Her Billionaire Husband's Betrayal (Billionaire Redemption and Grovel #1)

1. Chapter One

Chapter one

Inés

On Mondays, I leave my home an hour before my husband Harrison Locke wakes so I might have a little time to myself in the office.

It means the world to me to sit with a manuscript or an author, a paragraph or even a sentence with no one else around.

There are a lot of us now, editors and consultants at the big publishing house of Locke & Burgess, which Harrison owns as its CEO.

We are everywhere and we all do a little of the work of keeping my husband and the team at the top of the game.

The ghostwriters, the line editors, the developmental editors, the copyeditors, the proofreaders... All in our different ways.

But for this hour, from eight until nine in the morning, the building belongs to me.

I always imagine the other editors, the ones with offices or cubicles and assistants, taking the elevator up to our floor with their coats still smelling of the breakfast dishes, their minds still with their kids or their partners or the morning talk shows.

I come through the staff door with my passkey, climbing the stairs to my small office, which is little more than a closet compared to Harrison's.

Here, my husband's signed books have been stored, as well as my desk and chair and the original print run of many of our publishing house's first editions.

It's a bit of a closet, yes. But from this closet, I run the editorial department.

Every manuscript that comes through Locke & Burgess passes through my hands.

I assign the editors, manage the authors, write the training manuals, and keep the pipeline moving.

I do the work of a senior editor, a managing editor, and an editorial director, just don't have any of the titles.

That's the arrangement Harrison and I fell into years ago, when the company was smaller and I was happy just to be near the work. By the time I should have asked for the titles, it felt too late. And by the time it mattered, I'd already learned to be invisible.

This morning, in the silence of my office, I read again a beautiful piece which has been assigned to me.

It is very short, a little jewel that sparkles here and there, though it is missing its proper setting.

My job, as I know it, is to imagine that jewel's setting and put it in its rightful place.

In the silence of the seventh-floor hallway, the morning sun barely over the tops of the Manhattan skyscrapers and casting a golden glow on my tiny office walls.

I am midway through making this revision when my phone rings.

"Harrison's on his way up," says his secretary.

"Is it that time already?" I reply, feeling the calm of my morning slipping away, the rest of the team soon to enter and pull the rest of the world into my office with them. I'm no longer alone.

"Just wanted to give you a head's-up," she says. "Think it's going to be a packed meeting today."

She has a new accent this month, the woman who sits behind Harrison's big oak desk and handles his calendar.

A slight Australian twang this time, though last month it was something vaguely South African.

She's a temp from an agency that keeps sending us replacements. None of them last longer than a season.

"What's it about?" I ask, as I always ask, as if it could possibly matter, as if the bigwigs would ever tell us. I suppose I do it for her. So that she can tell me that she doesn't know, it's all a bit above her.

"No idea," she says, as she always does, but in that Aussie accent that's like a hot spoonful of treacle, sliding slowly down the back of my throat. "See you soon."

I close down my computer right as the other editors start to pour into my office.

Their coats and their sweaters and their scarves are wet with the morning rain.

Their boots and shoes are slick and leave black tracks across the gray carpet.

They stand, leaning on the walls of bookcases and pulling books out to make space, shaking hands, hugging each other hello, drinking their hot coffees.

In a few minutes I'll be barely visible in the press.

And I'll sit and I'll listen and I'll try not to take up any space in my own office.

***

They say the best writers can write anywhere, with any number of distractions, in the middle of chaos.

But that is not my truth, and it is why I no longer think of myself as a writer, or even an artist. A craftsman maybe, an editor, certainly.

I like to shape the words of others, I have the eye for it.

My own work feels so unfinished in comparison.

And so, the only real writing I do, the kind that can only happen in absolute silence, happens in the hours I steal for myself, here in my office, at night and in the mornings, in between the time I'm expected to be with Harrison or our editors and authors.

It has been this way ever since I came into his orbit.

Harrison enters in his customary manner, bringing with him the aroma of coffee and expensive cologne, what others dream billionaires to smell like.

He leans down to kiss the top of my head, as if he is doing me a favor, his big hands squeezing the tops of my shoulders so I might feel the full weight of his body pressing down on me.

"How is it this Monday, everyone?" he says, in his radio announcer's voice. "You good? You feeling good?"

I hate when he speaks like that, as if we're a group of old friends in a bar and he's giving a toast. But the others smile and say, "Good morning, Harrison.

" As if they believe he actually cares how they are feeling.

I hate the sound of their voices when they do it.

They are like the suck-ups in class who never make me feel any better about being a good student.

I suppose I am a snob. Perhaps that is why I am destined to always be someone in the background.

"So," he says. "Good stuff today. Great stuff coming up in the next few weeks.

The memoir of that TikTok guy. Did I read it?

No, but I don't have to. We have our experts.

" Here he winks, and everyone laughs as if he's the wittiest man in the room.

"We'll have that book on shelves before Christmas. But first up on today's agenda..."

He looks at me then, because of course I always take the minutes of these meetings. The minutes I write up at night, long after everyone else has gone home.

