Rules of Engagement

by Lily White

  “Because he blames himself for her death. That’s why,” Jackson roared again, fury written into the lines of his face and the tight set of his shoulders. “The news didn’t tell the entire story, and instead of digging into someone’s past and making up your own conclusions, maybe you should mind your damn business and come to work to do the job you were asked to do and then leave without threatening to destroy the company.”

  Frustration was a vibration beneath my skin. “How am I threatening to destroy anything? It’s not like I held Donovan down and forced him to kiss me!”

  Rolling back on his heels, Jackson smirked, his expression that of a cat that had just cornered a mouse. “So, that’s what happened. You decided to be a whore and spread your legs for –“

  The sound of my palm against his cheek ricocheted through the small office, the moments between sitting in the chair and standing in front of him lost to me. I didn’t recall standing from my seat, didn’t recall taking those few steps to close the distance between us, but I certainly felt the sting of that slap on the palm of my hand, saw the red mark blooming across his skin where I’d struck him.

  I’d never hit another person before, but I’d also never been called a whore either. Even my father hadn’t dared to demean me in such a way. Perhaps a month ago, I would have run off and licked my wounds to be called such a foul name, but not anymore. And definitely not with this son of a bitch.

  “Never, and I mean NEVER, call me a whore again.”

  Rubbing his hand over his skin, Jackson narrowed his eyes on me, his smirk stretching back in place as he towered over me. Lowering his voice so much that it was a menacing growl, he answered, “You deserve what’s coming to you, Mia. Don’t forget that. There are things about Donovan you don’t know, but I’ll step back and let you figure them out for yourself. I’m sure once you realize how stupid you’ve been by not listening to me, you’ll be begging me to forgive you for this.”

  Marching away from me, he’d barely passed through the open door before spinning on his heel to glare at me and say, “I suggest you clean up that mess on the floor near your desk. And when you’re done with that, I suggest you take off the rest of the day because you won’t want to be here when I find Donovan and drag him back into the office. You’ll be lucky if you even have a job by the time I’m done talking to him.”

  Jackson walked through the door, his heavy steps thudding through the office as he slammed the door on his way out of the back room and slammed the main door on his way out the office entirely. For the first time since I’d started my job with Stone Industries, I was alone in the office.

  Trembling where I stood, I let the tears slip from my eyes. Sad tears. Angry tears. Frustrated tears. They all spilled together in hot drops down my cheeks, all the misery that was held inside them left as wet trails down my skin until they slipped from my jawline to drop into a pathetic puddle at my feet. For once it wasn’t the threat of losing my job that scared me. Trevor had already offered me a position in his company should things go south here. I didn’t like the idea, especially after he asked me out this morning, but it was still a viable option regardless. Slapping away the tears still dripping down my face, I rolled my shoulders back as I took a deep breath. I wouldn’t let the argument with Jackson ruin me, but it was more than likely that whatever Jackson had to say to Donovan would be the final nail in the coffin of that budding romance.

  It was just like my life that I would finally open myself up to a man, only to discover he was even more complicated than me.

  But, I wasn’t fired yet, and as such, I had a job to do. Walking out of Donovan’s office, I closed the door behind me out of habit. My eyes scanned the mess of papers still littering the floor, and after blowing out a breath filled with what remained of the volatile emotions swirling inside me, I knelt down to scrape those papers into a pile and carry them to my desk.

  Setting them down, I went about sorting the papers. It was a tedious job, no more exciting than doing your taxes or sitting in the waiting room of the local driver’s license office. But it filled the time. An hour passed as I grouped the invoices into one pile, the contracts into another, the schematics into a third pile, and the correspondence into another. Having been at this job for over a month now, I was rummaging through contracts and records dating back two years. None of it held my interest, so I didn’t bother reading about the myriad of computer programs, hardware installs and website developments Donovan’s firm had accomplished since the satellite office first opened its doors. These records couldn’t have been for the entire firm. There weren’t enough to be the only work performed by a multinational company.

  Once the piles were broken down into type, I went to work grouping them by client names. Flipping through the invoices and billing, I’d made a dent into this newest stack of records when a name caught my eye. It wasn’t a client name, wasn’t a project name or a proposal that failed to sell. It was the name of a website, one that had been a thorn in my side and a shadow hovering over my days for the past month.

  Dropping a handful of papers to flutter over the surface of my desk, I gripped that one piece of paper in my hands and almost screamed to realize just how well I’d been played by Donovan Stone.

  Two words that should have had no meaning stared back at me with the same pompous smirk I’d come to associate with my silent boss.

  Dark Realities.

  The paper itself was a list of players in the sexual fantasies game offered by the site. Predators and Prey, and the amounts paid to them based on the size of the audience they’d gathered. It was all meaningless to me as I stared. I blinked my eyes thinking I must be going insane, only to open them again and discover that I wasn’t.

  Dark Realities.

  The website that had disappeared the day after I signed up for a game I never wanted to play.

  Dark Realities.

