Chapter Twenty-Five
“It was wonderful to meet you, Soph,” Nathan, the Creative Director at Just Graphics, said with a smile. He stood, offering his hand over the desk. Soph shook it. “I can’t believe Paxus ever let you go.”
“Thanks for this opportunity, Nathan,” she told him. “I think we’ll work really well together.”
“Consider the job yours, once all that mandatory HR stuff is out of the way, of course. My assistant can take you down there after this. They’ll show you the contracts, do a quick medical, drug test, and so on.”
Soph kept the smile plastered on her face, but inside her heart sank. She knew drug tests were part of standard company policy, but she’d hoped that Nathan might forgo it. To be honest, she’d hoped the last three companies she’d successfully interviewed with would miraculously forget about it too, but she’d had no such luck.
Nathan’s farewell sounded far away as Soph let the young assistant - was Sarah her name? - lead her from the office and down to the corporate level, where she was introduced to Matilda from HR.
Matilda talked her through the contract and Soph listened half-heartedly. She wondered in the back of her mind if she’d be able to pass this drug test. She somehow didn’t think so. Finally Matilda directed her to a medical clinic next door where a doctor would meet her to perform the medical tests.
Soph considered skipping it and just leaving, but the thought of her dwindling bank account, and the faint hope that she would throw a negative result, had her walking in the clinic’s door.
The doctor took her measurements and her blood pressure, then he offered her a sterilised cup to pee in and ushered her towards a bathroom. When she returned with a sample, the doctor showed her to the waiting room.
She was too nervous to sit and so she paced the room, taking in the stack of old magazines, the potted fern that direly needed a prune, and the few other people waiting patiently for their results. She wondered if they’d also applied for jobs at Just Graphics.
On her third pass by, she noticed a picture of Chase Rickon on the front of a two week old gossip rag. She paused, lifting the magazine and opened it to the centre. She skimmed the article, learning that Chase had been photographed in a Parisian penthouse at a wild party. He’d had to pay for room repairs, apparently.
Her gaze darted back to the picture of Chase with his arms around two topless women, their breasts blurred as one of them poured liquor straight into Chase’s mouth from the bottle, and then her eyes snagged on another person in the photo.
He wasn’t mentioned in the article and his back was to the camera as he leaned over a woman on a chaise, shirt undone and hair wild, but Soph would recognise Eli anywhere.
A month since their altercation at Sinners and she’d seen articles of him everywhere in the business news as he catapulted his empire into the European stratosphere, but this was the first she’d seen him in entertainment news.
She stared at the picture a moment longer, feeling as though a thousand fists pummelled her guts.
Sick. She was going to be sick with jealousy.
And she could do nothing about it. She’d let him go. Told him to go.
If he was having the time of his life with other women, then that was her own fault.
Choking on a sob, she tossed the magazine down. Through the door to the clinic, she saw the doctor appear and talk to a nurse who briefly picked up the phone. Five minutes later, Matilda, the HR person, appeared at the desk. She spoke urgently to the nurse, then to the doctor, who reappeared from his office. Then all three of them glanced through the door towards her.
Soph’s heart sank. Positive. Without waiting for them to approach her, she turned and fled the clinic.
Vampire blood thankfully didn’t show up as the culprit in the drug tests, but it threw a positive every time. Not that she’d known much about vamp blood before she’d developed her addiction to it, but she could only assume that traces of it had stayed in her system. It had been months since her last hit… could it possibly stay there forever?
She walked several blocks, then hailed a taxi to take her back to Marco’s place, all the while trying not to cry over the shambles of her life and the agonising shock that still pounded through her at seeing that article.
Fear of not knowing what would happen next was like an iron vice on her insides that had been getting tighter for weeks and she had no one to talk to. How could she possibly explain to Marco and her family that she couldn’t get a job because of her addiction? No, she just had to hold the anxiety in and pretend that she didn’t really need a job right now anyway, act like she didn’t only have a month or two worth of savings left in her account.
And Marco wouldn’t mind, because even though they’d barely been together for a few months, he was already hinting at how nice it would be for her to stay home and raise their babies.
And that was its own iron-clad cage around her with forever shrinking bars.
Finally reaching the Braxton townhouse, she schooled her features and exhaled a slow breath. The moment she walked in the door and saw Marco and Jacob preparing lunch in the kitchen, however, her facade crumbled.
They laughed and chatted together, and their normality was suffocating to watch. Later they’d all eat dinner, then probably sit down to watch a family-friendly movie. Marco was planning to propose soon. Luie had spilled his secret. Why had she wanted this?
