I stopped the conversation before it escalated into a brawl. Clearly, the quirky girl I remembered had grown into an unhinged nut case.
“If it helps, the original version had Ariel committing suicide and turning into sea foam, Mulan becomes the new ruler’s prostitute and commits suicide, and Snow White…” Five sets of eyes turned to me as I entered the room. “Well, that one actually does have a happy ending. Snow White and Prince Florian marry, invite the Queen to the wedding, and force her to wear hot iron shoes and dance until she dies.”
“Charming,” Emery muttered as if she hadn’t been the one to suggest a knife and two body bags.
I walked past the three on the couch, pretending I didn’t know Emery, and sat on one of the desks, my back to Chantilly as I addressed the room. “My name is Nash Prescott. I’m here to share the aesthetic Prescott Hotels is looking to achieve with the Haling Cove location. Which one of you five is an intern?” I made a spectacle of scanning their faces before landing on Emery, whose glare dared me to mess with her. I did, raking my eyes down her body as if I disapproved. “You look like an intern. What’s your name?”
Fight back, Tiger. Don’t be weak. Show me your claws.
She didn’t answer for a second.
Three.
Two.
O…
Finally, she bit out, “Em—”
I cut her off, “Actually, don’t care. I need a coffee from the cafe down the street.”
“I’m not getting you coffee.”
“You do work for me, right?”
We were at war with our eyes, neither of us budging.
I’ll make your life miserable, mine promised.
You have no clue what you’ve started, hers dared.
Oh, I do, little Tiger. Game on.
If she were anyone else, I would have admired her fight. The only feeling I had toward her was destruction. By the time I was done with her, I had no doubt she’d quit. If I acquired the location of Gideon Winthrop in the mean-time, even better.
“Emery, get Mr. Prescott his coffee,” Chantilly chimed in after the silence lingered too long. Panicked eyes darted between us, confusion with a dash of jealousy.
I cocked a brow, daring Emery to defy me. She stood on reluctant legs, her eyes screaming how much she hated me. I slid my wallet out of my inner pocket. Her wallet, actually. A distressed leather square peppered with cigarette burns that looked like it once belonged to a coked-out rock star.
Her breath escaped her pouty lips in a rush. She did that thing she always did, where she mouthed a bunch of words. Two tiny hands clenched into tight fists. Her tits jerked with her breaths.
Emery held destruction in her eyes. She looked like she wanted to wrap her hands around my throat, snatch the wallet from me, and stomp all over my new phone for good measure.
Destroy, destroy, destroy.
But I knew her. If Chantilly hated her for getting the job from Delilah, no way would Emery reveal she knew me. She held a hand out for the twenty-dollar bill I pulled out. Her twenty-dollar bill. The lone bill housed in this war-torn wallet. For one of the richest women in the world, she traveled light.
I pulled the twenty away before she latched onto it, holding it above her head like she was a child begging for lunch money, and conjured the most obnoxious drink order I could think of.
“Get me an iced coffee in the largest size.” When she reached up again for the bill, I tutted and held it back above her head, probably the one person she’d ever met who could make her five-nine frame feel short. “I’m not finished. Three ice cubes. Two pumps of vanilla syrup, pure cane sugar only. One pump of hazelnut and cinnamon. Two mocha drizzles. A layer of whip cream, but I want it in the cup before the coffee is poured in. A splash of oatmeal milk. Two tablespoons of cookie butter stirred in, not shaken or blended. Four shots of dark-roast coffee. Double-blended.”
She snatched the bill from me before I could hand it to her, tearing it at the corner in her haste. Before I could add to the order, she pivoted and darted out of the room.
“Hurry or you’ll miss the meeting,” I called at her back, an actual smile on my face.
As soon as she left, the air thinned. I exhaled easier, taking the time to lean against the table and observe the other four designers. Chantilly’s breathing heated my back for a few seconds too long before she walked around me and sat on the couch, taking Emery’s place.
She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t quite place it.
I eyed the designers, a circle jerk of (over) paid fresh-out-of-college kids, teenage acne scars still clear on their faces like I ran a casting call for High School Musical. When I started the company, Delilah mentioned young employees were more driven, highly productive, easier to manage, versatile, and adaptable.
I hired them because they were more affordable, but also for those reasons. The downside was, people like Chantilly received promotions before they paid their dues. Power corrupts fools, and Chantilly looked one hundred percent foolish in a red mini dress on an active construction site.
“Mr. Prescott, it’s wonderful to see you again,” Chantilly said after twenty drawn-out minutes of silence I spent ignoring them.
“We’ve met?”
