Chapter Twenty-One
“T hank you for coming in.” I plastered a forced smile on my lips as I sat in front of GS Properties’ worst employee to date, Kevin.
Kevin jerked his chin in a nod, his foot bouncing at ninety miles per hour. His eyes were red, and his brown shaggy hair was a mess.
He was in his midtwenties but didn’t look a day over eighteen. The only way I could justify calling him in here and terminating his employment was that I’d learned he was living with his mum on the Upper West Side. He didn’t have a family to feed, nor bills to pay.
“Well, uh, I didn’t actually have any choice.” Kevin scratched his unkempt stubble, studying me warily. “I know why I’m here. You’re firing my ass.”
“Actually, this is an executive decision, not mine.”
“What’s the difference?” he spat out. “Am I not being kicked out of the company or somethin’?”
“Your employment is still terminated,” I said carefully. Jesus, this was more awkward than the drive home to Manhattan with Tate from the Hamptons. “But I’ve arranged for your terms to be more favorable.”
I allowed myself to tweak the termination process since I was the designated person to carry out the actual sacking. If Tate had a problem, he was welcome to fire me. I’d sue him for wrongful termination and retain the best lawyers in town. After all, I was now married to a billionaire.
“Uh, can you say that in English?” Kevin blinked slowly.
“We’ll be giving you a generous severance package of twenty thousand dollars as well as a two-week salary continuation.”
“Oh.” His eyes remained dim. “Thanks, I guess.”
Kevin did not behave as though he cared about this job at all. He missed more days than he attended, arrived late, and was rarely focused.
My eyebrows knit into a frown. “Were you expecting something else? Anything that could’ve made the process easier for you?”
Kevin rolled his tongue along his teeth.
“So…this is pretty embarrassing, but actually, my mom is going through a tough period. My dad left her for another woman.” He bit down on his lower lip.
“Fuck, I can’t believe I’m telling a complete stranger.
” He shook his head, chuckling humorlessly.
“That woman is my former nanny. And my parents didn’t have a prenup, so my mom, who stayed home with me, definitely got the short end of the stick.
Since I’m no longer a minor…” He trailed off.
“Anyway, she became very depressed. Couldn’t hold on to the shitty job she found.
I decided to move back and have been taking care of her since.
Recently, it felt like she was on the brink of something bad.
Like, suicidal or somethin’. I’ve been watching her and trying to keep this job.
I barely sleep. I eat mostly junk since I don’t have the time.
I just…” He rubbed his palms over his face, falling forward, elbows on his knees.
“I’m tired of juggling this shit. When I first got the job at GS Properties, I thought I hit the jackpot.
I wanted to work my way up to management.
And I fucking hate my dad for putting me in this position.
It feels like I went to Emory and busted my ass for nothing. ”
I reached forward and put my hand on his across the table, knowing it was against protocol and not giving a toss all the same. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“I started out strong here.” Kevin screwed the bases of his palms into his eye sockets.
“I got the hang of my job. My boss liked me. But then Dad dumped Mom, and everything fell apart. I can’t just leave her like this.
I’m an only son, you see. And fuck my dad for what he did.
Seriously, he thinks he’s some kind of a saint for waiting until I was a grown-ass man.
But yeah, it screwed up my entire performance.
I’m agitated and bitter and just…I don’t know. Fucked . I feel like I’m fucked.”
GS Properties was a huge corporation. We could bloody afford therapy sessions—or at least vouchers—for those who needed it.
More support for struggling workers. Easier access to time off for people with special circumstances.
I’d only been in HR for a short period of time, but I’d already seen enough to realize Tate ruled this place with an iron fist and screwed people out of their basic rights in exchange for adding GS Properties to their résumé.
Long, unpaid overtime. Measly days off. Draconian contracts.
My jaw tensed, and my nostrils flared. Kevin’s story hit home, because we were going through similar things. I visited Mum at the hospital day in and day out, watching as she drifted further away from me, like a balloon sailing across the sky toward the sun.
“Know what?” I huffed, standing up. “You’re not sacked. In fact, I have a job for you.”
Kevin wobbled to his feet, scratching his head uncertainly. “You mean, like…here?”
