Page 71 of Brutal Heir

She waved her hand over me. “Trust me. That’s a walk-of-shame outfit.”

“Fine! Yes, I spent the night in his hotel room, but it’s not what you think.”

She smirked. “I think you had raunchy, one-night-stand sex with a hot-as-fuck man.”

I winced as she hit the nail on the head. “I didn’t do it to try to further my career. It just sort of…happened.”

Memories of Sebastian fucking me against the shower tiles that morning made my cheeks burn.

I followed her to the corner of the studio, where she was packing up her wedding dress designs for shipment back to America.

“Who cares if you did?”

I set aside my cup and helped her move a clothing rack. “I would care! I don’t want people thinking I didn’t earn the job.”

She tapped her pen against the clipboard she held, where she kept track of shipping details. “You know the biggest difference between men and women in the corporate world?”

I played with a roll of tape. “Besides the pay gap?”

“Men don’t give two fucks if they earned the job. It doesn’t matter if they got it because they deserve it, because their daddy owns the company, or because they got shitfaced with the frat buddy who was in charge of hiring. They’ll still walk into a room cock first.”

She took the tape from my hands. “Women should worry less about how they got the job and focus more on proving they were actually qualified. That’s all I’m saying.”

“By your thinking, that means I should have taken Sebastian’s job offer.”

“Holy shit, Sebastian offered you a job at the House of Diamanti?”

I nodded.

“Then why the fuck are you taking Édouard’s offer? I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s a respected designer…but he’s no House of Diamanti.”

The House of Diamanti was one of the wealthiest, most influential companies in the world. Even an entry-level job there would catapult my career into the stratosphere.

“Because, despite growing up without a father, I don’t have daddy issues. I’m not a whore. And even though what you say makes sense, I still want to know in my heart of hearts that I earned my way—and not on my back.”

She kicked a box out of the way with perhaps more force than necessary. “I did grow up with a father. Trust me, you didn’t miss anything.”

She'd even hinted that her husband had her father killed for hurting her.

My mother had always made me promise to never even Google my father’s name. She was so afraid of him that she was convinced that just typing his name into a computer would somehow summon him.

Like taunting the devil to appear.

It was only because I'd overheard her on the phone when I was nine, having a hushed, urgent conversation, that I even knew my father’s name: Judge Delluci. I didn’t have any idea what his first name was.

Yelena scribbled on an invoice before looking up at me. “And I’d hardly call Sebastian a daddy. He’s only, what? Ten years older than you?”

“Twelve. And you didn’t see how he likes to order me about like a child.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Does he like to spank you when you’re bad?”

I hissed air through my teeth. My skin tingled at the memory of his palm spanking my ass. “No.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “That’s a yes.”

I tossed a scarf at her and turned back to my work.

I ignored my rising anxiety.