She paused, her cheeks turning a shade of scarlet that outdid her hair, before she smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles on her skintight dress and laughed. “You’re so funny.”
Basil.
Basil Berkshire.
Reed’s self-absorbed girlfriend.
The one addicted to Gucci, Balmain, selfies, and sugar-free açaí bowls.
That’s who she reminded me of.
“Not particularly,” I replied, and though Emery wasn’t here, I knew if she had heard me, she would have had one of those ghost smiles on her face—hidden just beneath the blasé expression she wore so well.
Since the idea of Emery smiling nauseated me, I added as Emery walked in, “In fact, I only recognize Cayden.”
Emery held out a hot coffee for me. I brought it to my lips, my fingers clenched around the double layer of heat sleeves. Her smile told me she had spit in it. I held eye contact with her as I took a sip anyway, never one to back down from a challenge. We were the same people in that regard.
Her smirk and the fact that she stood in front of me, hovering, should have warned me. The coffee was black and near boiling, about the exact opposite of the frozen monstrosity I’d ordered. It scalded my tongue, but I swallowed it anyway and smiled even when the liquid lashed at my tonsils, burning a path down my throat.
Whatever I ate in the next few weeks, I knew I wouldn’t taste it. She’d fried my taste buds with a smile on her face, then lifted a blended drink to her mouth, a litany of add-ons written on the side like hieroglyphics, informing me she held the drink I’d ordered.
The smile on her face taunted me. She pressed the straw to her lips and sucked in sugary crap neither of us needed in our bodies. I drew the black coffee—what I would have ordered anyway, for the record—to my lips, ignoring when she mouthed, “I spit in that,” her face angled so the room couldn’t see.
“Change,” I demanded, holding out a hand. “I have a no-tolerance policy on thievery.”
Panic took over her eyes, along with pure rage. She dug into her pocket and slammed two fives and some loose change into my open fist. I made a show of sliding the money into her wallet and shoving it into my inner suit pocket before turning to the rest of the group, dismissing her like she meant nothing.
“As I was saying,” I began. Emery hovered beside me, no doubt talking herself out of first-degree murder. “I only know Cayden.” I shot him a nod of acknowledgment and continued before the rest of them had the opportunity to start introductions. “But Delilah, whom some of you may know as the head of the legal department, gave me the rundown on your names.”
Emery finally took a seat on the couch, but Chantilly made a show of stretching and stood, blocking Emery from my view.
I ignored them both and addressed everyone else, “Let’s cut to the chase. I’m looking for something dark and white. Muted colors. This is a beach hotel, but we want to stay true to our brand. Some base flooring and materials have already been chosen to match different locations, but each hotel still maintains its own identity.”
When Chantilly shifted, Emery finally peeked into view. She gnawed on her bottom lip, her brows furrowed in concentration. The ideas in her eyes brought more life to them than I’d ever seen.
A dash of hope, too.
My depraved sense of justice made me want to extinguish that hope.
After Reed hit high school, Ma gave him two gifts—a door and her permission to redecorate his room. My brother had the aesthetic vision of a prosopagnosiac, so he’d pushed the responsibility onto Emery.
My parents’ budget wouldn’t put a dent in a single Prescott Hotel bathroom, but it had been enough for a few buckets of paint. Unintentional as it was, I’d listed everything Emery had done to Reed’s room.
Dark on white. Minimalistic. But she’d added a mural wall, one that could only shine if the entire room had been dulled. Pictures hidden within pictures. Gray shades that blurred together, and each time you looked at it, you saw a different image.
Magic, she’d declared out loud when she unveiled it to us.
I stared Emery directly in the eyes and said, “No murals. This is a Prescott Hotel, not a decrepit building ripe for some Banksy wannabe to paint on. I expect you all to treat this like the billion-dollar hotel chain it is.”
Prescott Hotels had one worthy rival—Black Enterprises’ hotel chain, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Asher Black—and the company hadn’t stepped foot in North Carolina yet. I’d bought up every ideal property along the North Carolina coast, making this state officially mine.
Truthfully, it didn’t matter how the hotel looked. I could rent out a human-sized fishbowl and sell out a year in advance, because these rooms went for two-thousand bucks a night, and people were hardwired to believe money meant value.
Plus, my name was attached to the building in giant letters. Like Asher Black, I’d acquired my seed money through shady means. Unlike Asher Black, the general public regarded me as a saint.
I could do no wrong in their eyes, a privilege I hadn’t earned but used to my full advantage despite the guilt that nagged at me.
“But,” Ida Marie began, stumbling over what words to choose. “If we stick with muted colors without some sort of a focal point, won’t the design be…”
“Boring,” Emery finished for her.