“Hey, Soph!” Jacob greeted when he saw her.
With a strangled sob, she dropped her bag and slid down the wall of the hallway to the floor. She heard Marco ask his son to give them a minute, then he came and crouched beside her.
“What happened?” He stroked her back. For a time, she couldn’t speak through her tears.
“I failed the drug test,” she finally spat out. Marco’s hand stilled on her back. “I failed all the drug tests.”
“You’re on drugs?” He sounded nervous, and he glanced towards the stairs Jacob was climbing to get to his bedroom.
“I was addicted to vampire blood.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and dropped her head to them. “For some reason it shows up in the drug tests.”
Silence.
Dead, fucking quiet. She could hear his shallow breaths. Nearly imagined she could hear his heartbeat picking up.
“Are you still taking it?” His hand vanished from her back completely and she could imagine him wondering what sort of junkie he’d let into his home with his son.
“No. I haven’t taken it in months.” She tried to compose herself, but only broke down harder. Marco sighed.
“What can I do? What do you want?”
I want Eli.
“Eli,” Marco echoed and with a sinking stomach, Soph realised that she’d actually said the words out loud. “Eli Damiani?”
Soph nodded and her sobs renewed as Marco got up and walked away.
* * *
“Can I move back in?” Soph stood desolately at the door of her apartment, bag in hand and eyes rimmed red from crying. Her mother frowned at her.
“You live here too. Why would you ask such a question?” She stepped back so Soph could come inside. She dropped her bag by the door and looked around at the relatively tidy living room.
“Where’s Dante?” She asked. Zita waved a dismissive hand and went to the balcony where she’d been partway through a coffee and a cigarette.
“I dumped him,” Zita said frankly, not bothered that yet another boyfriend was gone. “He was quite immature and a bit of a slob, if I must say.”
Soph let out a huff of laughter and dropped into the chair opposite her mother. “How are you so unfazed by men?”
Zita eyed her knowingly, tapping the ash from her cigarette into an almost empty glass of water. “I just haven’t found the right man to be fazed about. Is that why you’re so upset, Baby? Has Marco broken your heart?”
To be honest, it felt like a weight off her chest to walk away from Marco. He’d been wonderful to her. Too wonderful. The type of man you read about in a woman’s trash mag. She’d tried to settle. She’d tried so hard to build that life her family had envisioned for her. But she realised now how stupid she’d been, how she’d never be able to love the things everyone told her to love.
“It’s not Marco.” Soph sighed, slumping down in her chair and looking over the city. “It’s me. I think I made the wrong choice, and now it’s too late to do anything about it.”
Zita reached across and patted Soph’s hand. “I’m sure if you talk to him, you can make amends, Baby.”
Soph wasn’t so sure. She knew she’d hurt Eli, and she didn’t think he’d be so forgiving. The two women were quiet for a while.
“I think you should give it a go, Baby,” Zita said finally. “Trust me. If you think this man is the one, you’ll regret not chasing him to the edge of eternity.”
“Yeah,” Soph sighed. “Maybe.” She rose and headed inside to get changed out of the clothes she’d worn to the interview. She doubted Eli would ever forgive her, so wallowing in something comfortable seemed like the best thing to do right now.
She rifled through her clothes, finding none of the old ex-boyfriend t-shirts she liked to wear around the house. Maybe Zita had moved them… She reached towards the back of a draw, her fingers closing around a combination of paper and fabric. Pulling it forward, she unfolded the large white shirt and held it up. There was no brand on it, but the material was luxurious and thick. She unpinned the note from the front.
I don’t want you wearing other men’s shirts anymore.
Though the shirt looked crisp and new, when she held it to her face, it smelled like him. Eli.
He’d worn it first, embedding his earthy, sweet and spice scent into the fabric.
Fucking Founders. Could the entire city hear the way her heart was splintering? Perhaps her mother was right. He might not ever forgive her, but she would never forgive herself for not trying.
So for the next week she blew up Eli’s phone, desperately wanting him to pick up so she could in the least apologise, but probably to grovel for his forgiveness.
On the third day, right at noon, Cole showed up at her door.
“Cole!” She stepped back in shock, allowing him to come inside. She snuck a quick glance down the hallway behind him, hoping Eli might follow, but he wasn’t there.
“Hello, Miss Sophia,” he greeted with a bow of his head. “And Miss…” He looked at the balcony door as Zita appeared there.
“Zita,” Soph said quickly. “Cole, this is my mum. Mum, this is Cole. He’s… a friend.”
