“Of course,” Emily answers. “Never mind that I just saw you on campus a couple of days ago. What are you doing here?”
“Slumming,” I say before Dahlia can answer. “It’s a miracle she steps foot in Brooklyn at all. Now that she has a sprawling penthouse suite to lounge in with the furbabies.”
“Stop it, that’s so not true,” she drawls and lets out a shy laugh.
“She’s right,” Emily agrees. “Except our Miss Dahlia here has two luxury homes to live in. Vivian’s place until the petsitting slash penthouse sitting job is over, and then, when her boss gets back, she can just move her bags over to the hot neighbor’s!”
“Hot jerk, if the company he keeps is any indication.” I cover my mouth, but it’s too late to take back what I said. “Sorry. I’m… that just came out. I’m sure Jackson is nothing like… you know who.”
“It’s okay,” Dahlia says softly.
“No, it’s not okay. I’m happy you found a decent guy to date in this town.”
She and Emily know what went down, or at least, they have the abridged version of events, the snippet I shared with them once, during a weak moment. I shouldn’t have said a word about Jackson just now, but I couldn’t help myself. The man Dahlia’s dating is close friends with the guy I consider to be the biggest mistake of my teenage life.
Caleb Mitchell.
Arrogant bad boy, unapologetic playboy, and cocky bastard.
After my parents passed away and social services put me in foster care, I took a part-time job at Mitchell’s New York, a chain of high-end designer department stores owned by Caleb’s parents. He was doing a stint at the time as VP of Merchandising, and visited the branch where I worked every few weeks to meet with the store manager. I don’t remember how he noticed me out of the dozens of staff who worked there, but he did. Maybe it was because he and I were just a few years apart in age. I still don’t know. But once he noticed me, he made my life in that job a living hell. Every time he visited the store, he’d scrutinize whatever task assigned to me. Whenever I worked on the cash register, he’d tell me I needed to move faster, or be more customer friendly, or he’d embarrass me about my counter being a fucking mess. If I was folding clothes or neatening rack that customers had rifled through, my neatening efforts wasn’t near enough to meet company standards. Hell, one night I was manning the fitting rooms, and he sarcastically told me I needed to do a better job of selling potential customers on what they tried on.
That job was a nightmare.
Then there was the holiday party that I’ll never forget.
I swallow hard to push down the lump that forms in my throat as forcefully as I try to shove away the memory of that evening.
“Are you all right?” Emily asks.
She watches as I fill my wine glass to the brim and gulp down the contents. “Yes. Fine. I’m peachy.”
Dahlia sits in the armchair opposite me. “I’m sorry you went through that night. And I’m more than sorry that dating Jackson is a constant reminder.”
“Don’t apologize,” I tell her. I let the fruity alcohol fill my stomach, and wish it was something stronger. “You and Jackson have every right to see each other, and if he makes you happy, I’m glad. Don’t worry about me, all right? I might have the odd slip of the tongue like I did just now, but… you know what? Let’s change the subject. How are the puppies?”
“A handful as usual, but impossible to dislike. They’re so adorable.”
“Good! You should bring them over sometime. We can take them for a walk around here.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “No, no! The streets of Brooklyn are no place for Vivian’s furbabies. The three of them together will terrorize our neighbors,” she says, giggling.
“I have to agree with Dahl,” Emily chimes in. She gets up and walks toward the bathroom but turns in the middle of the room. “I’ve seen them in action. It’s like watching an episode of The Three Stooges. And the little one is the ringleader too! Hang on, I need to take a leak.”
“Gosh, I know, right?”
I lean back on the sofa and smile, my mind sufficiently off of Caleb, thanks to my awesome roommates. “Okay, we’ll save their canine version of slapstick comedy for Central Park. Maybe one day next week after your lecture or something? Oh wait. No, I’ll be working late all next week,” I groan.
“That’s too bad. Big project?” Dahlia asks.
