“Yes, sir,” she whispers.
I kiss her deeply, closing my eyes, pulling her so tight against me she squeals. But somewhere, in the back of my skull, I hear Marcus’s voice:“She may have seen the contract and decided to stay, but she thinks she just stumbled into all this.”
I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, the only thing that matters is this wonderful girl in my arms who just agreed to be mine forever.
9
HAZEL
I’m sohappy it’s embarrassing.
My engagement ring is two-carats on a platinum band, and it catches the light every time I move my hand—which of course means I move my hand a lot now. I’m constantly adjusting my monitor, smoothing my skirt, reaching for my coffee. Even just talking with my hands more.
Yes, I’m that girl who can’t stop looking at her engagement ring. The only thing that stops me is my billionaire fiancé who made me comethree timesbefore breakfast today and told me I wasn’t allowed to wear panties to work…
…just in case he wanted “easy access.”
So now, sitting in my leather chair at work, the seat reminds me that I’m bare beneath my skirt.
Cassi nearly broke my eardrum when I told her. She shouted so loudly that her roommate called the police thinking she was being murdered. Then she made me send like twenty different photos of the ring from every angle imaginable.
“Itold youyou were waiting for someone to sweep you off your feet,” she told me.
Yeah, just not Brad Pitt. Better.
She was right; of course, she just didn’t know Dominic would use a contract to do it.
The contract. I think about it sometimes—the relief services clause and the non-termination language. I know what I signed. I’ve known since he first showed it to me in his office. I chose to stay, and not because of the fine print, but because the man behind the desk who couldn’t keep his eyes off me.
I chose this. All of it. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
It’s Tuesday afternoon when the bottom falls out.
Dominic is in a meeting and Marcus is at lunch. The trading floor is humming with activity, and I’m reorganizing a shared hard drive because I’ve finally learned how to do something decently well. I’m consolidating duplicate folders when I open a directory called HR–Internal.
There’s a subfolder labeled Assistant Hiring–Confidential.
I click because it’s my job to organize his files. Inside, there are only three documents.
The first is a background report with my name and Social Security number on it. It also has my credit score, my bank balance ($214.12 on the day they pulled it), my rent ledger showing me three months behind on payments, my employment history and social media accounts.
At the bottom, in ink, are Marcus’s handwritten notes:
No competing job offers. No boyfriend. No family wealth. Recommend immediate hiring. High retention probable.
“High retention probable…” I say to myself. Basically just a polite way of saying I’m too broke to leave.
The second document is an actual job listing with my title as Executive Assistant. It’s an internal draft, nothing I saw online. And it’s time-stamped three hours after I submitted my blind resume in via e-mail.
So wait, the job I applied for never truly existed? That means that Dominic or Marcus—or maybe both of them—saw my photo, pulled my records, and built a listing around me to make it look legitimate.
An open door designed for me, specifically, to walk through.
My hands start to shake as I open the third document. It’s simply my photo—the one from my application. It’s circled.
My heart starts to race as I close the folder. The screen is all blurry now because my eyes have started to water. I’m not exactly crying, but there’s this intensity of emotion flooding through me that I can’t quite process. It’s like looking down from the top of a tall building, realizing you’re about to jump without a parachute.
He told me last night while we were in bed, his forehead pressed to mine, his voice rougher than normal. He tried to tell me this, but I wasn’t listening.