He waits until I've opened up my laptop and set the meeting date. Until I've written his name at the top of the document. His is the only name we need, after all.

"We have an addition to the team today. Someone I know you'll be very happy to see. In fact..." He puts his hands on either side of the door and looks out into the hallway. "If you're ready? Come on in, and let me introduce you."

The person he brings back into my little office is a woman. Blonde, slim, her makeup light but flawless. She wears a smart black jacket, black boots, black wool trousers. She looks expensive and fashionable, the kind of woman I imagine him leaving me for one of these days.

"I can't tell you what a relief it is to see so many of you in real life," she says in a low voice, her French accent like thick velvet. "Harrison's been telling me for so long about you. That I simply had to meet you all."

And as she stands there, staring at us with her wide gray eyes, I realize who she is, though it takes a moment for my heart to stop racing enough that I can hear her name when he says it.

"Guys, this is Margaux Deneuve, the woman responsible for making Locke & Burgess the biggest seller of French books in the U.S. I'm delighted to welcome her on board as a new creative consultant here. She's going to be overseeing all editorial work from here on in."

She steps forward and kisses first Harrison, then each of my team members, on either cheek.

Her lips are full, her cheek smooth and cool.

I cannot imagine where Harrison has found her after all these years.

But I remember her, from the photographs that used to be all over his office before I started working for him.

She has barely changed. Her hair is shorter now, but those lips, those eyes, that willowy figure. They are unmistakable.

Margaux Deneuve. His ex-girlfriend.

When she gets to me, she kisses me too.

"I am so thrilled," she says, and takes my hand, pulling me up out of my seat.

She looks at me with her cat-like eyes, as if I'm her long-lost cousin. And perhaps I am, in her eyes at least. Another woman to be managed in the life of Harrison Locke.

I kiss her cheeks too, and allow her to hold my hands. To run her finger over my wedding ring and nod thoughtfully.

"And you, Inés, are the genius behind the scenes, aren't you?" she says in my ear. "I hear so much about you. Harrison tells me everything. How you keep the house in order."

She pats my hands with her cold white ones, and lets them go. When I sit back down at my laptop, her eyes remain on me.

"Are we recording the minutes, Inés?" she asks. "I so love minutes. So much detail. Please, don't let me stop you. Continue as you were. And we'll begin the business of the day, shall we, Harrison?"

"Of course," says Harrison, and he nods for her to sit in the spare seat next to me.

Margaux Deneuve's gray eyes stay fixed on my laptop screen. The room is full of editors, all staring at the two of us as they wait for Harrison to kick things off.

***

I can't breathe until she has left the building.

I sit in my office for a while after, the meeting minutes written up and sent out to the entire team.

When the rest of them have all gone, I close my laptop, stand, and head for the stairway down.

My feet move before I have made any real decision about what I'm doing.

It is lunchtime now, so Harrison's secretary is not at her desk. Instead there is a tall young man, an assistant, who barely looks up from his computer screen as I walk through to Harrison's office. He knows who I am and that he doesn't have to stop me.

Harrison looks up when I come in, surprised to see me, but he smiles anyway. That big white grin that used to make me weak at the knees. "Inés? Is everything all right?"

"I need a word," I say.

"Of course." He stands up, gesturing for me to take a seat. But I can't sit down. My whole body feels like it is vibrating. I want to hit something. Instead, I put my hands behind my back.

"Harrison," I say. "Why?"

His brow furrows, but his smile remains. He's still in performance mode. "Why what, babe?"

I hate it when he calls me that.

"You know why." I take a deep breath and look around his office. All the pictures of him on the walls, all the awards and the book covers with his face. His is the only name anyone will ever remember.

He walks around to me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I let him, because he is my husband and that is what I should do.

"You've been telling me for years," he says in a low voice. "That we need to do something about the nonfiction list."

"Something," I say, through gritted teeth. "Not... not this."

"Inés, we needed a shake-up." His thumbs dig into my shoulder muscles, making it difficult for me to concentrate. He is good at that. At keeping me off-balance. "I've known Margaux for years. She knows the French market. She's got all these new ideas."

"She hasn't had a new idea in her life," I snap, pulling away from his hands. I stare him in the eye. He looks shocked that I would dare to speak to him like this. "She is a parasite. She leeches off other people's talent."

I see his nostrils flare, but he remains calm. He reaches for me again, taking hold of my hands this time.

"Is this really about Margaux?" he says, and he brings my fingers up to his mouth and kisses them, one by one. "Or is this about me? Because I thought we'd discussed this."

I want to believe he's right. I want to think that I'm being stupid and jealous and small-minded. I don't want to be that woman, the one who can't let her husband have female friends.

"It just seems... so sudden," I say, forcing myself to look him in the eye.

He nods slowly. "It was my mother's idea, actually. But it makes sense. She knows the market." He shrugs. "She'll do a great job."

I look away, swallowing hard.

"And we'll still be a team," he says. "You and me. That will never change."

I nod and force a smile. He leans down to kiss my forehead.

"You worry too much," he whispers. "You have to trust me. You know I love you, don't you?"

And of course I do. I've known that since the first day we met.