Chapter 6
Sarah was used to compartmentalizing her personality.
It was how she got through the long, arduous workdays full of mundane tasks that had to be done yesterday and the astronomical tasks only billionaires could get away with requesting.
It’s also what allowed her to go to sleep at night, even when her brain was stuffed with enough toxic crap to give a girl insomnia.
Not to mention… Angel’s existence was born straight from Sarah’s ability to compartmentalize.
She was grateful for her skill after Luca joined the Moreau offices for the rest of the foreseeable future. It allowed her brain to break away from the fact that she had sex with Luca. And it made it easier to keep up the facade that they never met before Monday.
Luca Blackbourne, as Sarah discovered over the course of that week, was the daughter of a Danish heiress and an American entrepreneur who married almost forty years ago for the sole purpose of creating an empire similar to the Moreaus’.
Yet while the Moreaus mostly dabbled in developing properties and products that appealed to the middle class, the Blackbournes were hardasses in publishing and technology.
No wonder Danica called upon her best friend from Princeton to help the newlyweds launch their new tech subsidiary in a world full of tech startups.
Usually, Sarah didn’t give a shit regarding the structure of her employers’ business as long as she got paid. But the arrival of Luca Blackbourne changed more than her general disposition. It changed things around the office as well.
Ms. Blackbourne was granted a temporary office in the far corner.
It was only half the size of the Misses Moreaus’ separate offices, did not have its own private bathroom, and had some of the worst lighting after three in the afternoon.
This sent Luca out of her office more often than not, and this did not include every instance of her going to another office, the conference room, or out for other matters.
Sarah, who spent half her days at her desk making appointments, arranging schedules, phoning people on behalf of her employers, and God knew what else, saw so much of the woman she last slept with that she was liable to go fucking nuts if she didn’t enact every skill in her compartmentalizing arsenal.
It’s not bad. She doesn’t even recognize me.
Angel had different mannerisms, vocal inflections, and appearances from everyday Sarah.
The club had such low light that it was difficult to make out features, anyway.
Luca was in the mode people adopted when having casual sex – fuck her and forget her.
So what if she had inhaled and impaled Sarah’s body?
So what if she was the only one in the office to fuck Ms. Clayborn? Sooooo what?
Besides, they rarely interacted. Even when Sarah had to accompany Danica and Luca to their meetings, Luca seldom spoke – or looked – in her direction.
Still, using that mental power to look past certain facts took up much of Sarah’s energy. Even though her workload hadn’t changed that much since Luca’s arrival, she went home every night to collapse into bed for a deep, merciless sleep. Just so she could start all over the next day.
Her brother quickly noticed her change in mood.
People often mistook Nigel as the “submissive” twin due to his habit of deferring to his sister’s voice whenever they were in a room together.
Sarah never saw it this way. Not only was the idea of a dominant twin vs.
a submissive absolute bullshit, but Nigel was simply observant.
When they were a team at work, Nigel was the one who would take his sister aside and share his thoughts about what their boss asked them to do.
Sarah gave his observations a voice. While their marks had always been similar in school, she did have slightly higher oration scores.
Besides, the people they worked with preferred listening to “soothing” female voices.
While Nigel was taken more seriously thanks to his other genitals, of course.
So to come home to find her brother often standing in his bedroom doorway, arms crossed, and eyes intensely focused on his sister’s haggard form? He had noticed.
He also did not ask. Sarah’s descent into having an affair with their boss’s father and the trauma they both subsequently suffered had driven an uncomfortable rift between them. Perhaps one day it would be bridged again. Until then, Sarah had to deal with Luca on her own.
If she chose to deal with her at all, of course.
“How deplorable do you think cheating is?” she asked her brother one night over dinner.
Nigel looked up from his texting. A wooden bowl full of salad sat between them, Sarah picking at her leafy greens and completely ignored the baked chicken breast on the side.
Nigel ate his dinner with a bagel, but Sarah groaned at the thought of the extra bloating that PMS already foisted upon her.
“What kind of cheating? Relationship cheating?”
Sarah nodded.
“Well, it’s pretty bad.”
“Like… assume Dad cheated on Mum. How mad would you be?”
“I’d be bloody pissed.”
