After a few seconds, Ronan asked, “Am I understood?”
Dominique took a deep, deep breath, blowing it out slowly before she answered, “I understand.”
“Good,” he muttered. “We’ll talk again soon.”
“Fine.”
After a final glare, he turned away from her and stalked off, anger radiating off him in waves. Dominique spun in the opposite direction and stomped toward her townhouse. Her face felt hot, and her palms were sweating as she bit back all the angry words that wanted to spew out. He wasn’t even there to hear them. Her fingers itched for her phone to text him a piece of her mind, but she refrained. She wouldn’t give him thesatisfaction of knowing that he got to her any more than he already did.
When she reached her townhouse, she went inside and straight to her bedroom. The engagement ring was in the shallow dish she kept on her vanity. She stared down at it for a long moment, every inch of her resisting the idea of putting it on. Surely, she wouldn’t need to wear it in her own home.
Then, she remembered what he said about his parents having spies everywhere. Gods, she hoped that didn’t include her home, but still, she wasn’t going to risk it.
Discomfort filled her as she picked up the ring. It was almost painful as she slid the ring onto her left hand, settling it at the base of her finger. The stone winked at her in the low light of her bedroom. Then, she remembered what he said—that the stone was the exact color of her eyes.
She looked up and into the mirror over her vanity. He was right. Somehow, he’d managed to find a gemstone the same color as her irises.
Why did that unsettle her so much?
Before she could figure out the answer to that question, her phone chimed. She knew who it was before she even looked at it.
Sure enough, when she picked it up, the text was from Ronan.
I want proof you’re wearing it.
Narrowing her eyes at the screen, Dominique was tempted to ignore him, but she couldn’t discount his threat to contact her family. It wasn’t worth the risk of them getting involved.
She turned toward the window, letting the natural light wash over her hand and snapped a picture. With a few clicks and a whoosh, she sent it off to him.
A few seconds later, he replied.
Good girl.
Ire swelled inside her again, and she tossed her phone on the bed with an angry sigh. She hated those two words because they were condescending.
More importantly, she hated the phrase because she knew if he used it in a different context she would like it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Monday morning,the engagement ring felt like it weighed fifty pounds as Dominique walked into the office.
As usual, she arrived at seven-thirty, nearly a full hour before Veronica. Even knowing her employee wouldn’t be there, Dominique was still nervous about the lies she had to tell. While she never really volunteered information about her life, she wasn’t a liar either. This was why she kept distance between herself and the people around her. Anytime she started to let someone in, this would happen.
She couldn’t talk about her past. Her childhood. No one would understand.
No one knew that Jurgen Mueller, her mother’s husband, wasn’t her father. No one, not even Dominique, knew who’d sired her. The only person who did was her mother and Graciella kept a tight hold on that information. She had tried for years to pry her father’s identity out of her mother, but Graciella wasn’t going to talk.
Her parents never kept her a secret, but they had pushed her older sisters into the spotlight, ignoring Dominique most of the time. In the fae realm, a lot of the residents believed there wereonly two Proxa sisters. Especially after Zephira cursed her. Her mother believed her magic was tainted by the spell.
Maybe that was why Ronan wanted her for this scheme. No one would care. No one would want to protect her from his family’s machinations. If anything, her own family would do whatever they could to use her as a pawn.
On that happy thought, Dominique thrust her problems to the side. She had a business to run, a business that had taken her blood, sweat, and tears for the past two decades. Not only was it profitable, but it was also thriving. Expanding.
So much so that she was planning to offer Veronica a promotion. Or, honestly, a partnership. Veronica was a huge asset to the company, and she worked just as hard as Dominique.
Whether she was ready for it or not, her life would be changing soon and for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, Dominique sat at her desk and began drafting out ideas for how to bring Veronica into more of the business, calculate if she needed more than one or two more employees, and make the business easier to run if she was only in the human realm a week or two a month. She needed to begin preparing now. Dominique needed order and contingency plans. It made her feel safe. Calm.
In control.
