Chapter Two
S YLVIE WAS WRUNG - OUT the next morning, like she actually had spent all night having sex with a mystery man, instead of just typing steamy erotica for two in a round-robin with a stranger.
She took a sip of her coffee as she walked into the lobby of the publishing house and waved her badge in front of the elevator.
She had that meeting today and she was trying to block it out and think about Baby. It was a stupid name. She wished she knew his name.
She wished she could actually have his hands on her.
There were so many reasons not to, though. First of all, she was drowning in her job. Second of all, she was not a glossy, sleek socialite, and maybe it was weird to think he’d expect her to be.
They only knew vague things about each other. The conclusions she’d drawn about him were based on the way he came across in writing. She knew he worked a lot, like she did, so she’d drawn conclusions about him being in the corporate machine—as she was.
He didn’t know who her mother was. She did. And even when her mother shouldn’t be a factor in something it felt like she was right there.
Are you going to finish that whole plate?
I can get you in to see my stylist, Sylvie. You could do with a keratin treatment on your hair to manage that frizz.
You should get that hyperpigmentation treated.
She’d only been able to stare at her mother after that one. Until she’d figured out her hyperpigmentation meant…freckles.
Sylvie looked like her dad. A midsized short redhead with cheeks that got very red when they were angry, excited or overheated.
Sylvie didn’t actually want to know what had ever drawn her mother to her father, so she hadn’t asked.
But whatever had been there once had soured, and Sylvie was never sure if her mother was critical of her looks because she reminded her mother of her former husband, or if she just thought Sylvie was unattractive.
Either way, it had done a number on her self-esteem.
And it informed how she felt about the potential for meeting her mystery man and she just…she couldn’t bear it if she met him one day and the first time she saw that face it was twisted with disappointment.
Bleh.
Her heart was beating too fast. It was the eternal problem of being a somewhat anxious person who also needed a hefty dose of caffeine in the morning. She could make it so that she wasn’t sleepy, but then she was a little bit overly charged-up.
And she refused to credit this feeling to anything else.
Her mind was spinning in circles. The meeting. Last night. The giddy feeling that her secret created inside of her. The reality of what was happening with work.
How disappointed her father would be if she couldn’t save this. And then somehow the way that her mother was just always unimpressed. No matter what.
Around and around in her head as the elevator went to her office floor.
She walked in, and was satisfied to see that she was one of the first people there, which meant she didn’t have a lot of conversations as she navigated the narrow hallways and went toward her office. The office that she knew so many people at the company didn’t think she had earned.
One she sat in largely because of her father. It was true; it was also true that she had eaten, slept and breathed this publishing house from the time she was a teenager.
If not before.
She had been raised here.
She had sat in this office underneath her father’s desk, listening to him talk about books, profit margins and distributors from the time she was a little girl.
Had she been given something she might not have gotten otherwise? Yes.
Some days it was really hard for her to think that she deserved it. But she didn’t think there was anyone else who knew it better.
Because she hadn’t just been raised in a bubble and handed the publisher. She had been raised in the publisher, and she had been raised for it. When her father had died, she was the one who helped muscle them out of the hole.
It was only now the board seemed to forget. Five years on and she wasn’t seen as a wunderkind, but as a mediocre nepo baby. She could feel it.
And that was the story of her life. Always underwhelming, no matter what.
She pushed open her office door and stopped dead.
There he was. Standing with his back to her, broad shoulders made sharp by the severe cut of his black suit. His black hairstyle sleek and ruthless as the rest of him. With the sunlight shining across him, she was certain she could see some strands of gray there.
But they weren’t flaws.
No.
Christos Onassis did not do flaws .
Of course, he was in her office, in her building before her.
That was who he was, how he was.
She did her best not to catalog every interaction, every encounter she’d ever had with him over the last twelve plus years because there was just no reason to go over that.
And over, and over it.