“Right. But is it worse than other things he could have done?”
“Come on, there are way worse things than cheating. Like murder.”
“Right. Ah, never mind. I’m not making sense.”
Nigel put down his phone and looked his sister in the eye. His were surprisingly sharp. “Are you having an affair with a married man?”
“What?” Sarah dropped her useless fork.
Her brother steepled his fingers before his face. “When you go to New York. You’re seeing men, aren’t you?”
Sarah fixed her posture and shoved food around her plate. Her haughty airs came from their English mother, who cleared a room with her sense of self-importance and inability to ever be wrong – a characteristic she was thankfully aware of and only utilized when in her favor.
“So, yes?”
“I hate you sometimes.” What was the point in hiding it? If her brother was right, he was right. The man was impossible to successfully lie to. Likewise, he rarely got away with lying to her. “It’s none of your business.”
“It is if it’s upsetting you.”
Sarah stole her brother’s wineglass and helped herself, since hers was empty. “Fuck you.”
“I’m not judging you.”
“If you were, I’d call you a jealous bastard because you only fuck one girl.”
“So defensive.” Nigel slipped off his stool at the island counter, taking his empty plate to the kitchen sink. “Who gives a shit, as long as you’re taking care of yourself?”
“You don’t think I am.”
He stopped halfway toward his room. “If it’s making you act like this, then no.”
Sarah hated her brother in that instance.
Where did he get off acting so flippant about her promiscuous lifestyle?
Wasn’t he supposed to be her savior? The man who protected her safety and honor, or whatever crap he put himself through a few months ago?
“Different man every time I go!” she called after him.
“Sometimes more than one!” She didn’t even bring up the women!
Would that make his head explode? He has no idea.
Sarah only had boyfriends in front of her brother.
Nigel waved at her before closing his bedroom door with a soft click.
“You ever join an orgy?” Sarah launched off her stool, but stopped at the end of the counter. “You ever taken…” Her yell fell to a defeated whisper. “Damnit.”
She cleaned up the dishes as music played in her brother’s room. After that, she retreated to her own room, and the two of them didn’t speak for the rest of the night. Aside from a text from Nigel that said, “Please take care of yourself,” and nothing more.
Sarah threw her phone across the room.
“Hey!” Sarah walked into the conference room, thinking it was empty. Unfortunately, Luca was in there, having a private phone call. She ignored Luca as she cleaned up the debris from that morning’s meeting. “How goes it?”
Luca wasn’t talking to her. She wasn’t even acknowledging Sarah’s presence as she stared out the window at the sunny winter weather.
“Great, great! Yes, I miss you a lot, too.”
Sarah glanced up. No, the woman still wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
There was a class ring on her right hand, but nothing on her left.
Asshole. Does your wife know you’re not wearing one while you’re here?
All Sarah knew about Luca’s personal situation was that her permanent address was in Copenhagen, with a family home in Chicago.
The night they “shared” in New York was while Luca conducted overseas business with some fellow Danes from Copenhagen, where she had been staying the past few months.
“I promise I’ll see you soon. I’m going to buy you a present before then. What do you want? Anything you want. What? Disneyworld? Well, don’t know about that…”
Sarah showed herself out. Luca’s smile as she spoke with her wife made her sick. What would cartoon characters say about her adultery?
To think, Sarah had considered going back to New York that weekend to wash the taste of Luca’s pussy out of her mouth. Instead, she would probably stay home and get drunk off the wine she and her brother otherwise refused to drink.
“I need you to go to the Estate today, Ms. Clayborn.” Danica finally looked up from the papers on her desk. “I’m sorry. I hate to ask it of you, but Ms. Oduya took today off.”
“It’s not a problem.” Sarah picked up the notes her boss had left for her to take. “I’ll type these up and then head over to the Estate.”
Ms. Moreau studied her blank reaction before accepting her compliance. “Very well. Take my car. I don’t need it until I go home, and you should be back by then.” She turned her full attention back to her computer. “Send my wife in on your way out, would you?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sarah hustled out. Alicia sat on a couch in the main office, her body language pointed directly at Ms. Blackbourne, who sat on the other end. Sarah hated that she had to approach them both. At the same time, even.