Forbidden Boss (Nikki and Rome's Story) (Manhattan Billionaires)

41. Rome

Willand Natasha were lucky with the weather for their wedding day. It rained in Lake Como for a week straight leading up to the big day, and the morning of the big event, the skies cleared and revealed a beautiful, mirror-still lake surrounded with rolling hills. The trees were only just starting to bud, so the hills weren’t as lush and green as they would be a month or two from now, but it was still a beautiful sight. As it was only early March, it was the off-season, so we had the whole place to ourselves. My family had rented out the entire luxury hotel on the bank of the lake, and the whole place was abuzz.

Nikki would have loved this view of the lake, with the early morning sun glinting off the water and the surrounding slopes. She’d worn a dress the exact color of the water on one of our first nights out together.

I turned away from the sight, grimacing. I had to stop thinking things like that. We’d been apart for longer than we’d been together; it was getting ridiculous.

“Rome!” My mother walked down the cobblestones leading to the lookout where I stood. I leaned against the hip-high stone banister and waited for her approach. She surveyed my tuxedo with a critical eye, plucking a piece of lint off the lapel. “I need you to go see your brother. He’s already drunk and making a fool of himself. I want him standing on his own feet in his wedding photos.”

“I wonder if Will wants the same.”

She gave me a withering look and clip-clopped back up the path. Halfway up, she turned to give me an exasperated look. “Well?”

I pushed off the balustrade and followed her. Doing my mother’s bidding once again. Some things never changed. She hadn’t mentioned Nikki or the contract, but it hung between us. She knew, and she knew I knew she knew.

My brother was well on his way to being plastered when I found him in his suite, his tie askew, his nose red. I took the glass of alcohol out of his grasp and replaced it with water.

“You’re no fun,” he complained.

“I have strict orders to get you to your own wedding without you falling flat on your face.”

Will snorted. “Try-hard,” he mumbled under his breath. “Always have to be the perfect son, don’t you?”

I frowned as I dumped his drink down the sink, grabbing another water for myself. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m the one who’s marrying the perfect girl, the one they wanted me to. And still, she thinks I need you to make sure I do it properly.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, fuck you, Rome.”

“I’m making you a coffee. You need to sober up.”

“Perfect Rome with his perfect business and his perfect schooling. When are you going to let me have a win, for once?”

I whirled. “Are you serious right now? You’re the golden child who can do no wrong, Will. You’re the one they love. I’m the reject who gets the scraps.”

“Boo-hoo, poor little Rome who just wants to be loved by Mommy and Daddy.” Will snorted, stumbling back and sitting down abruptly on a long, low seat at the foot of the big king bed. His head lolled. “When are you going to take that stick out of your ass and realize that they judged everything I do based on you?”

Standing across from my sneering brother, it was hard for me to make sense of his words. My hands shook as rage shot through me, so I turned my back on him and busied myself with the coffee machine. It was one of those pod ones, which reminded me of the machine in my apartment, which reminded me of Nikki splayed out on top of my desk when I woke up with an insatiable need to have her again that first morning we woke up together in my apartment.

I slammed the machine closed and mashed the button. “You need to sober up, and then you’ll go downstairs and get married.”

“I just want to be treated like something other than an idiot,” Will said quietly. “I would have liked to have been sent away to school.”

“You would have liked it?” I roared. “Liked the isolation? Liked being left there for holidays because our parents were off doing their own thing? You would have liked feeling like no one cared about you because the truth was, no one did?”

Will slumped, his back arching at a weird angle as he lay on the foot of the bed. “I would’ve liked the choice. I had to stay there and be treated like an invalid. ‘Wear this. Stand here. Be quiet. Study here. Major in that.’ You have no idea how good you had it, Rome. No fucking idea.”

The machine behind me stopped humming, but I didn’t move. The scent of coffee filled the room. I stared at my brother’s sprawled limbs, his untucked shirt, his stubbled jaw. “Do you want to marry Natasha, Will?” I asked quietly. “It’s not too late to back out.”

Will let out a dry husk of a laugh. “It’s about two years too late to back out, Rome. I’m stuck with her now. A mini-Mom.”

I shuddered, turning to grab his coffee. My brother groaned as he pushed himself up to a mostly seated position, nodding his thanks as he took the hot drink.

I fixed my own coffee and took a seat on a chair across from him. My whole world had turned on its ear in a single conversation with my brother. He was jealous of me? Of the way I’d grown up?