She dreaded seeing his face. As if he sensed her trepidation, he turned slowly.
And then, she was looking square at her enemy. The enemy that made her whole body freeze up every time she saw him.
She remembered one time when her father had taken her to church, a rare occurrence but something that happened on occasion when he felt guilty about the manner in which he was raising her.
She remembered the priest saying that Satan had been God’s most beautiful angel.
That he had felt he was himself godlike, deserving of worship and praise, and it was why he had fallen.
Christos Onassis, unsuitably named for Christ, seemed to her closer to Lucifer than anything else.
Beautiful. In an otherworldly way.
Arrogant. As if he, too, would boldly claim he was worthy of more praise than God himself.
His eyes were so dark they were nearly black, his brows definitive slashes across his glorious brown skin. His face was sculpted to perfection. High cheekbones, the square jaw. His lips the only thing that looked like they had the potential to soften.
And yet she had never seen that.
When he smiled, she thought of a shark. There was nothing comforting about it.
But it wasn’t just his beauty that disturbed her. It was the wrenching, physical response that she’d had every time she had ever encountered him since she was seventeen years old.
The only thing that could ever come close was her text relationship with a man she had never even seen.
Usually, that cheered her. The idea that she could make a connection with a nice man, and have it be entirely separate to this nightmarish physical response she had with Christos.
But right now, with the X-rated conversation still creating need inside of her body, it was only a bad thing.
Very, very bad.
“Good morning, Miss Jones,” he said, his voice dark, smooth.
He was a man known for his ruthlessness. How cold he was. He had not tried to fashion himself into something more palatable in a world where rich people were often hated for their bank balance, no matter how nice or kind they were.
He wore the mantle of villain comfortably.
He did not pander to a social media–driven world. A world where people often wanted corporations to function as a reflection of their own conscience.
His media conglomerate destroyed smaller, independent news outlets, magazines, publishers, TV channels all the time.
And he seemed to wear it with pride. Like a warrior from ancient days, his body might be painted with the blood of his enemies.
There was nothing modern about him. Nothing remotely accessible.
For a moment—a strange, searing moment—she envied him.
She was a young female CEO, and she needed to be likable . People needed to be able to connect with her, to find her relatable. Who she was mattered to people who bought books from the publisher. What she did, how palatable she might be.
Nothing he did mattered. He succeeded regardless of whether or not anyone like him, approved of him. He was a man, and he was interesting. He didn’t have to be good.
She had to be good.
“I didn’t expect you so early,” she said.
“Well, I have other things to do.”
Somehow, his early arrival to the meeting made him seem less interested, made the meeting seem insignificant. She worried if she showed up too early to a meeting she’d seem eager.
“I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish with this meeting, Mr. Onassis.”
“The thing is, Miss Jones, I don’t have to accomplish anything. I am here to have a look at the building. I’d like to have a conversation about the financials.”
“Perhaps I don’t want to have that conversation with you.”
“That’s just fine since I don’t need to have it with you. I’m meeting with your board later.”
Terror clawed at her stomach.
“The wheels are set in motion. RedMedia will be acquiring Jones & Abbott. I hope you are prepared for that.”
She felt like she’d been punched in her stomach. “Why? You don’t need it.”
“I don’t need it. You’re correct.” He moved toward her and paused at the edge of her desk and touched a clear glass paperweight. He moved it, one inch to the left. “I want it, though.” He looked up at her, his eyes black holes. “And I get what I want.”
Her body went rigid. “It doesn’t mean anything to you,” she said.
This man was an emblem of everything that had ever gone wrong in her life. His ruthless sabotaging of that merger had sent her father’s health into a spiral.
He was always around, a shark cutting through the water.
It was… It was like he hated them, hated her : she could not understand it.
Then she looked into his eyes, and she saw something worse than hatred.
She saw nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“I’m asking you not to do this,” she said. “Because I love this publishing house. Because it is my life’s work. Because it belongs to my family…”
“Because your family built their empire?”
