“Sorry, sweetie, I don’t think seeing Mr. Fitzpatrick is in your cards today.” The malnourished PA made a show of tossing her platinum ponytail, a venomous grin on her scarlet lips. She wore a bubblegum-pink vinyl dress that made her look like BDSM Barbie, enough perfume to drown an otter, and the expression of someone who would die before letting another woman stake a claim on her boss.
I showed up unannounced at the Royal Pipelines’ offices as soon as I finished work, asking to meet with Mr. Fitzpatrick. Sailor had mentioned that Hunter, who also worked for the family’s company, was accompanying her to her first OB-GYN appointment, and dipped early. I didn’t want Hunter to see me and pass the information to my friends.
When I showed up, Cillian’s personal assistant pouted the entire time she spoke with him on the phone.
“Hiiiiiii, Mr. Fitzpatrick. This is Casey Brandt.”
Pause.
“Your assistant for the past two years, sir.”
Pause.
“Yeah! With the pink.” She giggled. “Totes sorry to bother you, but I have Miss Persephone Penrose here without an appointment.”
Pause.
“She said she needs to talk to you urgently, but, like, refused to give me any further information?”
I wasn’t sure why the question mark was necessary. Then again, I wasn’t certain why his PA looked like she belonged in a pink Corvette, driving around with her plastic boyfriend, Ken, and puppy, Taffy.
“Yes, I know it is my job to get the information out of her. Unfortunately, she’s been most uncooperative, sir.”
Pause.
“Yes, sir. I’ll let her know.”
She looked up at me like I was gum stuck on the bottom of her eleven-inch heels.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick cannot seem to fit you in his schedule.”
“Tell him I’m not leaving until he sees me.” My voice shook around the words, but I couldn’t get out of here without seeing him. Without trying.
She hesitated, biting down on her glossed lip.
I jerked my chin toward the phone. “Go on, give him my answer.”
She did, then proceeded to slam the switchboard phone.
“He said he’s in a meeting that will likely last hours.”
“That’s okay. I have time.”
That was two hours ago.
The grand lobby of the Royal Pipelines’ management floor gleamed in gold accents. TV monitors following the company’s stocks all over the world markets glowed in green and red.
Casey was growing restless, drumming the tips of her pointy fingernails on her chrome desk.
“I need to go to the ladies’ room,” she huffed, tugging a makeup kit from her bag under the table.
I looked up from the oil and gas journal I pretended to read.
“Oh?” I asked sweetly. “Are you not fully potty-trained? You know, I’m a pre-K teacher. Accidents don’t faze me in the least. Need help in the big girl toilet?”
She shot me a murderous glare.
“Don’t go anywhere, unless it’s back to the trailer park you came from.” She stood, running her eyes over my cheap clothes. “Or hell.”
Her red-soled high heels stabbed the floor on her way to the restroom, leaving dents.
As soon as Casey was out of view, I jumped to my feet, sprinting ahead. Cillian’s office was the largest and plushest on the floor. It was easy to spot the one fitted for the king of the castle.
I could only see his visitor’s back through the glass door as I raced in his direction. The man who hid him from my vision was broad-shouldered with tawny blond hair, a sharp suit, and an impeccable posture. They seemed to be deep in conversation, but I didn’t care. I threw the door open without knocking, barging in before I lost my nerve.
Unfortunately, my grand entrance wasn’t enough to tear Cillian’s gaze from the man in front of him. They were hunched over a mass of papers scattered all over his silver desk.
“…stocks going up, but I still noticed a trend in negative press. Saying the media doesn’t like you would be an understatement. It’d be like saying the ocean is damp. That the sun is lukewarm. That Megan Fox is merely shagable…”
“I get the gist of it,” Cillian clipped. “How do we rectify the situation?”
“I suppose a personality transplant would be out of the question?” the man drawled.
“The only thing that’s about to be transplanted is my foot in your ass if you don’t give me a solution.”
Tough crowd. I’m about to face a very tough crowd.
“Bloody hell, Cillian,” the posh man huffed, “you started your CEO journey by sacking nine percent of the company’s management and drilling holes in the Arctic. You haven’t exactly won any fans.”
“I trimmed the fat.”
“People rather like fat. The fast food industry rolls 256 billion dollars in revenue each year. Did you know that? The people you fired talked to journalists, adding fuel to the fire and making you truly one of the country’s worst villains. Royal Pipelines is already considered the most hated company in the US. The refinery explosion in Maine, the Green Living climate rally where an eighteen-year-old broke both legs—”
“I wasn’t the one who broke her legs,” Cillian interjected, holding his palm up. “Unfortunately.”
“No matter how you spin it, you must clean up your act. Play their game. Promote a wholesome, jolly image. The company’s reputation needs to be restored.”
The man had a smooth, English accent. Princely, drenched with entitlement, and dripping authority. He was playfully detached. An enigma. I couldn’t tell if he was a good or bad guy.
