Devastated (Anger Management Book 1)

by R. L. Mathewson

  “We need to talk, Miss Peppers.”

  *-*-*-*

  “Is something wrong, Mr. O’Mallery?” Kylie asked, shifting nervously as Hunter looked through everything that she’d organized so far for the convention on the iPad and had to admit that he was impressed.

  “I just have a few questions about the convention,” Hunter said absently, as he went through everything, noting that since she’d taken over planning the convention that she’d been very busy. She had their rooms booked, promotional packs ordered, VIP packs being made up, swag ordered, had his men in the Orlando office working on demonstrations, managed to negotiate a better spot at the convention, reserved a private lounge for their clients, and-

  “What’s this private security detail you booked for the convention?” he asked, as he scrolled down the impressive list of names that she’d managed to secure private security for through his company.

  “Oh, I thought it would be a good idea to offer a complimentary private security detail to your VIP clients since there will be at least ten security companies at the convention hoping to lure them away. With that in mind, I also did a little digging and compiled a list of Fortune 500 companies that will be at the convention who are interested in upgrading their security and thought that this would give Shadow Security an advantage,” Kylie explained, as he once again found himself wondering what she was doing working as someone’s fucking lackey.

  It made him wonder why she was settling for a job she hated, and there was no doubt in his mind that she hated being at someone else’s beck and call. If that stubborn glint in her eye that intrigued him so much hadn’t told him that, then the interviews his men had with her past employers would have. From what his men witnessed, they were all assholes who openly criticized and belittled their assistants while demanding that they wait on them hand and foot, and every single one of them wanted Kylie back.

  When they’d realized that his men were doing a background check on Kylie for a job, every single one of them had made a play to get her back. They’d tried to entice his men into telling them how much he was paying her, because apparently none of them had been able to offer Kylie enough to stay. That was interesting, especially since all of them had offered her more money than what he was paying her.

  “And how much is this going to cost me?” he asked even as he mentally calculated the cost of providing twenty-four-hour personal security to twenty-five people for-

  “Nothing. The contract with the convention will offset the cost,” Kylie said, making him frown.

  “How?” he asked, swiping through the files on the iPad, looking for the contract the Orlando office signed with the convention so that he could see what she was talking about only to have the iPad plucked from his hand.

  “When I called to see if we could get a better spot at the convention, I found out that they weren’t happy with their contract with Highland Security. After finding out what they needed, I called Tim at the Orlando office and after I explained everything, he swung by the hotel and figured out a few more things that they were going to need, wrote up a proposal, and the convention signed last week. In return, I was able to negotiate a better spot, the VIP room for free, and offset the cost of private security and you’ll still be able to write off the loss. Oh, and the hotel liked Tim’s security suggestions so much that they hired Shadow Securities to upgrade their system,” Kylie explained with a shrug as she handed the iPad back with the new contract opened and a, “It was in the memo I gave you last week.”

  “I see,” he murmured absently, realizing why her old bosses were desperate to get her back, because something told him that he probably wasn’t going to be able to let her go either.

  Chapter 12

  “Is there a reason why we’re looking at pictures of dicks?” Ryan asked, as he pulled out a patio chair and sat down next to him before adding, “Is this a new fetish?”

  “Visiting hours are over,” Hunter said, not bothering to look up as he scrolled down the page, seriously wondering how many times this loser was going to post pictures of his dick.

  “You can’t still be mad,” Ryan said, not really looking like he cared.

  “I really can.”

  Shrugging it off, Ryan gestured towards the screen. “What exactly are you doing?”

  “I’m checking into someone’s background,” Hunter said, as he glanced up to make sure that Kylie was still in the kitchen making lunch. When he spotted her through the kitchen’s double patio doors, he shifted his attention back to the sick fuck that she never should have married.

  “And she’s into small dicks?” Ryan asked with a glance of his own towards the kitchen as he reached down and pulled a thick manila envelope from his bag and placed it on the table next to him.

  “Apparently,” Hunter murmured as he scrolled through the rest of the post, making a note of the fact that the loser was bragging about having a four-inch dick.

  “Is this the ex?” Ryan asked, as he absently drummed his fingertips against the tabletop.

  “Yes,” Hunter said, still trying to figure out how she’d ended up with the sick fuck.

  “I see,” Ryan murmured as he glanced back towards the kitchen. “And is there a reason why we’re stalking her ex online?”

  “Boredom,” Hunter drawled, clicking on the next tab only to cringe when he saw the hooker sporting track marks that the little prick was bragging about fucking.

  “Ah, hookers,” Ryan noted, sounding disgusted.

  “It’s one of his favorite pastimes.”

  The other was tearing Kylie apart, something that Hunter noted that he did when he wasn’t bragging about how many hookers he’d fucked, posting questionable porn, complaining about how fucking stupid his boss was, or bashing his clients, something that Hunter found interesting since it looked like he was logging onto this site multiple times a day from different IP addresses. He also couldn’t help but wonder how his clients would feel if they knew the electrician they’d hired was breaking into their computers and taking screenshots and sharing their files on this website.

