Chapter 1 Angel
“I can’t believe that cocky son of a bitch pulled it off,” I heard someone say.
I was keeping my own rage at bay as I sat in the boardroom and kept my attention on my coffee cup, my coffee cup that was filled with hot water and a slice of lemon.
I avoided caffeine, not because I didn’t like it but because I just knew that with caffeine in my system, I was more likely to smack his smug face in with my five-inch heels.
“He sure does have the devil’s charm,” one of my colleagues murmured in appreciation.
My snort brought attention. “Hey, wasn’t Hudson supposed to be one of yours?” Johnathan asked me as he leaned over in his chair. “I thought you had him tied up?”
“Now, we don’t discuss the vampire’s sexual preferences; you know she’ll slap a lawsuit on you for suggesting she likes bondage.”
Closing my eyes briefly, I looked up and plastered a smile on my face as the dickhead of the century — no, millennium — strolled into the room like he owned it. Okay, so he did own it, but that was moot.
“You’re juvenile,” I told him sweetly.
“You’re jealous,” he said pleasantly. Turning to Johnathan, he gave him that smirk that made me fantasize about how I would kill him. “I do believe that Angel was in talks with the star of LA’s finest, but he’s more of an action kind of guy — less talking more doing.”
God, I hated him. Trying to tune him out, I focused on my drink.
“Isn’t that the fourth rookie he’s taken off you this year?” Glenn asked me quietly from beside me.
With a deep breath and a forced smile, I turned to look at my older colleague. “Fifth actually, but hey, who’s counting? We’re all a team, right?”
“You’re more graceful than I am, Angel,” Glenn said as he leaned back in his chair. “I’d have punched him by now. It’s not like he needs the fee.”
That earned him a genuine smile, and when I turned back to face the table, my smile caught when I saw the Devil looking back at me.
“What?” I snapped at him. His raised eyebrow infuriated me more. “What do you want, Onyx?”
“So hostile,” he mused before he rested his elbow on the table and dropped his chin in his hand. “Maybe if you were more pleasant, you may find it easier to secure more clients.”
“Maybe if you choked on your saliva in your sleep, my ears wouldn’t bleed every time I heard your voice.”
Dark eyes glittered back at me as he smiled, and the room fell quiet as he watched me, tension high as our co-workers waited for his scathing reply. Me included. I was saved when our boss walked into the room, completely oblivious that he had just saved me.
“Morning, folks,” Neil greeted. “I had a nice weekend off. Did everyone enjoy their weekend?” He beamed at Onyx. “Of course, some of us were working on the weekend and snagged the company a very, very prestigious client. Onyx, you did it again. Is there no end to your talents?”
I was going to puke.
I tuned them out as they congratulated the entitled prick on his win.
Not his win — my win. I had worked tirelessly to get Trent Hudson to sign with us and have me represent him as his agent.
He told me he needed the weekend to think about it.
I was furious. He hadn’t needed the weekend to think about my offer; he had spent the weekend being sweet-talked by the devil.
That Devil who sat across from me now and who was all but laughing openly in my face.
But I saw it, the amusement when he looked at me.
I wished I could slap him. It may even be worth getting fired for.
“Angel, how was your weekend?”
Mediocre. Lonely. Soul-destroying. “It was good, thanks, Neil,” I said instead. “No complaints.” I ignored the snort from across the table.
“Good leg work you did in getting Hudson on our radar,” Neil said to me, and I couldn’t even be angry at him, because his praise was genuine.
“Very nice leg work,” Onyx taunted me as he nodded alongside Neil in agreement.
“What percentage did you take?” I asked him boldly. It had to be the fee I had presented that he slashed. There was no other explanation for the guy signing with him and not me.
“Three percent.” He winked at me.
“How?” I asked with clenched jaw. He got the full three percent, how?
His grin was wide as he reached for his coffee cup. “What did you offer? Two?”
And now he was letting the whole room know not only did he take my potential client, but that client was willing to pay him more. “I am sure you discussed in great detail my offer to Trent.”
“No.” He shrugged. “He didn’t really mention you at all.”