“If by big you mean repetitive, labor-intensive and devoid of mental stimulation, then yes.” I rub my temples and close my eyes to avoid slumping into another funk. “Big project. Shred, shred, shred. That’s the sum total of this internship at Levine fucking Holdings.”
“Levine Holdings. Okay, making a note to self. Hmmm.” She puckers her lips and her eyebrows furrow as though she’s trying to jog her memory. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“Probably because I’ve whined, moaned, criticized and bellyached about them since my internship started,” I suggest. “And on that point, I’d have more of a challenge working at a burger joint. But my internship will look great on my resume! Hooray for that!” I squeal with more fake enthusiasm than my poor throat can muster. It comes out tinny and causes me to cough as though something went down the wrong pipe.
“I wish it was going better for you,” she hums apologetically.
“You and me both, darling.”
“Give it time. I’m sure it’ll improve.” I take my glass to the kitchen sink at the corner of our open concept living area. Giving it a rinse, I put it in the dishwasher and reach under the sink for bottled water. “Hey, tell Emily I’m gonna call it a night. I have a few weeks to figure out this student loan thing. Tomorrow morning, I’ll ask my manager at the makeup counter if they have any extra shifts I can pick up. After that, I’m going to troll around Soho for a short-term waitressing gig at one of the chic restaurants or clubs. Maybe tips are the answer.”
“How much do you have to come up with again?” she asks.
“A few grand, but it may as well be a million bucks. My teeny tiny credit cards limits are maxed out, I have seventeen dollars and sixty-three cents in my checking account, and I broke the piggy bank ages ago.”
“I know you already told me no the last time I brought it up, but I can help,” Dahlia starts off in a whisper.
“Uh-uh. I’m not taking your money, Dahl. You earned it, and it’s yours. I’ll figure something out. I always do.”
“Okay, okay. I just wish you’d let us help. That’s what friends are for, you know?”
I return to Dahlia’s side and lean down to her, pulling her into a brief hug. “I appreciate how sweet and generous you and Emily are, love. I really do. But I got this. I promise. Have a good night.”
As I leave the living room, my head starts pounding with a stress headache. It gets worse in my bedroom. Slumping into bed, I drag the covers over my head.
Of course, what I said to Dahlia is a flat-out lie.
I don’t ‘got this.’
I’m stumped as to how I’ll come up with the cash.
Four
Caleb
I look up from my brand new smartphone, and all the air is sucked out of my late model Mercedes-Benz S550. My thumbs freeze an inch from the phone screen, my eyes stop blinking, and my jaw drops.
In what feels like slow motion, I open my car door and plant one caramel-colored House of Testoni lace-up leather cap-toe out onto the pavement. Sadly, I’m too late. I spent the last thirty seconds ogling instead of taking action. She’s gone. The woman I’ve been waiting to speak to disappears inside the entrance of her walk-up apartment building.
As I stare at the metal and glass front door, the phone slips out of my grasp. I look down in time to see it drop screen-first onto the rough concrete.
It’s my second broken phone in as many weeks.
But I don’t give a fuck about the phone.
My mind is on the one person in all five New York boroughs who refuses to give me the time of day.
/> Rose Burnell.
I haven’t seen Rose since I graduated from my Columbia U MBA a couple of years ago. She looks exactly as she did back when she was in high school. Those soft sweet lips, her large hazel eyes, her bone straight dark brown hair that skims along her lower back when she let it down from her frequent ponytail hairdo, her stunning face that can express every emotion under the sun at the drop of a hat. Fuck, I was hooked, never mind her trim, athletic curves and long shapely legs I often pictured wrapped around my waist as I eye-fucked her.
From the first instant I saw Rose, I wanted her. The problem was that at eighteen, I was an arrogant and immature teenage asshole. Being her boss in the loosest sense of the word at the time, I grabbed the reins of my power difference to dominate, oppress and abuse her in the workplace.