“Fine. I’ll kiss a few babies. Sponsor some students. Donate funds to open a new hospital wing.” Cillian leaned back in his seat, his eyes dropping back to the paperwork in front of him.
“I’m afraid we’re quite past the kissing babies stage. It’s time, Kill.”
Cillian looked up, scowling.
“I will not sacrifice my personal life to pacify a few self-righteous, Tesla-driving pricks—”
“Cillian? I mean, Mr. Fitzpatrick?” I cleared my throat, jumping into the conversation before more information that wasn’t meant for my ears was given.
Both men turned to look at me in surprise. With blue eyes charred with gold, a granite jaw, and an elegant nose, the British man was the kind of handsome that should be outlawed.
Cillian…well, he stayed gorgeous in his own go-screw-yourself way.
Kill raised an eyebrow. My appearance in his office didn’t surprise him in the least.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt—”
“Yet you did,” he cut into my words.
“Sorry about that. May I have a word with you?”
“No,” he answered flatly.
“It’s important.”
“Not to me.” He dropped the documents to his desk, already looking disinterested. “Which Penrose sister are you? The older and loud one, or the young and annoying one?”
After all these years, he still couldn’t tell Emmabelle and me apart. We didn’t even look like one another. Not to mention, he’d seen me naked as the day I was born (also: just as red).
Yet again, I found myself torn between the need to seduce and stab him.
“I’m Persephone.” I balled my hands into fists beside my body, recalling how badly it hurt when he broke my heart. How sublimely idiotic I’d felt after I tried to put that silly spell on him.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Fine,” I bit out. “I’m the annoying one.”
He turned his focus back to the files at his desk, skimming through them. “What do you want?”
“To speak with you in private, please.”
“Barging into my office unannounced is otiose. Expecting me not to kick you out implies you got your degree at the local Sam’s Club. Spill it. Mr. Whitehall is my lawyer.”
“Lawyers are people, too,” I pointed out. My humiliation didn’t need an audience.
“Debatable.” The gorgeous blond man smirked viciously. “And actually …” He pushed up from his seat, glancing back and forth between us with amusement dancing in his marble eyes. “I have better things to do than watch you two engaging in verbal foreplay. Cheers, Kill.”
He gathered his documents, tapped the desk twice, and dashed out. Cillian’s office temperature resembled that of an industrial freezer. Everything was neat, minimal, organized, and silver-chrome. Clinical and deliberately unnerving.
“May I come in?” I wrung my flowery dress. I hadn’t even noticed my dress of choice when I left home this morning, but now, the irony wasn’t lost on me.
He swiveled in his chair to face me, propping one ankle over the other on his desk. His five-piece dark gray suit looked like it had been sewn directly onto his body. Even though my obsession with Cillian Fitzpatrick morphed into resentment over the years, I couldn’t deny he was the type of smoldering that made Michele Morrone look like Steve Buscemi.
“You have exactly ten, no, make it five minutes before I call security.” He flipped an hourglass on his desk. “Give me the elevator pitch, Flower Girl. Make it good.”
Flower Girl.
He remembered.
“You’re going to call security on me?”
“My to-do list is long, and my patience is short. Four and a half minutes.” He cracked his knuckles.
I rushed through the details so fast, my head spun. I told him about Paxton taking me to the cleaners. About Colin Byrne and Tom Kaminski. About the massive debt. I even told him about Byrne’s promise he would pimp me out or kill me if I didn’t come up with the money. When I was done, all Cillian did was nod.
“You managed to cram all of this in under three minutes. Maybe you’re not completely useless.”
A bang behind us made us twist our heads in unison. Casey was plastered to the glass door, wide-eyed. She pushed it open, baring her fake teeth.
“Gosh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Fitzpatrick. She promised she wouldn’t…”
“Miss Brandt, leave,” Cillian clipped.
“But I—”
“Save it for someone who cares.”
“I—”
“That someone isn’t me.”
“Sir, I just wanted you to know that—”
“The only thing I know is you failed at your job and will be assessed accordingly. You’re leaving in the next three seconds, either through the door or the window. Friendly advice: choose the door.”
She bolted like the Looney Tunes Road Runner, nearly leaving a cloud of sand in her wake. Cillian turned back to me, ignoring the look of horror smeared on my face.
“You just threatened to throw Barbie out the window.” I jerked my thumb behind me.
“Not threatened, heavily implied,” he corrected. “You have less than two minutes, and I have about five hundred questions.”
My palms dampened despite the temperature in the room.
“That’s fair.”
“One—why me? Why not Hunter, Sailor, or anyone who actually gives half a damn about you, pardon my forwardness?”
I couldn’t tell him about Sailor’s pregnancy. She still hadn’t shared the news with her extended family. Or about my need not to be the loser one out of our group of friends. The one in need of saving.
I settled for half the truth.