“All right, people, let’s get this Monday on the road. Glenn, how are you doing with that hockey player?” Neil asked, and the Monday board meeting began.
My eyes stayed locked with Onyx until his smirk became a wide grin. I was going to kill him if I stayed here, or I was going to make a fool of myself, and I refused to give him the satisfaction. Pushing back from the table, I stood, halting Glenn mid-speech.
“Sorry, I have a call I need to make,” I mumbled as I met Neil’s curious stare.
“I’ll catch up with you,” I told him and swiftly headed to the door.
But not before I heard one of my colleagues say it must be my time of the month, and I faltered when I heard Onyx shut him down with a stern reprimand about equality in the workplace.
I may hate him, but he didn’t fuck me over whenever he got the chance because I was a woman in a man’s game. No, he fucked me over because it was personal between us; my gender was irrelevant.
That was the charm of Onyx Santo: he didn’t discriminate; he hated everyone equally.
As I closed the office door behind me, I let out a deep breath, feeling that I could finally breathe again.
I had been dreading seeing him this morning.
I got the message late last night that Hudson had signed with Onyx, and I hadn’t been sure which was worse, seeing it on ESPNews or the fact that I had spent hours yesterday afternoon finalizing the contract.
I couldn’t even blame the client fully. I had been on the receiving end of Onyx’s charm.
He bamboozled you with his personality, his sharp wit, and his flawless flattery.
Even when you were sure he was a con artist, his blunt honesty contradicted everything your gut was screaming at you, and you fell into his trap.
Added to that, he was intelligent and educated; it was no wonder he was as successful as he was at his age.
I had the displeasure of meeting the snake at college, and then he got his law degree at the same school as I did too.
I was older than him, but of course, he had to add insult to injury by being ridiculously intelligent.
He didn’t flaunt his wealth, but he owned this building, and the company I worked for was, for all intents and purposes, his.
In the beginning, he was just a silent partner.
Most of our co-workers thought his uncle was the driving force behind the agency’s success, but it had little to do with Kage Santo.
The mastermind behind our success was Onyx.
It helped that Kage was an ex-professional and was well known — it attracted clients — but it was the poison-tongued nephew who trapped them.
Or stole them.
Bastard.
“Let it go, Angel, you’re better than him,” I reminded myself as I crossed the plush cream carpet to my desk. I was better than him . . . maybe not when it came to bullshitting clients, but as a person, I was better.
I hoped.
Opening the contract I had for Hudson, I read it over carefully.
God, it was a good deal. Dragging the document, I hesitated over the “trash” icon as I considered my options.
When I started here, my one advantage that I’d had over the prick was that I had passed the bar and was a lawyer specializing in contract law.
He had his JD, but he hadn’t yet passed the bar exams.
I hadn’t even known he was preparing for the exams, and then one morning he just announced in the boardroom that he had passed the bar, and my one thing — my one thing — I had over him was gone.
The run-up to my own bar exam had been so intense that I gained about eight pounds through stress eating.
Onyx spoke about it in the same manner as he would as if he had been telling us he ordered a morning coffee and they had made his order with soy milk instead of almond.
Tilting my head back, I considered the ceiling, wishing it were blue skies and a million miles from Nashville, where my most hated rival sat a few offices down from me.
So many times, my friends asked me why I stayed here, and the answer was, depressingly, that I loved my job. I really liked my co-workers, and Neil was fantastic. I just despised the guy who owned the company and who made it his mission in life to steal my potential clients.
Sitting forward, I placed my elbows on my desk as I rubbed my temples.
I could try to be nicer to him. College was a long time ago, and what should be in the past really needed to stay there.
I just had a hard time letting go of my resentment of the guy who played me for a fool in front of all his friends . . . for a bet.
I transferred colleges during my undergraduate studies.
I’d heard of Cardinal Saints College — prestigious, elite, with an almost Ivy-League-like status.
They said if you got your undergrad degree there, the East Coast colleges liked you more for your graduate degree.
So, when the opportunity came up to do my final two years at Cardinal Saints, I jumped at the chance.