Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Dimos
Long days at the office are nothing new for me.
I’ve been working crazy hours since the moment I became my own boss fifteen years ago.
However, the days have seemed longer still these past few weeks.
I’ve been trying to train my new assistant via email, which is far from efficient.
It’s not the way I prefer to run things, but after Kati …
I don’t want to leave anything to chance.
I’m not the cheating kind. At least, I never wanted to be. But Kati had this allure to her. This magnetism. She captured the eyes of everyone in the room, men and women alike.
Just like Gianna. In that fucking dress.
My cock gets hard like it does every time I think about her.
Unlike Kati, Gianna actually has class. Kati only got attention because she’s a man-eating whore.
And I’m the poor asshole she chewed up and spit back out.
Day by day, she wore me down. She knew when Emma and I would have a fight or when she would make me feel like less of a man. Kati could read me like a book, so finally, I opened up to her. Little by little, she weaseled her way under my skin.
First it started with little smirks across the table during meetings.
The way she would nibble on the end of her pen while she stared at me, eyes hooded with lust like she could crawl across the table and into my lap at any moment.
We’d toss sexy, suggestive banter back and forth with each other when no one else was around.
Then she began to stay late when I did. We would order dinner in and end up talking instead of working. That’s when it turned physical. We would fuck here most of the time—there isn’t one surface in this office her naked body didn’t touch—but occasionally we would go to her apartment.
My stomach rolls just thinking about it.
She made me feel powerful again. Like I was the smart, strong, and capable man I used to be before Emma got her claws into me and started wearing me down. It continued several months before it came crashing to a halt.
One day she didn’t show up for work. I got a call from her just before lunchtime.
She was crying and told me she needed me to come to her apartment right away.
I thought she was pregnant, and it made me sick to my stomach.
I knew sleeping with her was a bad idea.
It was wrong and immoral, and my values have always been much stronger than that.
But I couldn’t help myself. I went over how I was going to break the news to Emma in my head the entire time I raced to Kati’s.
Only, when I got there, she seemed perfectly fine. She’d even invited two friends over. Two large, muscular, mean looking Russian men who stood over me as she spoke.
She handed me a large envelope. Inside of it were pictures of us in her bed, on her sofa, the kitchen island.
There was also a tape recorder. My stomach dropped when I realized what was going on.
She played the recording for me. It was from the night she talked me into acting out a rape fantasy of hers.
I didn’t feel right about it the entire time it was happening, but I did it anyway. It’s shameful how tight her grip was on my balls. She really wasn’t much different from Emma. Fury rages through me as I close my eyes and think back to that day.
“This is what’s going to happen next, Dimos. You and I are going to take a little trip to the bank, and you’re going to request a transfer of five-million dollars into my account.”
I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t believe what was happening.
“As soon as it’s complete, you’ll receive the only other copy of this recording as well as the thumb drive containing all the pictures. If you don’t comply, I’ll release the tape to the media and have you arrested for rape.”
Not much of a choice there. We went straight to the bank and initiated the transfer. As soon as we stepped outside of the building, she handed everything over to me.
“At least you’ll have something to remember me by,” she joked before turning on her heel and walking out of my life.
A couple weeks later, Emma hit me with divorce papers. Not because of Kati but because she found someone else. I didn’t know it at the time, but she’d been cheating on me for longer than I cheated on her. Unfortunately, I ended up having to pay big time in both cases.
Since Kati, I’ve had a revolving door of executive assistants working for me remotely in my New York office.
I refuse to hire one to work with me here in Torrance.
Furthermore, I never speak to them on the phone.
Communicating with them via email means everything is in writing.
There can be no he said, she said. I’ll never get myself into that kind of shit show ever again.
I do feel bad for the people HR has hired for the position since then. I guess you could say I haven’t been the nicest boss in the world. But I need to be firm so no one can take something I’ve said and make it out to be anything other than business.
I hear my cell phone vibrate seconds before it starts dancing along the surface of my desk. Looking down at the screen, I see Ez’s name and pick it up.
It’s 11 P.M. in the big apple.
“Ezra, is everything okay?”
“Yeah, man. Why?”
“It’s late for you. Just wanted to make sure.”
“Oh, yeah. No, everything is good, I had a business dinner and am just now getting home. How’s it going, man?”
“Can’t complain too much. Just sitting at my desk, trying to get some work done,” I explain.
