Chapter 46 Rae
RAE
LE BERNARDIN — PRIVATE DINING
Reservation: Lazarev, L.
A week and a half later, I’m ready to jump off the roof.
Kir has reclaimed me with a vengeance. Whatever truce existed between us on that rooftop, whatever fragile understanding I thought we’d reached, it’s been incinerated.
He now has a grudge against things like “Rae getting enough sleep” and “Rae consuming sufficient calories to maintain proper brain function.”
LGSII—that’s the “Lazarev Global Strategic Innovation Initiative,” for those following along at home—has become my personal torture chamber.
Kir has me running point on half a dozen workstreams, all of which require deliverables that seem to multiply overnight like the world’s horniest rabbits.
Every morning brings a fresh avalanche of urgent emails.
Every evening stretches into late nights and many frustrated tears.
After racking up a hundred-plus hours since my return from France, it’s now Friday—I think. I’m staring at a spreadsheet that has begun to pulse and breathe like a living organism. The cells are definitely moving, crawling across the screen in little fluorescent ripples.
The coffee in my mug went cold hours ago, but I drink it anyway, grimacing at the bitter dregs. It’s my fourth cup today. Or maybe my fifth? I dunno. Numbers have stopped meaning things.
Across the open-plan floor, the other initiative members have long since packed up and gone home. Their desks sit dark and empty, monitors sleeping peacefully.
Must be nice.
I drag my attention back to the report I’m supposed to have finished by—I glance at the deadline in Kir’s email to confirm—yeah, yesterday.
Excellent. Fantastic. Love that for me.
The worst part isn’t even the workload; it’s that Lukas has been completely absent. According to the rumor mill, he’s been traveling. Moscow, apparently. Or maybe London. The gossip varies depending on who’s doing the gossiping.
Not that I care. Obviously. I’m far too busy being slowly murdered by pivot tables to spare a single thought for the man who fingered me in a conference room and then vanished like a ghost.
My eyes drift closed. Just for a second. Just to rest them.
And maybe just to remember for a moment how unbelievably good it felt to gush all over Lukas Lazarev’s hand…
When I jerk awake, my cheek is pressed against my keyboard and I’ve filled in roughly eleven thousand Excel rows with the letter R.
I sit up, wiping drool from the corner of my mouth. The clock in the corner of my monitor reads 7:41 P.M.
I so badly want to tell Kir to kick rocks. Anything is better than devoting the best years of my life to this meaningless nonsense.
But then I hear motion at the elevators. When I look to see who it is, I start to wonder if maybe that “meaningless nonsense” wasn’t better than this alternative.
I have to blink again to make sure I’m seeing correctly. But no, it’s him—Lukas, striding toward me, appearing like the biggest shadow there ever was.
His suit jacket is charcoal, double-breasted, viciously sharp at the lapel. Square cufflinks wink gold to match his watch and his hair looks ghostly white.
He stops at my desk. “Get your things,” he says without preamble. “You’re coming with me.”
I squint at him, still half-asleep and definitely hallucinating. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I have dinner with colleagues, and you’ll be joining me.” He checks his watch. “We leave in ten minutes.”
“I can’t just—” I gesture helplessly at my disaster of a desk, the spreadsheets bleeding across my screen, the cold coffee, the general sad-sack state of my existence. “I have deadlines. Your son’s deadlines, actually. Which are already overdue.”
“Kir’s deadlines can wait.”
“He specifically said—”
“I specifically don’t give a fuck what Kir said.” Lukas’s gaze sweeps over me, cataloging every rumpled inch. The wrinkled blouse, the mascara I’m sure has migrated halfway down my face. “You look exhausted.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.” He drags my chair back from the desk, and I scramble to my feet keep from toppling out of it. “You have eight minutes left to compose yourself. I suggest you use them wisely.”
I spend six of those eight minutes in the bathroom trying to make myself look like a person who hasn’t been rotting at her desk for the past ten days. The remaining two minutes, I waste staring at my reflection and wondering what new nightmare I’m being dragged into.