“How can you stand there and call this an empire when you’re absorbing it without lifting a finger. Into your conglomerate .”
“You misunderstand me. I don’t think people ought not to have empires.
But if you’re going to step into the arena you must be prepared to do battle.
As I am. I do not believe in taking advantage of the weak and the innocent.
The Jones family is neither. You have built the company on the back of those that could be taken advantage of.
There was much free labor being done, particularly in factories doing bookbinding and printing back at the founding of this place.
You swallowed up smaller publishers on the way to greatness, and now your era of greatness is past. No one is innocent.
If you are going to engage in such tactics, you cannot weep when they are used against you.
” He lifted a dark brow. “Rather you can, but I will not respect it.”
“You don’t respect me,” she said. “Don’t pretend that you could if I responded with as little emotion as you seem to have.”
“Do I put on such comfortable pretense, Miss Jones, as to make you think I am pretending to care? I did not think so. Perhaps I need to stop being so soft.”
There was something disquieting in his words, and it sent a skitter of electricity over her skin.
“Maybe the company wasn’t founded in a perfect way,” she said. “I’m quite certain it wasn’t. Human beings are awful. That has nothing to do with me, and it has nothing to do with my father. You don’t have to continue to act in such a ruthless manner.”
“Of course I don’t. I enjoy it. And make no mistake, I’m not a crusader. I am merely pointing out that your protestations are hollow. This is the arena. Gladiators will act accordingly.”
He moved closer to her, and she felt her breath simply leave her body. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move. He was even more glorious up close. She would love it if media photos overinflated his beauty.
If anything, the camera hated him.
He was so much more mesmerizing in person. Every line, every angle, cut to perfection.
It was a shame about his soul.
And she had no idea where it came from, but she found the strength to meet his gaze and hold it. “Then, you won’t be surprised if I fight back.”
“I would be disappointed if you didn’t. But I would be lying if I didn’t tell you I will find it quite sad. You have no weapons, Miss Jones. And I myself am a whole armory.”
He straightened, and she felt like that frozen air was suddenly pulled straight from her lungs in one gust.
“What is your plan for the company?”
“The same as it ever is. I plan to keep what is profitable and make use of what might be a unique asset for me. Your foreign distribution channels are strong. Stronger than the other publisher in my stable, and I think there is benefit there.”
“You want to strip it for parts.”
“Not immediately. And not necessarily. I am moving quickly to complete the acquisition, but changes will not occur overnight, and you’re of course welcome to negotiate the contract.”
“You’ve excluded me from the process. The board is flinging me under the bus.”
“You can still read a contract from under the bus.”
“Not if I’m being squished by the tires.”
His gaze was uncompromising. “You don’t look damaged to me.”
She hated him. Right now more than she ever had.
What did he want her to do? Peel her skin back and show him every place where she’d ever been hurt?
Never. She would never give him that. She wanted to beg him to leave her alone.
To leave her family business alone. To stop dancing on her father’s grave.
She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let him see her break. She wouldn’t let him see the things he made her feel.
“I can’t threaten you,” she said. “You’re right. I’m fighting with sticks, and you have a sword. But what I can’t respect is the fact that you seem to find that a worthy battle.”
“You mistake me, Miss Jones. This is not the battle, it is not the war. The world is a war zone, and every day is a battle. And if you do not win regardless of who your opponent is, then you are nothing. And your life is nothing. I don’t need you to be a worthy opponent. I need you to lose.”
His words chilled her straight to the bone. “I hate you.”
She hated herself for saying it. For letting him see the way he’d gotten to her. All the way down deep.
“I don’t care.”
He walked past her then, down the hall and into the boardroom, where he closed the door firmly behind him.
There was a meeting behind that door to decide her fate, and she wasn’t invited.
All she could do was stand there while Christos Onassis took the one thing she cared about in her life and turned it into ash.