“Uh… should I be worried?” my senior EA asked.
“Not in the slightest.”
She sighed a little. “Am I sensing that someone is about to get fired?”
“Why, Velma,” I said dryly, “is that the only possible reason I could have for wanting to meet with a subordinate after hours, at her office?”
“Pretty much. Also, I know that tone you get when you’re about to fix a problem that’s bothering you.”
“Hmm. What tone?”
“I’d call it happiness, but it’s not. Maybe the closest to gleeful you ever get?”
“Remind me to reduce your pay.”
She laughed. “Good one.”
I hung up on her.
And promptly did a Google search forDevi Sereda.
Chapter Five
Devi
“What. The. Hell.”
I stared at my phone, like it could somehow explain to me what just happened. I did that a lot. My life was filled with dramatic phone calls from dramatic people.
Normally, I didn’t mind.
But my boss had just hung up on me. After dropping one hell of a bomb in my lap.
Jesus Christ, was she drunk? It was goddamn eight-fifty-eight a.m., and she sounded like she’d already been sucking back Amaretto Sours. Wouldn’t exactly be the first time, but shit.
I ducked out of the rain, taking cover under the awning of a building, and called her back. Voicemail.
“Janelle.What do you mean you’ve beenfired? Where are you? Call me back.”
I left the message, then wondered what the fuck I was supposed to do. I was like a block-and-a-half from the agency, and I wasn’t even sure if I was supposed to go into work now or what.
Had weallbeen fired?
Was that why the devil himself had come to town? To clean house?
Aughh.I shivered at the mere thought of that smirking, condescending look, the one he gave me at the restaurant yesterday—theI now own youlook.
Granted, in my limited experience, Dane Davenport looked at the entire fucking world that way.I own you. I’m better than you. I despise you.Those were basically the only three expressions that managed to chip themselves into his icy features. I’d seen the latter two, many times, in high school.
But he didn’t scare me then (much), he wasn’t going to scare me now.
The alpha male posturing, the wealth, the power? I’d seen it all before. Maybe it intimidated me a little when I was sixteen, unpopular, and completely out of my social element at that goddamn rich-brat school. But I was not sixteen anymore.
And as I’d decided after that restaurant meeting, I would not be intimidated by some rude, arrogant, better-than-thou, billionaire executive—much less one who thought he could get naked with two chicks and a camera and no one would ever find out or care.
Like the internet didn’t exist? Or he thought he owned that, too?
Or he thought he was just that untouchable that he could get away with it?