How could he possibly think that I had it better out of the two of us? I was shunted off to boarding school, ignored, and told to keep quiet. The only thing I got from my family was a trust fund and a last name, which, admittedly, had set me up for a successful life.

A successful, empty life.

But Will…he had the affection and the attention of two people who might not be capable of caring for their children the way we’d needed them. Maybe receiving our parents’ attention had been more toxic than lacking it. For the first time in my life, I considered the pressure Will must have been under for the entirety of his life. I knew the expectations our parents put on us; I’d always fallen short.

Based on Will’s half-drunk ramblings, it sounded like he felt the same. Neither of us had gotten what we needed, and we’d been pitted against each other in the process. The whole thing made me feel tired and sad.

I stared at my brother as he stared into his cup. As gently as I could manage, I said, “You don’t have to go through with this, Will. I’ll back you up if you want to call it off.”

Will snorted, then downed the coffee in one shot. “No,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “It’s too late for that.”

The wedding seemed more tragic after that. Will made it downstairs, looking presentable enough that I avoided getting an earful from my mother. He put on his most engaging smile and laughed with all the uncles and aunts and family friends, all the business associates and important personages in our parents’ various circles. He kissed his bride and grinned as the guests threw rice, and even managed a passable impression of a man in love as he spun his bride around the dance floor for their first dance.

But for the first time, I saw the tightness around his eyes, the slight grimace at the start of his widest smiles.

He was miserable. We both were.

“Rome,” my mother said behind me. “I want you to meet someone.”

I turned to see my mother standing beside a couple and a younger woman. She was shortish, blonde…and familiar. “Ophelia? What are you doing here?”

My mother smiled. “Rome, you remember the Gerbers, don’t you?”

Shock splashed through me. I looked at the older couple, recognizing acquaintances of my parents.

The family resemblance between them and my employee was striking.

“Our daughter was determined to make her way in the world without our influence,” Ophelia’s father said indulgently, smiling at his progeny. “We’re so very proud of her.”

My own mother cut in with a sharp smile, “I understand Ophelia has been performing very well at Blakely. Hasn’t she, Rome?”

I frowned at my mother, then at the other three. “What’s going on here?”

“We just wanted to introduce you two properly,” my mother said, giving me a significant look. “I’ll let you and Ophelia catch up. I’m sure you have lots to talk about.”

She ushered the parents away, and I was left with my employee. She blinked up at me, a coy smile on her lips. “We met before I started working at Blakely, actually. A gout charity four years ago. I was there with my mother.”

“I see.” My mind raced as I tried to understand what was going on. Ophelia knew my parents, but she’d never mentioned it. My mother knew Ophelia worked for me and didn’t tell me.

Was this a setup? My heart thumped. Was this the mole? This was the woman who’d fed information back to my mother?

“You mother mentioned you’d be here on your own,” Ophelia said, touching my sleeve. She took a step closer to me so I could smell her overly sweet perfume. I jerked back, and her expression hardened. She dropped her hand from my arm but didn’t back up.

I glanced across the room and saw my mom staring at us intently, watching if her snare had closed around me as she’d planned.

I was supposed to choose Ophelia the way Will had chosen Natasha. I was supposed to go along with what was expected of me, chasing the carrot of my parents’ affection while they wielded the stick of their disapproval.

And suddenly, in this beautiful resort, surrounded by people wearing designer gowns, dripping in jewels, eating the best food and drinking the best wine, I realized just how empty my life really was.

I took a step back, studying Ophelia. “How much has my mother pumped you for information about my company?”

Ophelia lifted a shoulder in a subtle shrug. “Only as much as I wanted to tell her.”

“What did she promise you in return?” I sneered. “A ring on your finger?”

Ophelia watched me, then lifted her chin. “I see you’re still hung up on a woman that’s so far below you. She’ll ruin your life, Rome. She already has. Did you know she refused to work for the Monks? So not only is she a social climber, but she’s also an idiot to boot.”

Rage momentarily blanketed over me, but one thing Ophelia said stuck out. “She refused to work for the Monks?”

A touch of victory entered Ophelia’s gaze. She sighed and said, “Crazy, right? Trying to sabotage your biggest deal because you broke up with her. It’s pathetic. She should have kept her legs shut and stayed in her place.”

Ice descended over me. I blinked slowly, tamping down the urge to throttle the woman sneering at me. I lifted my chin. “You’re fired, Ophelia. HR will be in touch by the end of the day.”

