“I was considering mercy,” I continue. “I was going to actually offer you some compensation so you would leave and start anew. But I have now decided to revoke any such offer,” I say as I walk back over to her, and she flinches as her breath quickens.
“You chose blackmail,” I say as I run a finger over her cheek, and she pales slightly.
“I don’t negotiate with parasites.”
“You can’t touch me,” she snaps. “I’ll scream.”
“No one can hear you, they have gone about their day, off eating lunch with their friends.”
She looks at the walls again to see no staff. No help. She’s cornered.
“What are you going to do?” she whispers and I lean closer.
“You will disappear.”
“Or?”
“You will discover how small you are and how very little people will grieve your death.”
I think the message may finally be getting through as her lips tremble. For the first time, she looks unsure.
“You think you’re powerful,” I murmur. “Because men wanted you and made you feel special. Important. But all they wanted was a whore for the night, a normal working girl to fill their fantasies before they return to their wives,” I say before I straighten.
“I own outcomes, Sarah. I own Leo and you will accept that. You won’t touch him again. You won’t speak his name. You won’t exist in his world,” I say before moving back to sit behind my desk.
“But if you try to come back in any way —” I let the silence finish the sentence.
She grabs her abandoned bag off the floor and scuttles toward the door, flushed and panicked.
“You’re insane,” she says, like that’s supposed to bother me.
“Yes, I am.”
Before she leaves, she turns back to face me one last time.
“You’re wrong about him,” she says weakly. “He’ll hate you one day.”
I smile softly because she has no idea what is between me and Leo.
“He already does and he wants to be with me anyway. You’re not even a thought anymore, Sarah. Now fuck off.”
She leaves and jogs down the corridor, and I relax now that that bitch is out of my office. She thought this was a negotiation, but all it became was the footnote. Leo will never see her again, and not because I told him not to. But because some wrongs are corrected quietly behind closed doors.
I open my desk drawer and remove a small velvet box, where inside is the bracelet. Platinum, simple and unbreakable. I imagine it around his wrist. A circle of promises with a lock disguised as devotion. He will never take it off, even in death it will remain until his turns to bone and dust.
I will always know where he is, and he will always know who he belongs to. Me.
CHAPTER 29 - LEO
Istand in my apartment, ready to collect my shit, remembering how Ethan got me to agree to move in. Yep, after a few weeks I’m moving in with my boss. Crazy boss. It went as you would expect, Ethan didn’t ask, he never does.
He stood at the window of his penthouse earlier this evening, calm and controlled as he laid out his plans for me.
“You’ll move in tonight.”
Not if. Not when you’re ready. Tonight.
I remember standing behind him, my fingers knotted in the hem of my jacket, feeling like a guest in my own life.