  The mistake I made because I was desperate to keep running from a past that wanted me to be a failure.

  Dark Realities.

  The game that gave a man the opportunity to know everything there was to know about me when I had absolutely no knowledge about him.

  I didn’t have to guess which man was behind the site. It was the same man who watched me while silently prodding me to be a stronger woman. The same man who could cut me to the bone without speaking a word, and who had been running me through a maze of illusions and deceit since the first day he ever met me.

  The paper crinkled in my clenched hands, my eyes scanning over the remaining piles as I wondered what else could be found regarding the site in what was left of the careless record keeping.

  Had Donovan known I would eventually find this? Was he watching through his cameras at this very moment enjoying the shock on my face now that I’d discovered his little secret?

  My fingers flew through the papers almost as quickly as my anger boiled up inside me. Thumbing through the stacks in a frantic search to find more, I hissed when the edge of one page sliced across my skin. The stinging cut didn’t bother me half as much as the knife stuck in my back, the blade twisting and turning until it was embedded deep enough to shred my heart.

  Not finding any other records discussing Dark Realities in that stack, I tore through the others on my desk. After that, I tore through what was left of the disorganized stacks on the shelf, finding nothing that would point me to who within Stone Industries ran the site. Running back to my desk, I picked up that one lonely sheet of paper again and noticed the dates of the payment made to the players. None of the payments were over a year old, which meant this page shouldn’t have been grouped with records that were twice its age.

  Someone had intentionally hidden this page to keep me from finding it, and that same someone was most likely the man who assumed I wouldn’t last a day in his office, and therefore wouldn’t have made it to the records I was now sorting.

  But where were the remaining records? Why was there only this one page?

  Dragging my eyes away from th
at one bit of evidence, I flicked a glance at the lobby door and chewed the inside of my lip. There was no telling where Donovan had run off to or whether Jackson had found him to talk through what happened. They could have left entirely to go grab lunch and discuss whether I would still be employed this afternoon, or they could still be in the building, quietly talking in the hallway. There was no telling how much time I had to continue my search for additional records regarding a site that had become a mysterious nightmare, but I was alone inside the office, and Donovan’s office was open for exploration.

  If there were additional records to be found, his office was where I would find them.

  The indecision was a fetid pulse inside me, my heart beating as it counted down the passing seconds. The truth was I might lose the chance if I waited too long to dig into Donovan’s desk, because it was almost a certainty that I would be fired by the time the two men came back.

  Jackson had it out for me, especially after I’d slapped him so hard it left a mark. If they came back early and found me snooping, would it really make a difference if they planned to fire me regardless?

  The inside of my lip was so raw I could taste the trace of blood from the broken skin where I’d chewed. But my curiosity was too much to bear, my anger boiling even harder when I remembered all the fear and insecurity the Dark Realities game had caused.

  Screw it. There was only one shot for me to find out the truth, and if it turned out that Donovan was my stalker, then I decided to play the game after all. Except this time, I refused to play by anybody’s rules but my own.

  Decision made, I stood from my seat and cast one last look at the lobby door, not caring that Donovan’s cameras would record everything as I rifled through his office. Surrounded by the silence of an empty office, I quickly crossed the room to run through his door, but the sound of two male voices stopped me before I could make it past his doorway.

  “Hey, Mia,” Jackson’s voice called out from the lobby as he walked in from the hallway, “you can take off for the rest of the day. Donovan won’t be returning.”

  Spinning in place, I saw Jackson and Trevor coming through the door, their arms full of boxes and a scowl written over both of their faces.

  My heart was practically tearing from my chest from how hard it hammered. “Where’s Donovan?” I asked, hating the breathlessness of my voice. “Doesn’t he want to talk to me?”

  Setting the boxes down, Jackson shot me a look full of hatred and condemnation. “I wasn’t able to catch him before he tore out of the parking garage.”

  My eyebrows pulled together. “What does that mean?”

  Barking out his response, it was plain to see that Jackson was still angry. “It means I don’t know whether you still have a job or not. But if it were up to me, you’d be packing your shit and going home today.”

  Glancing past Jackson, I saw Trevor set down his boxes before looking between us in confusion. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  Humorless laughter burst from Jackson’s throat. “If you call an assistant making out with her boss as okay, then sure, things are fine.”

  Trevor’s expression shadowed at the comment, his eyes glancing my direction with rejection rolling behind them. The poor guy had just finished asking me out, and now he knew why he’d been brushed off so easily. I guess that meant I could no longer run to him for a job when I was fired the next morning.

  “I mean it, Mia. Take off. I don’t want to look at you for the rest of the day while I worry about Donovan. If something happens to him because you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself, then I’ll let all of our investors know who they can blame for the destruction of Stone Industries. Once word gets out, you might as well leave the city. Nobody will hire you after learning that you, personally, took down a thriving company.”

  The bastard was being far too harsh, far too accusing for what happened between Donovan and me, but there was no use standing there arguing.