The word didn’t seem quite right to describe the immaculate yet imposing man, but she wasn’t about to tell her mother that this friend was actually the companion of the vampire she was pining for. Cole offered Zita a nod as well, before turning to survey Soph, hands clasped behind his back.
His assessment of her was inscrutable, yet thorough. “You look well,” he finally concluded.
“I am, I’m great. Have you seen Eli? I’ve been trying to call and -”
Cole’s eyes tightened slightly. “I’m sorry, Master Damiani is currently preoccupied.”
With other women? Her stomach was so tight she thought she was going to be sick.
“Can you… can you tell him I want to talk?”
“I believe he’s seen your attempts at contact.”
And doesn’t want to speak to you, she could almost hear Cole finishing. Which was why Cole was here… Because Eli didn’t want to talk, but he’d said he’d come if she was in trouble, so he’d sent Cole to check that she was actually not in any danger.
Which meant a part of him still cared.
Her heart flip-flopped as Cole stepped back towards the still open door. He paused within the frame, fingers drumming on the jam. “Keep trying to call,” he said eventually, then left.
“What was that about?” Zita tipped her head back out the door to release her lungful of smoke to the breeze.
“Just some friendly advice.” She quickly snatched up her phone and tried to call Eli again.
By the weekend she still hadn’t heard from her vampire, and on Saturday night she found herself planted in the living room with a bottle of wine, watching the red carpet coverage of the Sinister nightclub opening.
So many faces. She saw Chase Rickon and a slew of other A-list celebrities. There were business people, some of which she’d recently interviewed with. She saw influencers and socialites, all dressed to the nines.
Finally Eli arrived, gorgeous, leggy models on either side of him. Envy gripped Soph so tight she’d nearly flung her wine at the TV.
Eli moved along the row of reporters, smiling and posing for photos, and occasionally answering questions. Finally he got close to the camera belonging to the TV station Soph watched on and he paused.
A reporter - the same business reporter that had questioned him at the last club opening - called him over.
“Mr Damiani,” he began. “Congratulations on your new acquisitions in France and Greece! Can you shed some light on what’s next for SinCorp?”
“Well, the ink has only just dried, so we have some planning to do, but my Chief Operating Officer, Freddy, will hold the fort here while I relocate to Europe to set up a European HQ.”
Sound, light, sensation. It all vanished as Eli’s words sunk right into the marrow of Soph’s bones. He was leaving. For good.
Her vision blurred, obscuring the TV as Eli and his models entered the club. She shut the TV off and sat in the dark.
Her mother was out at a dinner with friends, so when the first sob crawled up Soph’s throat, she let it.
At the very first hint of dawn, Soph was up again, having barely slept. Zita had come home sometime in the early hours and was snoring on the lounge. Unable to sit still, Soph wrote a quick note, snatched her mother’s car keys and took a drive out to Grimshollow Forest.
This had been a regular thing for her, once upon a time. She’d loved the pre-dawn light that suffused the trees, loved how quiet it was before the birds woke. Why had she stopped coming?
Marco. Life. The trappings of a family that thought her silly for getting up at this hour to go into the forest.
Leaving the car in an empty car park, she picked out a trail and set off at a jog.
Though it had been a while, she didn’t stop. She ran as fast as her limbs would allow, relishing the burn of her muscles, the pound of her heart, the sear of her breath. She tried to outrun her stupidity, her regrets, the deafening silence that was Eli to her calls.
Tears streaked her temples, flying into her hair as ragged sobs tried to claim her breaths. He was leaving. Moving across an ocean. It was business, but why did it feel like he was trying to get away from her?
Finally, her body couldn’t take it anymore. Vision swimming and heart hammering, she slowed to a stop, bracing against a tree trunk until the seizing of her lungs eased enough that she could draw a decent breath.
The sound of moving water caught her attention and, not ready to go home, she stepped off the track and headed across the pungent forest floor until she found a creek. Water bubbled over the rocks, dark as ink but catching the first pinks and golds of the sunrise. With a heavy sigh, Soph eased herself down the bank and perched on a rock, watching fish and other little creatures flit below the surface.
After a long while, she pulled out her phone and opened her messages to Eli, all of them unanswered. Her apologies, her begging him just to hear her out. Fingers hovering over the text box, she finally typed a message and hit send before she could second guess herself.
- Please stay.
The ping of a phone receiving a message sounded behind her, and she turned as a deep, velvety voice cut through the still morning air.
“Hello, Witchling.”