So much fire burned in her eyes, watching her reminded me of feeling alive again.
Chantilly flinched, waiting for me to explode.
My jaw ticked. I checked my watch and loosened its grip on my pulse, feeling hot every time I looked in Emery’s direction. “It’s not my job to design this hotel for you. If you can’t make it work, I can find someone else.”
I realized, as she stared at me like she wanted to kill me, that it wasn’t only irritation I felt. Her defiance turned me on. I set the shitty coffee on the table, pulled a chair out, and sat on it backward so they couldn’t see I was hard as shit behind it.
She and her family fractured yours. When my dick didn’t get the hint, I added, remember when she basically forced herself onto you and roll the hell out of you?
It saluted her as if the idea made it want her more.
“No need to find someone else, Mr. Prescott.” Chantilly shot a glare Emery’s way. It bounced off her like a quarter off Nicki Minaj’s ass. “We’ll make you proud.”
“I’ll see you all when the mockups are complete and ready for my approval. Miss Rhodes,” I emphasized her new last name, “a word.”
“I have somewhere I have to be.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
Chantilly froze first, taking her time to collect her belongings. Cayden left quickly, twisting the car keys to his Civic around his middle finger. Hannah shoved Ida Marie out of the room when she all but shouted to catch Emery’s attention.
Emery and I waited in silence until everyone left and the elevator in the hall dinged. I stood and leaned against the table, my hands gripped around its edge.
“Your hair is black.” It slipped out, a lapse in control I hated myself for.
“I’m well aware, considering it’s my head.”
My eyes scraped a path down her body, cataloging all the similarities and differences. The shirt would have hugged her curves if she had them, but she didn’t. Two hip bones jutted out.
Outside the elevator’s shitty lighting, I could study her better. She looked thinner than I’d ever seen her, borderline fragile and breakable if it weren’t for the expression on her face. She looked like the type of girl to brandish her middle finger as a weapon. I knew from personal experience she’d do it while hiding a knife in her other hand. Better to stab you in the back with.
“You’re dressed oddly for a catering gig.” She didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. I continued, “If you’re going to continue working for me, and that’s a big if, you’ll have to learn I don’t tolerate lies,” unless they’re my own, “and respect is demanded. Oh, and do keep your hands out of the proverbial cookie jar. I don’t need the prepubescent offspring of a thief caught working for me, let alone stealing from me.”
“At least I don’t need to pay people to date me.”
“It’s a choice, not a need. Speaking of dates, at least buy me dinner before you mount me next time.”
Her cheeks flushed. “No need to worry. If you recall, the lights were off. Had I known it was you, I would have been looking for a toilet to puke in. I hate you, Nash Prescott, and every time you step into a room I’m in, I’m unsure if I want to vomit or stab you.”
“I know I inspire your gag reflex. It takes time and experience for women to blow someone my size. I wouldn’t worry about it until you get your first period.”
“I’m twenty-two,” she fumed, absently tugging at her shirt until it pulled against her chest and I noticed I made her nipples hard.
“Wow, you’ve been an adult for two seconds. Congratu-fucking-lations.” I tore my eyes away from her nipples. “Nevertheless, I appreciate that—this time—you’re able to keep your hands to yourself. It must be difficult, considering the past two times we were alone in a room together, you forced yourself on me.”
I stepped forward until her tits brushed against my stomach, just like they had last night when she’d pressed against me in the elevator, angry breaths caressing my skin.
She’s Reed’s age, I reminded myself when the urge to turn her around, flip her over my lap, and mark her skin gripped me. She needed to learn discipline, yes, but she was too young and too tempting for me to be near.
“I didn’t force—” She stopped herself, flicked her eyes down to where our bodies met, stepped back, and delivered a saccharine smile. “Is there a point to all this or did you want to isolate me so my coworkers can hate me more?”
I studied her. The daughter of a thief. The woman whose actions could never be justified. I didn’t know who I hated more—her or myself for wanting her.
“The point is, Prescott Hotels is not Winthrop Textiles. I will not allow another Winthrop to ruin the livelihoods of thousands of people. Any stealing, scheming, and general misbehavior will not be tolerated.”
“You’re the thief,” she seethed, ignoring the whole part about the merry band of thieves she called a family. “I want my wallet back.”
“Or?”
Her eyes flashed, but she said nothing. What could she say? The one thing she had that I wanted was her dad’s location, and I wouldn’t let it slip that I wanted it. Not until the perfect moment.
She retreated. Chin up and silent.
I stood alone in the room, staring at her ass as she left.
Victory felt bittersweet on my tongue, and if she was defeat, I wondered what defeat would taste like.
