm around her friend. “What’s more satisfying, making my brother piss his pants with a stun gun or watching Tea and Crumpets do it with scary faces?”
Jane heaved a sigh. They took the boxes of Emily’s corporate life and headed for the Range Rover outside.
“Emily! You gotta talk to me,” Trey yelled.
Then the idiot made the mistake of trying to go after her.
“Let’s you and I have a chat,” I said, grabbing him by the back of the neck like a pup. He was still wearing his sunglasses indoors, and that made me even angrier.
“Get off me, man. I need to talk to my sister!” He tried to shrug out of my grip, so I squeezed harder. I didn’t get to deck Lita. But Trey was a different story.
“Your sister is busy.”
I steered him toward the building security manager’s office. It was a small room with two desks, a sagging bookcase full of binders, and two shabby visitors’ chairs. I pushed him down into one.
“Where’s Lita going? What’s going on?” he asked, trying to get back up. I pushed him down again and sat on the corner of one of the desks.
“That’s really none of your concern anymore.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face and through his $300 haircut. “Look, just tell me what’s going on.”
“You conspired with Lita Smith to steal and sell Flawless’s scar treatment formula because your sister wouldn’t bail you out.”
Trey blinked. “That’s not how it went down.”
“You worked with Lita to destroy Emily’s reputation, to get her fired.”
Surly now, he kicked back in the chair. “She needed to be taught a lesson. Family first.”
“How do you put your family first, Trey?”
He smirked, and I couldn’t help myself. I snatched the sunglasses off his face and hurled them against the wall.
“Jesus, man! Those cost four grand!”
“Real men don’t wear sunglasses indoors, and they don’t make other people buy them for them, you stupid sod.”
“What’s your problem?”
“You, you festering moron. What’s your family contribution, Trey? What do you give back to your parents, your sister? No wait, let me guess,” I insisted when he opened his stupid mouth. “Your familial contribution is requiring them to clean up your messes, you pathetic pissant.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m the kid, the baby of the family.”
“You’re thirty-three years old. You stopped being a ‘kid’ fifteen years ago. Legally, at least. Mentally and emotionally, you appear to be about four.”
“Dude. What the hell? You can’t talk to me this way.”
“You set your sister up.” I gripped the lip of the desk so I wouldn’t choke the living shit out him.
“This again. She fucking deserved it. So high and mighty about her money and her work. Jesus. You’d think she was curing cancer or something.”
“Actually, she’s working on heart disease, not that you’d give a damn, you worthless little shit.”
“Dude. Can we not with the insults?”
“Dude. You’re lucky your sister didn’t give me permission to destroy your face,” I shot back.
“Look, man. I’ll clear it up with her. It was a misunderstanding. Just lemme talk to her.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked.
“Get what?” he asked, exasperated.
“You blew it. That was your last interaction with your sister. Ever. There’s no coming back from what you did.”
“So she lost her job. Lita’s gonna give me a title and some pull. Maybe I’ll make a position for Em after she apologizes.”
I laughed. The unbridled idiocy of this moron was making me crazy.
“Have you ever had any IQ tests? Taken your SATs?” I asked.
“My tutor took the SATs for me. My time isn’t best spent in some classroom.” Trey snorted.
“I can see that.” He was a fucking git, and it was all Venice Stanton’s fault. “Let me spell it out for you. You tried to take away the thing that mattered most to Emily. And now you’ll never see her again.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“I wonder how your father will feel? He’s the one who holds the purse strings, isn’t he? He wasn’t too keen on helping you out of this jam before. How’s he going to feel when he finds out you tried to sabotage Flawless? Your sister’s company. He’s on the board of directors here. He’s got a vested interest. So really, you screwed him over, too.”
“Look, it’s not that big of a deal,” Trey insisted. “Emily was being a bitch. Lita and I taught her a little lesson. Whatever.”
“Now it’s my turn to teach you a little lesson,” I said amiably. “You saw Lita leaving?”
“Yeah, what the hell happened to her face?”
“You’ll see in a minute or two,” I predicted. “Lita is being questioned by the SEC. Do you know what that is?”
“The better question is, do I care what it is?”
“Oh, I think you will. But some things are better left as a surprise. Your girlfriend Lita—”
“We only screwed a couple of times,” he clarified.
I shook my head to clear it. “Very well, your friend Lita is being investigated for committing fraud.”
“Jesus, what’s with everyone and this fraud bullshit?” Trey demanded.
“The government doesn’t like it when you fuck with people,” I explained.
“You’d think they’d have better things to do.”
“Be sure to make that point when they question you.”
“Me?”
“Lita has been in their custody for—what?” I glanced at my watch. “Five whole minutes now. How much do you want to bet that your name was the first thing out of her mouth? Oh, I forgot. You don’t have money. You can’t bet.”
“She wouldn’t…” But his slow, clunky wheels were starting to turn. I could hear the creak of unused machinery.
I glanced up and spotted the man I’d been waiting for.
“So, to recap, not only are you facing fraud charges for your little non-existent music festival, but you’re also going to be looking at some pretty serious charges from the SEC because you decided to take your sister down a peg or two and helped Lita Smith steal and sell a patented formula.”