“Yes,” I said brightly. “We’re going to start a workers’ union. I need you to help me put together an employee survey and send it across the company, to all twelve thousand employees.”
“S-start a union?” he stuttered, eyes flaring in a panic.
“Start a union, Kevin.” I nodded briskly. “We deserve one, don’t you reckon?”
Later that day, after reading a gazillion online articles about the process, I worked on the four-page survey for all GS Properties’ employees and its sister companies in the building.
In order to start a union, I had to get most of the workers’ signatures, no small feat for a company with over twelve thousand personnel.
I felt positive I could do this, though.
It would help people like Kevin— everyone , really—and I wasn’t mad about the fact that people would stop treating me like the Wicked Witch of the West.
If they saw I was still one of them, still fighting for what’s right and what’s good, they’d understand I was the same Gia.
I typed along different questions— What would you change about the company? Roughly how many overtime hours do you work per week?— when I caught sight of the elevator sliding open and Tate stepping out of it in my periphery.
Fumbling my laptop shut, I accidentally spilled my iced coffee all over my dress, which made me squeak.
Shoot . I forgot to visit him upstairs for our daily romp.
Two days had passed since Tate and I had returned from the Hamptons.
My husband and I seemed to slip into a routine where, sometime during the workday, he’d call me into his office, flip my skirt up as I braced my forearms over his desk, and eat me out from behind while he was on his knees.
He’d make me come so hard I started bringing an extra pair of knickers to work. He always dismissed me from his office by giving my arse a little careless slap.
When we returned home, we ate dinner in silence. He did not ask after Mum, how my day was, or if the bodyguards he assigned to me—Enzo and Filippo—were doing their job.
(They were. Too well for my liking. They suffocated me with their looming presence. But they had this weird, nonthreatening vibe of two frat boys giddying up together on initiation week.)
Tate never asked for his own release.
In fact, he seemed completely unfazed about not getting his rocks off, to a point where I began to suspect he wanted to fuck me just for the notch on his belt and not because he was mad with desire.
I didn’t know why I was so hell-bent on not sleeping with him. Perhaps I still clung to this one, single power I had over him. Something I could control.
The HR crowd cleared the path for him like Moses parting the Red Sea. He sauntered toward me, ignoring the coos and the greetings of people around him.
Expressionless. Cold. Frightening.
He opened my office door, closing it behind him. It was surrounded by glass, so everyone could still see us.
Enzo and Filippo were on either side of me, staring hawkishly. He gave them a curt nod, which they didn’t even acknowledge.
“The fuck happened to your dress?” he bit out, examining the giant coffee stain on my garment. “Are you five now? Incapable of drinking from a straw?”
Smiling calmly, I retorted, “I’m not five, though I doubt if I were, it’d have stopped you from strong-arming me into marriage. In fact, I believe if taking candy from babies was a profitable occupation, you’d have pursued it.”
Enzo looked up, trying to cover his laugh with a cough.
Tate arched an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
I wanted the workers’ union to be a surprise. The type that might be followed by a minor heart attack and send Tate to his eternal slumber.
I fell back into my seat and grinned. “Oh, this and that. Slammed with work.”
“You should be slammed by me ,” he quipped, ignoring the two bodyguards next to me.
I didn’t give him the pleasure of flinching in embarrassment.
“It’s four in the afternoon, which means my breath should be the scent of your cunt.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“I don’t have a heart, and for your reproductive health, my cock doesn’t need any more growing.
” He sat on the edge of my desk, folding his arms over his sculpted chest. Behind his broad back, I spotted Trisha, Mariam, and the rest of the floor watching in awe as the great Tatum Blackthorn acted casual—almost human—with his lowly wife.
“Your cock is not my vagina’s problem,” I reminded him with a sweet smile.
Tate snatched my chin, tipping my head up to catch his gaze.
“We’ll be rectifying that soon. I have my tricks.
” Before I could sass back at him, he stood up and waltzed over to my window overlooking the busy Manhattan streets, lacing his hands behind his back.
“Actually, I’m here in a professional capacity. ”
“Oh?” I swiveled in my executive chair. “How so?”