The car ride is silent. Lukas spends the entire time on his phone, thumbing through emails with the focused intensity of a man who has forgotten anyone else exists.
I watch the city through the window and try not to think about the last time we were alone in a vehicle together. I’m mostly unsuccessful.
Our dinner companions are already seated when we arrive. It’s a range of all types: tall, smug-looking Wall Street financiers, some grizzly, bearded captains of industry, and a few slick tech bros wearing pricey t-shirts beneath their tailored blazers. A dozen or so in total, including us.
“Lukas!” The eldest of the group stands to clasp Lukas’s hand. “And who’s this?”
“My assistant,” Lukas says. “Ms. Everett will be taking notes.”
That’s the full extent of my introduction. Not even a first name. I’m so tempted to give a mocking curtsy and say, I serve at the pleasure of our liege.
But I doubt that Lukas would appreciate my humor, so instead, I smile tightly and take a seat at the far end of the table, pulling out my phone to dutifully document whatever pearls of wisdom these titans of the world choose to dispense.
What follows nearly puts me to sleep.
The conversation orbits around Series B funding rounds and market penetration strategies and something called “synergistic value creation” that makes me want to claw my own ears off. I nod along and type notes that grow increasingly sassy as the evening progresses.
· Guy with too much hair gel thinks AI will “revolutionize the grocery vertical.” Does he even know what that means? Does anyone?
· Second bottle of wine uncorked. Nobody has offered me any. Rude.
· Balding one just said “move the needle” for the sixth time. I’m now considering “moving a needle” into his eyeball.
But worse than the mind-numbing business talk is Lukas himself.
Because he’s cordial.
He laughs at their jokes, smiling with teeth and everything. He discusses market trends with genuine engagement. He orders the wagyu tartare for the table and remembers everyone’s dietary restrictions.
He is, in every possible way, a completely normal person having a completely normal dinner.
And, just like in the conference room and the gala before then, he doesn’t look at me once. Not even the briefest acknowledgment that I exist beyond my capacity to transcribe their tedious conversation.
By the time dessert arrives, I’m vibrating with a toxic cocktail of exhaustion and confusion. One of the tech bros comes over to trade seats with his friend to my right as the baked Alaska arrives.
“You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” he murmurs, low enough that the others can’t hear.
I glance up from my phone, caught mid-snark. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to someone paying attention.” His eyes crinkle at the corners. He’s handsome in a flashy, young-rich way—dark hair, unshaved jaw, a tan that says yacht rather than tanning bed. “I’m Preston, by the way. Though I suspect you already knew that.”
Now that he mentions it, I do, actually. He bid on me at the auction. Half a million dollars, if I remember correctly, before Lukas swooped in with his unlimited checkbook and a warning.
There’s a trail of gibbering, broken girls in psychiatric hospitals across the country courtesy of him.
That’s what Lukas said about my new friend Preston here. At the time, it was enough to make my skin crawl.
Now, though, I’m wondering if it wasn’t just more of Lukas’s bullshit.
After all, Lukas warned me about a lot of things, and then he did a lot of things that sounded an awful lot like the exact stuff he warned me about. So forgive me if I’m not exactly trusting his judgment right now.
“Rae,” I offer, extending my hand. “Though I suspect you already knew that, too.”
Preston’s handshake is warm and firm. “Hard to forget a woman who inspired a five-million-dollar bidding war.”
I blush. “‘Inspired’ is a generous word for it. I was more like merchandise than inspiration.”
He laughs. “Fair point. Though I’d argue you were significantly undervalued.”
It’s such a smooth line, delivered with such easy charm, that I almost roll my eyes. But there’s something disarming about the way he says it—like he’s fully aware of how ridiculous it sounds and is inviting me to laugh along with him.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Howell.”
He makes a grossed-out face. “Oh, God—Preston, please.” He signals to the sommelier, who steps forward instantly with an extra wine glass and pours. “And it’s not flattery if it’s true. Here—you look like you could use this more than anyone else at this table.”