“This is bullshit. It’s all bullshit,” Trey said, coming to his feet.
“That true?” Byron Stanton grunted from the doorway.
Trey’s eyes widened with hope. The dumbass.
“Dad. This has all been a misunderstanding.”
“Your fucking life has been a misunderstanding,” Byron shot back. “You’re getting nothing from me, you stupid fuck.”
“Dad! You don’t get it. They want to arrest me! I can’t go to jail!”
The worst thing in the world to Trey Stanton would be being told what to do and when to do it.
“Try using that in your defense,” I suggested, moving toward the door.
Trey picked up the computer monitor from the desk behind him and hurled it in my direction. It hit the wall by my head. My hands flexed into fists.
“A temper tantrum? Really?”
“Christ, this kid,” Byron groaned. A keyboard smashed into the filing cabinet, keys flying in all directions.
“That’s the first problem,” I told him. “He’s not a fucking kid.”
I grabbed Trey by the arm, and he took a swing at me. “He swung first,” I said conversationally. And then I plowed my fist into Trey’s washboard abs and followed it with a swift uppercut to his Instagram-famous jaw.
He crumpled to the carpet, deflated and defeated. Entirely unsatisfying.
“Byron,” I said as I walked past the man.
“Price,” he grunted back.
I walked out without another word.
Jane met me in the hallway. “How did it feel to hit the fucker?”
“Not satisfying enough,” I admitted.
A chair shattered the glass window of the office and came to rest in the hall behind me. Trey was shouting incoherently.
“Calm the fuck down, you fuck,” Byron shouted.
A computer monitor flew through the broken glass next.
“Now can I?” Jane asked.
“Be my guest,” I said, stepping out of her way.
I walked out with the delightful sound of Trey’s shrieks and Jane’s maniacal laughter ringing in my ears.
“How did it go?” Emily asked as I slid into the back seat next to her.
“About as to be expected,” I said cheerfully.
She picked up my hand and compared knuckles. Both our rights were bruised, split.
“Good day,” she whispered.
I lifted her bruised hand to my lips, kissed each knuckle lightly. “A very good day,” I agreed.
“Let’s go get a drink,” Jane said, opening the driver’s door.
“I smell charred flesh,” Emily said.
“Huh. Imagine that,” Jane mused, putting the SUV in gear.
“Here,” I said, digging in my pocket. “I got you something.” I pulled out Trey’s watch and handed it to Emily.
Jane snorted.
51
Emily
“To Emily Stanton, badass,” Cam said, holding a Bloody Mary aloft.
“Unemployed badass,” I corrected.
“To Emily Stanton, unemployed badass,” the rest of the table chorused.
My circle—Cam, Luna, Daisy, Jane, and Derek—raised their glasses in the middle of Mordecai’s Bistro. We’d also invited Lona to join us as long as everything stayed off the record.
And since she was sitting on the biggest story of her career, she seemed happy to oblige.
“Wait a minute,” Daisy said. “Since Emily is no longer of the vagillionaire status, can we still be friends with her?”
“Girl, please,” Luna giggled. “Give this woman five minutes, and she’ll have twelve patents, four drug trials, and another billion-dollar company.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Daisy crowed.
“Honey, you sure know how to rock a scandal,” Lady Raquel in a pink sequined romper said, leaning in to air-kiss my cheeks. “Proud of you.”
“Thanks, Lady Raquel. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself, too.”
“All right, kids, let’s take some orders. Who want
s something to soak up the alcohol?”
My phone buzzed on the table.
Bethenny: Do you and Derek have dinner plans? Ed and I would love if you came over. We can take the boat out.
I showed Derek the message, and he grinned. “No offense, but I like your father’s ex-wife significantly more than his current one.”
I laughed and, for the first time in my life, didn’t feel like a traitor when I agreed.
Me: That sounds perfect. We’ll bring the wine.
On reflex, I checked my email and found my inbox was disabled. I blew out a breath. I wouldn’t start every single day of my life with the goal of processing the first one hundred emails. I wouldn’t be sitting in board meetings or reviewing sales numbers, okaying marketing campaigns.
Another text message came in.
Esther: Been thinking. If we can ID these proteins that signify damage, why couldn’t we create a synthetic one designed to fix the muscle damage?
I bit my lip to stop the grin. A new challenge. A new direction. A new family.
“So let me tell you guys about getting mugged,” Cam said.
“What did you just say?” Luna asked, bringing my attention back to the table.
“Did you say mugged or muffed?” Daisy interjected.
“Mugged. Attempted mugging actually. A guy tried to grab my purse in the parking garage at work,” Cam said. “I speared his foot with my stiletto.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “You need better security.”
“I know a security guy,” Derek added.
“You’re missing the point,” Cam said, exasperated. “I was fine.”
“We’ll find you a hot security guy,” Daisy promised.
“I don’t want a security guy, hot or not,” Cam protested.
“Derek, is your friend hot?” Daisy asked, ignoring her.
He shrugged. “I hadn’t thought much about it, but yes. If I were into men, I’d shag him.”
Daisy slapped the table. “Problem solved. Hot security guy.”
Cam rolled her eyes. “Not happening, weirdos. I’ll handle this on my own.”