Page 42 of Threaded Lies

Just fuck.

I sit in my office, my mood surly and head still a fucking mess.

Friday night still ghosts through my mind. The engagement party. The revelation that I’m being played. Her kiss.

None of them I want to believe happened. All of them I have to acknowledge.

It’s Sunday, but I’m here burying my head in fucking work. Isn’t that how I cope? How I plot and plan and figure the best way to carry out everything I’ve worked toward for years?

I let distraction fuck me once. That won’t be happening again.

So I put my head down and sift through some of the proposals that Bob has sent my way: offers to buy, offers to sell, land that might be of interest, and palms that might willingly be greased.

It’s a shady business fucking someone over, but isn’t that the best part of living in the gray? You blend into the shadows without a second look?

I’m on my second glass of scotch and making ample progress as the sun slowly begins to slide from the sky. My office is growing dark but I don’t get up and flick the lights on.

I don’t need to.

I spent many a night in my early twenties sitting in darkened rooms staring at servers and screens. The dark has never bugged me.

A whole two hours where I haven’t thought of her.

Making progress, Knight. Making progress.

It’s the voices in the hallway that throw me. The cheese-dick laughs I know all too well that have me rolling my shoulders and tipping the remainder of the scotch into my mouth.

Fuck me.

I can’t escape them if I fucking try.

With a few keystrokes, I check the cameras to the parking lots and see they parked in the one on the opposite side of where I did.

I bet they don’t even know I’m here.

So I sit in the darkness, welcome the anonymity, and wait to see what might come.

“I don’t fucking care. All that matters is it’s finally fucking happening. All that hard work is coming to fruition,” Chad says somewhere down the hallway.

“It is. It has. But … how?” Rhett asks as a door opens and then shuts.

“She knows if she wants to stay with the company, I’m the best option she has. It’ll make our moms happy and her life easier. I wore her down. Simple as that. And now I move on to the next phase.”

“Which is?”

“Making her fall back in love with me. She did once.”

Rhett snorts. “In fucking high school.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Chad says. “I’m a sleeper.”

“You could say that again.”

It sounds like hands are slapped as a high five is given, and my stomach churns. I fight the urge to stay silent but fuck that. Within seconds I’m in my doorway and staring at the backs of the two dipshits as they stand in the hallway.

“You’re in my office,” I say, and they both jump.

Gasps turn to awkward smiles and further still to narrowed eyes as they look at me. “You mean we’re in the hallway,” Rhett says.