  Rather than remaining in place just to listen to him threatening me, I huffed out a breath and marched to my desk to grab my purse. Thankfully, Jackson turned to say something to Trevor about whatever project they were working on, so he didn’t see me take the record I’d found on Dark Realities and slip it into my purse.

  Letting myself out, I slipped past the two men on my way into the hallway, and made sure to give Jackson the finger as I passed.

  “Wait up, Mia,” Trevor called out.

  Casting Jackson a scathing look, Trevor followed me into the hall and said, “Don’t let Jackson’s crap bother you. He gets grumpy whenever he has a big project coming up.”

  Forcing a friendly smile, I answered, “Thanks, Trevor. Have a good night.”

  “You too,” he called as I descended the stairs. “Have a good night, and sleep well.”

  I almost tripped over my feet at his choice in words. How many times had I been told the same thing by the man stalking me? I turned to say something in response to Trevor, but instead of asking him why he’d said those words, I shook my head and continued to walk down the stairs, my mind spinning with questions about the identity of the man running Dark Realities.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Rule No. 5: Never underestimate me. And I promise I’ll never underestimate you.

  Someone once told me that a habit is formed after repeating the same activity every day for twenty-one days. I’d often questioned that small amount of time, often believed that a habit takes much longer to acquire. The body and the mind can’t possibly be so malleable that twenty-one days can change a person, that twenty-one days are all that’s needed to alter a behavior or mindset that may have been normal for years or an entire lifetime.

  However, while standing at the glass doors on the first floor of a building I’d learned today is owned by Donovan Stone, I found myself pausing with my fingers gripping the handle, my lungs drawing in air in preparation for flight, my legs and feet set in such a position that when I found the strength to push the door wide open, I would be ready to run, to sprint, to move as quickly as I could possibly manage in low heeled shoes between the building and my car.

  It didn’t matter that I hadn’t heard from my stalker since going to the police, I still ran as if being chased every day while coming to work or going home. I still ignored the people on the sidewalk who watched me with confused interest as I navigated the crowds to keep from being easily followed.

  Twenty-one days. That’s all it took for me to conform to a life of being stalked. Twenty-one days and I had slipped into a habit of running when nobody was actually chasing me.

  I knew that now, and so on this day I opened the door that led to a misty, rain soaked sidewalk. I grit my teeth and clenched the straps of my purse to walk calmly from the building to my car. As soon as I was free of the building, panic settled within my stomach. A heavy weight, it whispered up my nerves to convince my brain that there was a reason to run. But this time, my brain whispered back and told that panic to step aside. It reminded every tense muscle inside me that I had been played by an enigmatic man that had never spoken a word to me since the moment I met him.

  Maybe twenty-one days isn’t the magical number after all, because when my anger blossomed again, the heat of it drove off the panic, smothering it and squelching it until I could roll my shoulders back with pride and not give a damn about the man watching me from the shadows.

  I knew his name now. I knew his face. And I refused to let him toy with me any longer.

  What I didn’t know was why.

  Why would a man like Donovan Stone take the time, expend the energy, or even have an interest in running a woman he hardly knew through a twisted and aggravating game?

  The walk to my car took little time, my heels clicking over the concrete with a rhythmic beat, unhurried, without fear, but with fortitude I’d not known before meeting Donovan. Perhaps in the twenty-one days it had taken me to become the target Donovan had made me, I’d also become something more.

  I was a woman who
was no longer afraid to stand up against a bully. I was a woman who could reveal her secrets without shame for having carried them. I was a woman who no longer feared the criticism of those around her, the people who watched with sardonic smirks in hopes that she would fail.

  In twenty-one days, I’d changed in ways that stripped me of the self-imposed cage, and freed me to become a force of nature.

  Arriving home, I didn’t bother to lock up behind me, trapping myself inside while cutting myself off from the world. I was tired of peeking out windows and covering mirrors, tired of always fearing who would be staring back at me from the shadows. Perhaps the anger is what helped alleviate the fear, and maybe if I’d allowed myself to be angry at my father so many years ago, I wouldn’t have grown into a woman who sheltered herself from the world. But whereas my father had been open and honest about his abuse and criticism, Donovan had been sly and quiet, a man holding the puppet strings of a woman who had no clue they’d been tied to her the entire time. I had every intention to cut those strings, and in doing so, I planned to attach strings of my own, to teach the puppet master what happens when the puppet learns she’s just a toy.

  A smile stretched my lips, the corners curling with the fury bubbling to the surface of my thoughts. No longer concerned with losing my job or getting dragged off by a stranger, I stepped away from my unlocked door, set my keys, purse and phone on the counter and leisurely strolled down the hall to grab a shower and wrap myself in the comfort of my warm, ratty robe.

  After making a hot cup of tea, I sat at the stools next to the kitchen counter and toyed with my phone, scrolling through the nefarious messages left by who I once thought was a stranger.

  In truth, Donovan was still a stranger. I didn’t know more about him other than the business he owned and the tragedy of his past, but he was no longer a faceless stranger, which made him less of a threat and more of a beguiling nuisance.