  “So, what exactly have we learned about Miss Davis?” Ryan asked, sounding amused while Hunter clicked on the next post and-

  “Oh, that’s fucking disgusting,” Ryan said right around the time that Hunter decided that he’d had enough for one day.

  “She married a sick fuck and her family hates her,” Hunter said, sighing heavily as he cleared the history before closing his laptop and leaned back in his chair as his attention shifted back to the woman who he still couldn’t figure out.

  He wasn’t sure how it happened. One day, he was giving her busy work to keep her out of his way and the next, she was color-coordinating his files, commandeering his desk, taking over all the bullshit that he had to deal with every day, slapping post-it notes all over the fucking place, taking over the morning meetings, and shoving memos at him to look over morning, noon, and night and-

  She was also the only reason that he hadn’t lost his fucking mind.

  Every time the walls started to close in on him, she was there, shoving another memo in his face, keeping him company in the morning during his workout, going over memos with him during breakfast, hunting him down at lunchtime, and bugging the shit out of him to give final approval on all the shit that she did during the day that he didn’t want to do at dinner time so that he didn’t have time to think about how badly he’d fucked up his life.

  Over the past few weeks, he’d found himself even more intrigued with his own personal mystery, trying to figure her out. She was quiet, kept to herself, always greeted him with a smile that looked less forced these days, was severely uncoordinated, hardworking, never complained, bitched, or pissed him off, never left the house unless he needed something, and she was too fucking kind for her own good. He still wasn’t sure why that bothered him, but it did.

  When he’d first asked her to help with the files, he’d expected her to do it with another one of those determined smiles that he reall
y fucking hated, but instead, she’d devoured everything he’d shoved at her and seemed to be enjoying every single minute of it. It didn’t matter how much work he gave her, she’d do whatever he asked and get it back to him with a greedy look in her eye, desperate for more. Every morning he found her waiting for him in his gym, sitting on the floor, iPad in hand, and looking so damn eager that he-

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  “Not all of us fuck the help,” Hunter drawled, shifting his attention to the thick envelope that Ryan was toying with.

  “Really? Because I find that it’s a great way to improve morale,” Ryan said, as Hunter gave up waiting for the asshole to fuck him over and grabbed the envelope.

  He tore the envelope open and felt his brows arch to his hairline as he took in the face sheet written up by his men, letting him know that there was so much more to his assistant than he thought.

  *-*-*-*

  Maybe she should take this as a sign that it was time to buy a new car, Kylie thought even as she gave up hope that her car would start on its own. With a heavy sigh and a prayer that this wasn’t as bad as the last time, she reluctantly popped the hood and reached for her phone only to have it fall between the front seats. Resigning herself to searching for it later, she climbed out and made her way to the front of the car with absolutely no idea what she was doing. But that was fine, more than fine, Kylie decided since she also didn’t seem to have any idea what she was doing with her life either.

  “What the hell am I going to do?” Kylie asked, sighing heavily as she reached under the hood and released the latch.

  She should buy a new car, she told herself, but she’d been hoping to put it off for as long as humanly possible since that meant that she was either going to have to empty her bank account or get a loan, something that she really didn’t want to do. It had taken her seven years to fix the damage that her parents did to her credit and four years to pay off the credit card debt that her ex left her with, and she wasn’t exactly in a hurry to start the process all over again. But she might not have a choice, she realized, as she stared down at the engine that was most likely on its last leg.

  It took her a minute to find the rust-colored stick, another minute to get it to lodge in the slot correctly, and ten minutes before she finally accepted the fact that she had absolutely no idea what she was looking for. Maybe she needed to top off liquids, she hoped, as she checked the windshield wiper fluid, the coolant, and finally the oil only to decide that she probably shouldn’t have skipped her last oil change.

  “Maybe it’s the battery?” Kylie said, worrying her bottom lip as she looked from the engine that she had absolutely no idea how to fix to the large house behind her as she debated going back inside and telling Hunter, the large man who had made it perfectly clear how he felt about excuses, that she couldn’t do her job. She needed to get to the post office before it closed, call Mr. O’Mallery’s latest court-appointed therapist and reschedule the appointment that he’d canceled, again, and run to the store, but she might have to put everything off until tomorrow.

  Knowing that wasn’t really an option, she shifted her attention back to the battery, trying to remember if the guy that sold her this car had mentioned anything about when she was supposed to replace it. Sighing, she placed her hand on the car and knelt down so that she could get a better look under the-

  “Good afternoon, Miss Davis,” a vaguely familiar voice drawled, drawing her attention up to find the District Attorney that she’d interviewed with, standing next to her car, looking bored. “Is Mr. O’Mallery inside?”

  “Yes,” Kylie said absently, as her attention was drawn to the two large police officers joining them.

  “And did Mr. O’Mallery have therapy today?” he asked, already gesturing for the officers to head to the front door.

  “Well, no, but-”

  “Thank you, Miss Davis. That will be all,” he said dismissively, cutting her off before calling after the two officers, “Arrest him.”