“Sailor and Hunter don’t know what Paxton did, and they’re the only people I’m close with who actually have this kind of money. They know Pax left me and took the money we’d saved, but they don’t know about the debt. I don’t want to taint my friendship with my best friend by putting her in this position. I figured you and I share no history, no ties. With us, it will be a business transaction and nothing more.”
“Why not Sam Brennan?”
Sam was Sailor’s older brother and, as far as I was aware, a good friend of Cillian’s. The reigning king of Boston’s underground. A dashing psychopath with a peculiar taste for violence and pockets as deep as his soulless gray eyes.
“Mixing up with Brennan to try to pay back a street loan shark is like cutting off your arm because you broke your nail,” I said quietly.
“You think I’m less dangerous than Brennan?” A ghost of a smile passed his lips.
“No.” I tilted my head up. “But I think you’d be entertained by watching me squirm as I pay you back, and therefore more likely to give me the money.”
His smirk was cocked and charged, like a loaded gun.
I was right. He was enjoying this.
“Where’s that useless husband of yours now?”
“I don’t know. Trust me, if I did, I’d have chased him to the end of earth and back.” Made him pay for what he did.
“How are you planning to pay this loan back?” Kill ran the back of his hand over his sharp jawline.
“Slowly.” The truth tasted bitter in my mouth. “I’m a pre-K teacher, but I moonlight as a babysitter and tutor first and second graders. I’ll work tirelessly until I pay you back every penny. You have my word.”
“Your word doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know you. Which brings me to my final question—why should I help you?”
What kind of question was that? Why did normal people usually help others? Because it was the decent thing to do. But Cillian Fitzpatrick wasn’t normal nor decent. He didn’t play by the rules.
I opened my mouth, searching my brain for a good answer.
“Thirty seconds, Persephone.” He tapped the hourglass, watching me.
“Because you can?”
“The number of things I can do with my money is infinite.” He yawned.
“Because it’s the right thing to do!” I cried out.
He picked up one of the brochures on his desk, flipping through it.
“I’m a nihilist.”
“I don’t know what that means.” I felt the tips of my ears reddening in shame.
“Right or wrong are the same side of the coin for me, presented differently,” he said impassively. “I have no morals or principles.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Really?” He looked up from the brochure, his face a stone mask of cruelty. “The saddest thing I’ve heard recently is a woman who got screwed over by her no-show husband and was about to get trafficked, murdered, or both.”
“Exactly!” I exhaled, pointing at him. “Yes! See? If something happens to me, it will be on your conscience.”
My lower lip trembled. As always, I kept my tears at bay.
He tossed the brochure across his desk.
“First of all, as I mentioned not two seconds ago, I have no conscience. Second, whatever happens to you is on you and the complete and utter buffoon you married. I’m not another item on your pile of bad decisions.”
“Marrying Paxton wasn’t a bad decision. I married for love.”
This sounded pathetic, even to my own ears, but I wanted him to know. To know I hadn’t been twiddling my thumbs, pining for him all those years.
“All middle-class girls do.” He checked the time on the hourglass. “Very uninspiring.”
“Cillian,” I said softly. “You’re my only hope.”
Other than him, my only option was to disappear. Run away from my family and friends, from everything I knew, loved, and cherished.
From the life I’d built for the past twenty-six years.
He adjusted the tie clasped under his waistcoat.
“Here’s the thing, Persephone. As a matter of principle, I do not give anything away without getting something back. The only thing separating myself and that loan shark who’s after you is a privileged upbringing and opportunity. I, too, am not in the business of handing out free favors. So unless you tell me what, exactly, I could gain for the one hundred thousand dollars you’re asking me to kiss goodbye, I’m going to turn you down. You have ten seconds, by the way.”
I stood there, cheeks ablaze, eyes burning, every muscle in my body taut as a bowstring. A cold shiver ran down my back.
I wanted to scream. To lash out. To collapse on the floor in cinders. To claw his eyes out and bite and wrestle him and…and do things I never wanted to do to anyone, my enemies included.
“Five seconds.” He tapped the hourglass. His snake-like eyes sparkled in amusement. He was enjoying this. “Give me your best offer, Penrose.”
Did he want me to give him my body?
My pride?
My soul?
I wouldn’t do that. Not for Byrne. Not for him. Not for anyone.
The remaining seconds dripped like life leaving Auntie Tilda’s body.
His finger hit a red button on the side of his desk.
“Have a nice life, Flower Girl. Whatever’s left of it, anyway.”
He swung his chair to the window, documents in hand, ready to return to his work. The glass door behind me burst open, and two brawny men in suits stomped in, each grabbing me by an arm to drag me outside.
Casey waited by the elevator bank with her arms crossed and shoulder propped over the wall, her cheeks flushed with humiliation.
“It’s not every day security takes out the trash. Guess there’s a first time for everything.” She flipped her hair, cackling like a hyena.
I spent the entire bike ride to North End fighting back the tears.
My last and only chance just went up in flames.