What can I say? I was a prick.
A boy.
Not much different from the little rug rat whose only way to show that he likes a girl is to tug on her pigtails, taunt her, or make her cry.
That was me.
Fucking her for real was the only unmet fantasy of my late teens. And with what went down after the holiday party, I knew that was one dream that would never come to life.
The thing is, because she’s always been on my mind, it’s as though I saw her just yesterday. I caused Rose a fuck ton of pain and anguish back when she worked in one of our stores. I can’t look myself in the mirror whenever I think of for how far I let things go. She was only a sophomore. I used the little power and influence I possessed to convince her to leave with me. I took her away from the company holiday party. Then all hell broke loose. Rose was the only casualty.
To this day, I know without a doubt that she still hates me because of it.
Hell, sometimes I’m sure I hate myself even more. What I did to her showed me the worst version of who I am. Since the night that it all happened, I’ve tried to let it go and put it behind me, but I never could. It’s impossible to move on when you can’t forgive yourself for your sins. Deep down, it’s the reason I won’t let myself open up to anyone but the guys. If it weren’t for Jace, Jackson, Dylan, and Foster, I’d still be waist deep in a solitary cesspool of my own making.
But even with good, mostly law-abiding, mostly sober friends like them, I haven’t stopped seeing the dark side of myself in the mirror. The cowardly side. That part of me that just stood by and did nothing to help when I needed to step up. It’s an occurrence that coincides with pretty much every memory of what I stood by and almost allowed to happen to Rose.
It fucking haunts me.
I convinced her to come with me. She only got into the car because I told her she had to, then I drove her from the Midtown holiday party to the house of one of those other rich slackers I used to hang out with back then. It was all my fault, because I’m the one who took her there. Then one of those piece of shit high school douchebags slipped something into her drink.
No one can absolve me of my sins as I left her alone, thinking she was safe here. I wasn’t in the room when someone waited for her to pass out then removed pieces of her clothes and took pictures of her half-naked, unconscious body. I was too fucked up or too naïve to stay beside her the entire time so that no one would touch her. They would’ve probably done much worse to her, and I would’ve been somewhere in the house while they did it.
She was a victim, but those losers I thought were my friends back then hadn’t hit rock bottom yet.
Thank fuck for that.
But I can’t take any credit for that fact that Rose was spared that night.
It’s only because someone else stepped in and put a stop to it. I don’t even remember who it was, but that guy was the hero who saved her from possibly being passed around to seven or eight guys in one night. I was a fucking coward. A prick for letting myself give in to doing stupid shit, an idiot for giving up all my control to hard drugs just for the sake of something to do. Not that I can’t blame the drugs for what happened. I was an ass before I inhaled, snorted, and injected. The drugs only augmented the fuck-up that I already was.
Rose got away with her physical innocence intact, but emotionally, she was scarred.
A couple of her half-naked drunken pictures ended up on someone’s Facebook or Instagram account. They were eventually taken down, but no one can stop social media from sharing a mistake that a person wants to erase. We didn’t attend the same school, but from what I heard, the kids there got wind of what happened. One night with me eviscerated Rose’s high school social life.
All because of me.
After it happened, when she quit her job at our department store, I was so guilt ridden that I did a bit of digging to find out more about her. By then I was fixated on her. Obsessed with my need to make it right and redeem myself in her eyes.
I found out she was not only financially constrained, but an orphan who lost her parents and was living in a foster home. That discovery tore up my insides. It was close to impossible for me to shake the guilt and shame. She had nothing, and even then, I managed to take something priceless from her. For a long time, I didn’t know how to live with the fact that I was the wealthy, sick fuck with everything, and I stripped away the tiny sliver of peace that Rose had in her already tragic life.
All because I was an ass.
The villain who almost singlehandedly brought about her newest tragedy.
Taking a deep breath, I force myself to focus on the five steps that sit between me and the buzzer to Rose’s apartment.