  *-*-*-*

  “So, what do you think?” Ryan asked, as he dropped down on the couch next to him.

  “They’re full of shit,” Hunter said, tossing the thick folder onto the coffee table.

  “They really seem to hate her,” Ryan murmured thoughtfully as he grabbed the folder and skimmed through all the bullshit his men had collected on Kylie.

  “Yes, they do,” Hunter said, drumming his fingertips on the armrest as he thought about everything he’d found out today and realized that he still didn’t know a damn thing about her.

  “They made some pretty serious allegations,” Ryan said, gesturing to the folder with a lazy flick of his hand.

  Yes, they had.

  They’d accused Kylie of…everything.

  Absolutely fucking everything.

  Her family had done one hell of a job destroying her life and they’d apparently been doing it since she was a little girl. His parents had been useless, but at least they’d never gone out of their way to make sure that everyone hated him. He’d done that all on his own. But Kylie…

  He doubted that she’d ever done a damn thing to deserve this.

  “They’ve accused her of being a drug addict with a history of identity theft,” Ryan pointed out. “I don’t know if you want to ignore that.”

  “And yet there’s never been any charges pressed against her. She also doesn’t have a record, never been arrested, and pays her bills.”

  “Her father claims that they didn’t press charges because they didn’t want to get Kylie in trouble,” Ryan said, sounding like he didn’t believe that line of bullshit either.

  “How considerate of them, and yet that didn’t stop them from telling everyone about it and how much they hated Kylie,” Hunter drawled before adding, “You know, it’s funny that her parents go out of their way to make sure that everyone knows that Kylie is a mentally disturbed alcoholic and drug addict that can’t be trusted even though there isn’t a single shred of evidence, but they don’t say one bad word about their other daughter who actually has a seriously fucked-up criminal record.”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Ryan said, sighing heavily as he roughly rubbed his hands over his face before dropping his hands away and adding, “To be on the safe side, I think it might be a good idea if we requested a new assistant. I think given the circumstances that the D.A. would probably agree.”

  “Probably,” Hunter murmured absently, as the sound of the front door opening drew his attention.

  “Mr. O’Mallery?” an officer said, as he walked inside the house and headed towards them.

  “What’s going on?” Ryan asked, as they came to their feet, but one look at the District Attorney walking inside the house told Hunter everything that he needed to know.

  “Hunter O’Mallery, you’re under arrest for violating the terms of your house arrest,” the D.A. explained, as one of the officers reached back and pulled out a set of handcuffs.

  “I didn’t violate anything,” Hunter bit out as his arms were yanked behind his back and he felt the cold bite of metal close around his wrists.

  “I’ll handle this, Hunter,” Ryan said, sighing heavily as he gestured for the cops to wait as he moved to speak with the D.A. in private and-

  “Your assistant confirmed that you missed another therapy session, Mr. O’Mallery,” the D.A. explained, as he felt his stomach drop the same time that Ryan released a curse that let him know that he was truly good and fucked.

  “The therapist cancelled the appointment,” Hunter bit out.

  “According to who exactly?” the D.A. asked with a condescending smirk as he gestured for the officers to grab him.

  “Miss Davis,” Hunter said, shaking his head in disbelief with a humorless chuckle.

  “I think it’s safe to say that Miss Davis just figured out that she would be compensated for the rest of the year if you went to jail,” Ryan explained, following that up with a curse as Hunter watched the woman who had played him so
well come rushing inside as he was yanked back and-

  “Mr. O’Mallery didn’t miss his appointment! The therapist cancelled,” Kylie rushed to explain, sounding out of breath as she stumbled, righted herself and somehow managed to shove her phone in the D.A.’s hands before she stumbled again while the D.A. looked down at her phone and sighed heavily before handing it back to her.

  “Release him,” the D.A. said, waving a hand dismissively in his direction. “The therapist cancelled and forgot to let us know,” he added while Hunter stood there, watching the woman that had taken him by surprise for the last time.

  Chapter 13

  “This isn’t so bad,” Kylie lied to herself because lying to herself was better than admitting that she was seconds away from freaking out.

  Besides, things could be worse, she reminded herself as she sat there on the couch, the soft glow from the iPad the only light in the otherwise pitch-black room that she’d stumbled her way through the dark to get to after the power had gone out once she’d accepted the fact that it probably wasn’t coming back on for a while. Granted, she’d come to that conclusion with the help of the loud thunderstorm currently rocking the house and the text alert she’d received from the electric company informing her that they expected to have the power back on by six a.m.

  Normally, she enjoyed thunderstorms and the way they were able to drown everything out, including the deafening silence that she’d always hated. It probably also didn’t hurt that storms had always guaranteed that she wouldn’t have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night to find her father standing over her bed, ready to take everything out on her since he hated storms and normally rode them out with a six-pack and a bottle of whiskey. Thankfully, her father had his priorities straight and always made sure there was plenty of alcohol in the house. So, Kylie never had to worry about her father paying her a visit on nights like this.