I leave out the fact that I get depressed going home to an empty house every night, which is another reason why I work late.
“My new assistant finally seems to be getting the hang of how I like things to be run.”
“That’s actually why I called. I ran into your new assistant today when I was there for my meeting.”
His voice sounds off, like there’s something wrong.
“What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
“No, not exactly, but…”
But? Come on, Ez. Spit it out.
“There’s no easy way to say this, but Gianna is your new assistant.”
My heartbeat increases at the sound of her name, but Ez must be mistaken.
“What? No. Her name is Carley. Carley Garrettson.”
“Gianna is Carley, D.”
Now it feels like my heart has stopped. There’s no way.
“I took her picture when she wasn’t paying attention. I’m sending it to you now,” he explains when I can’t come up with a response to the bomb he’s just dropped on me.
I pull the phone away from my ear and wait for the picture to come through. When it does, the biggest smile crosses my face. She’s leaning over her desk, reaching for something off camera, in a tight black pencil skirt and blue blouse that matches her eyes.
I’ve found her.
I tried looking her up a few times since Greece, but with no luck. My gratification is short-lived, however, when I realize what this means.
I fucked my assistant. Again.
“Did you talk to her? Did she see you?”
I feel like a fourteen-year-old boy all over again, asking my buddy if the girl I liked said anything about me.
“Yeah, we talked.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me she felt bad for not giving you her real name. She said she doesn’t give it out to random guys—”
“Random guys? Now I’m just a random guy?” I’m fuming.
“She did it to protect herself, D. She mentioned she had a bad experience in the past, so she only gives her real name once she gets to know someone better.”
“Well, we got to know one another pretty fucking well that night, if you ask me.”
“Look, you know I’ll always have your back, but you really don’t have a right to be angry with her, Nick Evans.”
Damn it. I hate it when he’s right.
“But she also said leaving your bed the next morning was one of the worst mistakes she’s ever made. She can’t stop thinking about you, and she gave me her number to pass along.”
“Well … shit. This isn’t what I was expecting when I saw you calling,” I laugh.
“There’s … something else, too,” Ez adds slowly, and it worries me.
“Which is?”
“She hates you, Dimos Anastos, with a passion, and she’s going to quit. She has two interviews next week. You have a very small window of opportunity here, D. I think you need to get on the phone ASAP and come clean with her.”
“Yeah …” I say, as another realization hits me. Hard.
She’s known the dickhead me for longer than the me I showed her in Greece. Once she finds out, what if she can’t look past the way I’ve been treating her?
Fuck.
“I’m sending her number through to you now.”
“Thanks, Ez. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome, man. Good luck and let me know how it goes.”
“I will. Goodnight.”
As I hang up the call, I think about everything Ez just told me. I do have a small window to connect with her and make things right. And I want to make things right with her.
I pull up the photo I took of her wrapped in a sheet in my bed on the night we spent together. She’s asleep, her hair is like a messy halo around her head. She looks sated and absolutely the most radiant thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
A phone call doesn’t feel like the right way to handle this situation.
She needs more. She deserves more. Placing my phone back on my desk, I stand and walk to the small bar on the other side of my office.
As I pour myself a couple fingers of bourbon, I look out toward the sea.
I never thought I would want to leave Hermosa Beach, but Ez was right.
I’m incredibly lonely out here by myself.
I think about seeing Gianna—Carley—again and my heart races. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hurt when I woke up in an empty bed the morning after our date. The only trace of her she’d left behind was the smell of her perfume on my sheets and her decadent, aromatic desire on my fingers.
I’ve been toying with the idea of moving to New York for quite some time, especially after Kati, but I couldn’t picture myself packing up and leaving the beach behind. With this latest bit of news, however …
Yes.
Yes, I think it is time for a change of scenery.
I can take my jet and have Captain Percival follow behind with The Cerulean.
Walking back to my desk, I place my highball glass down and pull up my email.
Carley—
I need to take the rest of the week off. Reschedule all my meetings for next week.
—D.A.
Part of me wants to change her name to Gianna and make her sweat for the next few days, but I won’t do that.
I’d rather see the look on her face when she realizes who I am.
Will she look past the asshole I’ve been and see the man I was in Greece?
Or have I pushed myself past the point of redemption?
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but one thing is for certain.
I’m not going to let her run from me twice.