“It’s Rebecca.” He turned around to face me, a dark glower on his face. “She put the mess in embarrassment.”
“There’s no mess in embarrassment.” I frowned.
“You should tell her that. She misspelled the word in a company email.”
I pressed my lips together to suppress a smile. Karma never disappointed.
“I’d say she is stupid as a rock, but that’d be offensive to rocks everywhere. If she ever had a clever thought, it died alone and afraid.”
“Rebecca is a Dartmouth graduate,” I said primly. “She is extremely—”
“Disposable,” he finished. “Come back.”
I sat up straighter. I had no intention of coming back. I liked not having him as my direct superior.
“Whatever happened to ‘people will talk’?” I smirked.
“I’ll cut everyone’s tongues off.”
“That’s a lot of lawsuits.”
“I have a lot of money,” he deadpanned.
I laughed. He didn’t. Oh. Of course he was serious.
“She’s also hitting on me,” he added. “Constantly. Offering kinky sex that’s depraved, even by my standards.”
Smiling to hide the simmering rage bubbling beneath my skin, I groused, “Guess she can fill in for me when I don’t make it upstairs.”
“In case you forgot, we’re exclusive.” He motioned between us. “I’ve no interest in other cunts. And trust me when I say you don’t want to see what happens to any man dumb enough to try to touch you. Now, come back.”
Standing up, I swanned over to him, stopping when I was shoulder to shoulder with him. Fine, shoulder to elbow. The arsehole was tall. We both stared out the window.
“That is a firm no, Tate. By the way, I forgot to tell you, I’m meeting Cal and Dylan after work today.”
His face clouded over in my periphery, a muscle jumping in his cheekbone. “It’s not safe.”
“I’ve accepted the Ferrantes’ security detail.” I gestured to Enzo and Filippo, who were messing with their phones and conversing in Italian. No point in trying to get myself killed, I had an entire season of The Bear to catch up on.
“Enzo did a shit job tracking you down three days ago,” Tate said.
Enzo’s head snapped up from his phone. “She was out the building before I set foot in it. It’s not my fault you can’t put your woman on a leash.”
“We stopped doing that in the twenty-first century.” I smiled serenely at Enzo.
“Depends on your kinks.” Enzo shrugged. “Though I guess Tate’s vibe is staying a virgin.”
“Achilles punished Enzo by fucking his high school sweetheart,” Tate said without breaking eye contact with Enzo, a sadistic smile on his face. “Or should we call her ex -girlfriend now, Enzi boy?”
Enzo’s cheerful smile never wavered.
“That’s awful.” I gave Enzo a sympathetic face.
“I concur,” Tate agreed. “The punishment for losing my wife should be, at the very least, death.”
Enzo rolled his eyes. “Bro, she’s your wife by name only. I’ve seen her show more sympathy to half-eaten subs at her desk.”
“Enzo is doing an excellent job,” I clarified, mainly because I didn’t want Tate to add an entire SWAT team to watch over my every move.
“He’s not doing an excellent job keeping his mouth shut,” Tate said.
“Hoo boy,” Enzo smirked. “Someone got bitch-slapped by their own emotions.”
“I only trust myself to keep you safe,” Tate argued.
“Well, I need a break from you,” I countered. “Go make plans with your mates.”
“Don’t have any.” He turned to stare at me, looking angry and lost and… boyish , almost.
“Shocking stuff,” Enzo muttered, playing with his knife.
“Find some.” I breezily made my way to the door, opening it and jerking my head for him to leave.
The entire floor was at a standstill, watching as if we were the best show in town.
Not every day did they see Tate Blackthorn brought to his knees.
“In the meantime, I’m busy, and you should be too.
Go make us millions, stud.” I winked, blowing him a little kiss.
His steadfast, unrelenting scowl melted in an instant, making way for something gentle and beautiful. Almost childlike. He wasn’t smiling, but he looked… content .
He enjoyed when I pretended to like him. That I assumed the role of the playful wife.
He made his way out the door. When he brushed past me, I gave his arse a small slap, the way he did me when he was done eating me out in his office. “You’re dismissed.”
Tate side-eyed me, giving me a barely audible woof .
Promising to punish me for that little flex.
I couldn’t wait.