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For the fourth time in her life, Jay found herself moving things into her old childhood bedroom. It was surreal, shoving aside bubble hem dresses and skinny belts to make room for her adult clothes as she sidestepped her agitated cat. He raced around the room, alternating between sniffing at the boxes she was unpacking and yowling his unhappiness.
Jay felt sorry for him. Change upset her, too.
Perhaps it would have been smarter to insist upon her own apartment, but her heart wasn’t in it. It would feel too much like him setting her up as his mistress, and she knew he would fight her on rent, which would defeat the whole purpose of having her own place.
Nicholas may have freed her from her imprisonment, but now, in the absence of those barred walls, she felt as if she’d lost all the hard edges that had defined their relationship in this place.
And then there was his confession: helovedher, and wanted to marry her. If she left again, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would be taking his broken heart with her. She didn’t want to hurt him but staying here was a tacit promise of the very sort of possession that he had initially tried to obtain by force, and she wasn’t sure how to navigatethat, either.
It didn’t help that part of herwantedto be here. The cruel boy who had used to fling her own confused desires back into her face like a knife-thrower at a carnival had become a man who could charm her into holding those selfsame blades at her own throat.
Things were different now, and he seemed to sense that, too. He hadn’t even come to her room and she had been listening for him, braced for the familiar tread of his footsteps outside her door.
It won’t last, she told herself.He’s not patient, he’s never had to wait.
But he didn’t come to her, and when she dragged herself down the stairs, poorly rested and haunted by the nightmares of a not-too-distant past, she felt hunted by the way his eyes tracked her through the kitchen, and how they lingered on the engagement ring she still wore at her throat.
She owed him an answer and could feel the unspoken deadline drawing nearer and nearer. For the first time in her life, she had control, and the thought of giving it up was terrifying.
Work was her only normal. From the moment she stepped out of his car, to the moment she walked over the threshold of his mansion, she was simply Justine Varens, administrative assistant. Not her stepbrother’s mistress. Not a stripper’s daughter. Not a member of the deposed elite, shaded and scorned by her betters. She was Jay.JustJay.
And she was good at being Jay.
She just had to figure out the rest of it.
A calendar invite popped up on her computer screen with a cheerful chime. Jay looked away from the bullet points she was putting together for one of Arthur’s upcoming presentations to the Finance team. A meeting? Quarterly evaluations weren’tuntil next month and they only met every other week or so to discuss tasks and projects too detailed to fit into an email.
Hey, did we have a 1:1 that I forgot about?
No, Arthur responded.Are you available for a quick chat?
There were few words in the English language as terrifyingly euphemistic as “a quick chat.”
A cold feeling washed through her as she mentally sped through her performance over the last month and all the ways she could have failed.
Okay, sure, I’ll be right there.
She was being fired, clearly. They knew about her and Nick and this was the final straw. And it wouldn’t be sensitivity training forher, no. She wasn’t important enough to rehabilitate. They would just replace her with another assistant and she would be back to where she was before, living off of Nicholas’s charity and having to see the awful triumph of having her at his mercy in his eyes.
Arthur was waiting for her in one of the conference rooms on the second floor. She had to walk past Nicholas’s desk to get to it and was aware of his head turning to follow her shaky progress. In a company this small, word spread like wildfire. God, that fucking woman in Acquisitions had noticed that Nicholas waited for her inside his own parked car.
With a trembling hand, she closed the door behind her until it latched with a little click.This is the end, Jay. The privacy is just a formality in case you cry when you’re fired for being a whore.
“So,” Arthur said, in a voice that did not contain nearly enough disgust for how shameful she felt sitting in front of him. “Nicholas tells me that you’re very interested in the VP role that just opened up, which I have to admit was a bit of a surprise.”
Jay gaped at him, trying to understand.I’m not being firedcollided full-force withNicholas told you WHAT?It felt like her brain had just short-circuited and was shooting off sparks.
“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what prompted your interest in the role,” Arthur suggested, when she continued to stare at him stupidly. “This isn’t a formal interview, of course, but I’m curious what made you want to apply, and also how you envision your future at this company. You’ve been here for a while and we haven’t yet discussed the prospect of growth.”
Arthur thinks you would be perfect for the position, Nicholas had said. Apparently that meant,I think you’re perfect for it, and I always get what I want so I’m going to meddle in your life.
Her fingers dug into the armrests as she forced herself to smile and nod.
I’m going to kill him, she thought.
Not now, though. Later, at home. In private. She might have wanted to wrap her hands around his big stupid neck and squeeze, but she didn’t want to get him fired. Between the near miss of the lawsuit and his total disdain for workplace harassment, something like this could well be the breaking point.