I didn’t show up at her place to walk down memory lane.
I’m not here for forgiveness or redemption either.
That ship has sailed.
Oh no. I’m standing here, in the middle of Brooklyn, because at the heart of every successful billion-dollar enterprise is one or more selfish, conniving motherfucking entrepreneurs. I can suggest that openly, not only because it’s true, but since I’m one of those selfish, conniving motherfucking entrepreneurs too.
My partners and I have Rose in our sights because, true to form, she’s a means to an end. Rose happens to be one of a very select few individuals that my firm can work with under the radar to confirm what we suspect about Levine Holdings and all of its subsidiaries. Thanks to Jackson, I’m the one they nominated to track down Rose and beg her to do us a favor that can cost her the internship and her freedom. One thing’s for sure. My business partners and friends don’t fucking shy away from asking for the moon. They—or I should say we—want Rose to effectively commit corporate espionage and risk being arrested for a white-collar crime. And our end goal? To help us fix the Mont Blanc deal from completely tanking, a deal that we never should have started to work on in the first place. I told my business partners that I’m the last fucking person on earth that she’d ever help, but they don’t care. To them, because Rose and I have a history, they’re adamant that only I should make contact. It saves the rest of them from facing any and all possible criminal charges for soliciting corporate secrets from a business interest.
There only one thing I’m sure of as I press the buzzer to her fifth-floor walk-up apartment.
It’s not a matter of whether or not I’ll have to grovel to get what my business partners and I want.
It’s a question of how much.
But fuck, if that’s what I have to do, I’m ready to swallow my pride, to bite back my domineering nature, and to shove away my arrogance.
I’ll do whatever it takes this time.
Even if it ends up hurting us both.
Five
Rose
“Are you going to talk to him or not?” Emily stands with her hand a few inches from the old-style two way speaker installed on the wall beside our front door. She has better things to do than wait there, and the proof of that is the oven mitt on her other hand, the bright yellow apron tied around her waist, as well as the smell of butterscotch scones that fills the entire apartment.
“God, the smell of those scones alone is so decadent. Did I tell you I love you tod
ay? Well, I love you. My waistline doesn’t, but I’ll run an extra mile tomorrow to make up for all the calories I plan to inhale tonight.” I sit in the armchair furthest from the front door, rambling on about her baking as I do my best not to acknowledge what’s really going on around here.
Five floors down, at the main entrance of the apartment Emily, Dahlia and I rent, there’s a man from my past trying to insert himself into my present. If I let him, he’ll also fuck up my future.
That sums it up in a nutshell.
Oh, he also happens to be my weakness.
My Kryptonite.
The worst of my teenage tormentors.
A horrible boss.
A ruthless bad boy.
A cruel human being devoid of compassion or empathy.
A heartless demon with no soul.
And he’s less than sixty feet away from where I’m sitting.
“Yes,” Emily answers. “And I love you too, honey, but if you don’t go out there and talk to him, he won’t just camp out on our front steps, but he’s going to Keep. Pressing. The. Fucking. Buzzer! I swear to God it’s driving me nuts and he’s only been at it for two hours.”
“We should call the cops.”
“He’s a friend of Dahlia’s man,” she reminds me. “And a friend of Dylan. You know, the guy I kinda like?”
I throw my legs over the side of the armchair and lean way back, staring up at the ceiling. “Doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy like they might be.”
“True, but so far, he’s been polite.” She walks past me and stops at the oven, switching on the light inside. “My scones are rising nicely!”
“I love big buns,” I joke flatly.
“Come on, girl. Stop kidding around. I know that jerk hurt you back in the day, but can you at least go downstairs, look him in the eye, and tell him ‘no’ to whatever help they need?”
“I don’t want to see that asshole’s face. Do you realize I had to put up with seeing him almost every day for four of my six years at college?”
The Billionaire and The Virgin Intern (Seduction and Sin Book 5) Page 2