She arched a brow. “On what grounds?”

I turned on my heels and stalked away.

“On what grounds!”

Her words chased me out of the room, but I didn’t turn.

Because I knew the truth.

Nikki hadn’t refused to work for Roseanne Monk because she was trying to sabotage my deal. She did it because she was trying to save it. Even after everything I said to her, the way I treated her—she still put me first.

A woman with that much integrity wouldn’t be able to lie to Roseanne about me, so she gave up the opportunity of a lifetime for the sake of my company. My reputation.

For me.

It was just like her standing up for me at the gala honoring my parents. Just like the hours of research and preparation she did for events where she could have just as easily stood beside me and said nothing.

Nikki cared. She’d cared about me, about my company, about her work. And I’d thrown it back in her face the moment she tried to ask for something honest for herself.

I was a colossal asshole.

I cut across the room toward the exit, but my mother accosted me just outside the door.

“What do you think you’re doing, Rome?” she hissed, her nails digging into my elbow as she dragged me out of the room.

I tore my arm away. “You’ve been spying on me,” I told her, my voice oddly flat.

“Don’t be dramatic. She wanted to play the rebel for a few years, but Ophelia is a good girl and she’s ready to come back into the fold. I think you’d be good together. Her parents?—”

“I don’t give a shit who her parents are or what they can do for you if I date their daughter.”

My mother’s jaw hardened. “If this is about that girl?—”

“This is about me, Mother. I’m done.”

The words came out of me before I really understood what I was saying, but once I spoke them out loud, the clarity they provided put my entire life into sharp relief. I’d spent so many years being torn between resentment and desperation for affection. I hated my parents for their rejection, yet I jumped at every phone call, answered every demand.

I was so desperate for a scrap of love that I really thought it was okay to be treated like an accessory in their lives.

Maybe it was the sight of Will vowing to love and cherish a woman he had no interest in marrying that did it. Or the realization that my parents would go as far as to plant someone in my own organization to get information on me. And then, the cherry on top of the shit sundae—to try to set me up with her! As if a bit of family espionage was just par for the course when the eldest son decided to build his own company instead of dancing exactly to the family tune.

I was done. Utterly and completely. I no longer cared if these people approved. I no longer craved their attention, their affection, their time.

Truthfully, I hadn’t even realized I had craved it—not until that need was gone.

Or maybe, I realized how empty my familial relationships were when even at a distance, Nikki gave me something that meant so much more.

“She isn’t good enough for you, Rome,” my mother hissed, accurately reading the direction of my thoughts. “You think a girl who came from nothing can stand at your side? You think she can actually help you get to the next level?”

“What level is that, Joanne?”

“Don’t you call me by my first name. I am your mother?—”

“You aren’t. You haven’t been that for a long time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice jumped up an octave as her arms fell to her sides.

“It means exactly what it sounds like. I’m not rushing over every time I get a summons. I’m not entertaining your opinions or your judgments. I’m not answering your calls. As far as I’m concerned, my family is dead.”

Her face went white. “Rome?—”

“Goodbye, Joanne.” I began to walk away.

“People will find out about that contract, Rome. Your company won’t survive the bad press.”

I paused and turned. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s the truth.”

“I don’t think anyone will find out, actually,” I said, coldness creeping into the edges of my words.

My mother scoffed. “How do you figure?”

“How embarrassing would it be for you if everyone found out the lengths you’d go to set me up with a woman? You’d be laughingstock, especially because there’s no way I’ll ever date the Gerbers’ daughter. And all those businesses you’ve invested in—how many of them would be happy to find out about your little spy? Everyone would be suspicious of you. No one would trust you. The whole house of cards might just fall apart.”

Eyes that shot flames bore into mine. I withstood her glare for a few long seconds, then turned around and walked away.

In the lobby, an elevator opened as I pressed the button, and a few moments later I was in my room, phone at my ear, my suitcase open and on the bed.

“Clara,” I said, “I’m coming back. I need the jet to be ready as soon as possible.”

“On it,” she said, and I hung up the phone.

An hour later, I was on my way to beg forgiveness from the only person in my life that truly mattered. The only woman who had defended me, even when she had no power. The only woman who kissed me like she cared about me, and not what I could do for her.

The one who told me, clear as day, that she couldn’t work for me because she wanted a real relationship. She wanted me.

I’d been too wrapped up in my own hurt to realize she’d been offering me the world. I just hoped it wasn’t too late to make amends.