The wine is dark and velvety. I take a long sip and feel some of the tension in my shoulders unknot.
“So,” Preston continues, turning his body toward me in a way that creates a little bubble of privacy amid the chaos, “what does Lukas Lazarev’s assistant actually do? Besides suffering through interminable dinners with a bunch of old bores like myself, I mean.”
“Mostly? I suffer through interminable dinners with old bores like yourself.” I waggle my phone. “Also spreadsheets. Many, many spreadsheets.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“You have no idea.”
He grins. “Well, if you ever want to discuss something other than synergistic value creation, I’m an excellent listener. And I promise my dinner parties involve far less jargon.”
Down the table, Lukas is deep in conversation with one of the Wall Street types, his attention fixed anywhere but on me.
Fine. If he wants to pretend I don’t exist, I can do the same.
I turn back to Preston with my warmest smile. “I might take you up on that.”
For a man with such a sinister reputation, Preston is easy to talk to.
He asks about my background, my interests, whether I’ve always lived in Manhattan.
Normal questions delivered with genuine-seeming curiosity.
When I make a joke about my college dropout status, he laughs and touches my knee—just a quick squeeze, nothing overtly inappropriate—and tells me formal education is overrated anyway.
“Half the guys at this table have MBAs,” he murmurs out of the side of his mouth, “and they’re still the most boring people I’ve ever met.”
As he talks, his arm finds its way to drape over the back of my chair. Not around my shoulders, exactly. Just hanging near there, close and easy, no big deal at all.
“I bet a stunning, successful woman like you must have guys lining up around the block,” he mentions. “Boyfriend? Boyfriends, plural?”
I take another sip of wine to buy myself a moment. “Nothing serious at the moment,” I say carefully.
“Hard to believe.” His smile is blindingly white, filled with the biggest, brightest veneers I’ve ever seen. “Their loss, I suppose.”
He’s charming, but he’s not my type. Not even close. My type, apparently, is much older, much bigger, and much, much ruder. Which says nothing good about my psychological health.
“You’re blushing,” Preston observes with a grin. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“Trust me, they’re not worth that much.”
“I doubt that.” He hesitates, like he’s struggling with an embarrassing secret, then says, “You know, I was disappointed when Lazarev outbid me at the auction. I had plans for our evening together.”
“Plans?” I ask in confusion.
“Nothing sinister, Scout’s honor.” He holds up his hands in mock surrender and laughs. “Just dinner. Dancing. Maybe a nightcap at my place in the Hamptons. I have an excellent wine cellar.”
“How very civilized of you.”
“I can be civilized when the occasion calls for it.” His eyes drop to my lips for just a moment before returning to meet my gaze. “Though I’ve been told I’m more fun when I’m not.”
The line lands somewhere between flirtatious and predatory. I can’t quite decide which.
What I can decide is that the wine has gone straight to my head on an empty stomach, and Preston Howell is starting to look like a viable option for making a certain cold-shouldered billionaire jealous.
That, of course, is when Lukas arrives.
He materializes beside my chair, one hand coming to rest on the back of my seat exactly where Preston’s was just a moment ago. Except where Preston’s arm had been casual, almost lazy, Lukas’s presence is a white-knuckled declaration of war.
“Preston,” he says, his voice surface-level pleasant in a way that says it’s anything but that beneath the surface. “I see you’ve met my assistant.”
Preston’s smile doesn’t waver, but something behind his eyes does. “Just keeping her company, Lukas. You seemed busy.”
“I was.” Lukas’s gaze finally drops to me, and the weight of it pins me to my chair. “But I find myself with a spare moment.”
He leans down, and for one giddy, rom-com-poisoned second, I think he’s going to kiss me right here, in front of everyone, in front of Preston Howell and a dozen Wall Street sharks.
Instead, his lips brush the shell of my ear. His breath is warm. His voice is ice.
“You’ve been a bad girl tonight, Ms. Everett,” he murmurs, so quiet that only I can hear. “Take off your underwear and give it to me.”