Chapter 2
Bad news.
WHY OH WHY, do our last names have to start with the same stupid letter? As if we don’t see enough of each other already.
This sucks.
Loch Ness sucks.
More on this never because it’s not good for my preteen soul.
I blinked, but the mirage remained intact.
He was here. He was different.
His signature dark, floppy curls had been clipped and tamed into perfect submission. His bone structure had hardened around the edges. Matured.
He was older. Broader. Angry.
So very angry.
I smacked his hand away, snapping out of it. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, come on.” His voice was so much darker than it used to be. It suited him perfectly. “Even you’re smart enough to have figured it out by now.”
My cheeks grew hot, but I kept my expression even, refusing to wither under his lazy gaze as it flicked a shameless trail of murmuring fire down my body, and back up.
Whatever he saw made the hatred in his eyes burn feral, though his smirk never faltered.
“It’s you, then?” I deadpanned, almost mocking in my accusation. “You’re the reason I’ve been getting fired?”
The significance of the fourteen-day mark finally made sense. His mother had worked as a housekeeper for my family for fourteen years before we’d… parted ways. This was just his way of returning the favor.
And here I’d been, under the blissful assumption that he’d forgotten all about little old me.
His head cocked to one side. “I have to be honest, I thought you’d catch on a lot sooner. I was starting to get bored.”
“I don’t think about you enough to have put two and two together.”
He raised a brow. “But you do think about me.”
“Sure. Sometimes. My old landlord had a Norwegian troll statue perched outside of her unit that reminded me of you.” Before I’d been forced to move into a family-owned apartment because I could no longer afford rent. “The resemblance was uncanny. My hand was forced.”
He scraped a knuckle over his chin, huffing a scathing chuckle under his breath.
My gaze flicked down to his mouth.
I always assumed he’d grow out of it, but tragically, he still suffered the unfortunate affliction of a perpetual pout. Nothing annoyed me quite as much as Dominic Crawford’s upper lip. The way it jutted out constantly, all pillowy and sweet, grated on my every damn nerve.
“Seems like I’ve been on your mind quite a bit, though,” I noted lightly, feigning the boredom I desperately wished I felt. Here was to hoping he couldn’t see my heart slamming against my chest, because it felt like my whole body was vibrating with the assault. “Stalking me, are you?”
“Just helping karma along.”
“By threatening whoever hires me?”
“Not threatening, no. Crawford Capital has been expanding its portfolio.”
Wait. He was buying these companies? Just so he could have me fired from them? I caught my mouth before it could fall open. “What’s Crawford Capital?”
I got him.
His smirk faltered, and I bit back a smile. He never did like having his accomplishments undermined, did he?
“That’s my bad,” he drawled, recovering. “I forgot you don’t care to consume anything that doesn’t have the word ‘Housewives’ stuffed in the title. It’s the largest private equity firm in the country. We own the 6Queue Media network. Ever heard of them?”
My amusement withered.
6Queue Media was the first failing company Dominic had reportedly scooped up for “mere pennies,” ruthlessly gutted, and rebuilt from the ground up.
Five years later, it was one of the biggest media networks in the country—thanks in no small part to a revolutionary social-media-slash-news-outlet of his own creation, and the bane of my family’s existence: Gossip Gorilla.
The second my dad announced he was going to retire early and named Adrien as the new CEO, Dominic had weaponized the platform against my family, using it to ruthlessly drag my brother’s reputation through the mud with speculative bullshit, his goons citing unnamed “sources” for their defamatory lies.
We all knew it was him, we all knew why he was doing it, and every time I’d made mention of taking legal action, Gampy had stepped in, arguing that it would only make things worse—that Dominic was operating from a place of hurt, and fighting back with fire would only aggravate the situation.
“He’ll eventually leave us alone on his own. Just give him a little more time.”
He was right. Dominic had eventually stopped.
Except by then, it was too late. The negative social sentiment he’d manufactured against Adrien had already taken a life of its own, and all the other outlets were foaming at the mouth over how many clicks my brother’s name could get.
My mask slipped. “You know damn well Adrien didn’t deserve the bullshit you put him through. It was our fight, Dominic. You should have kept my family out of it.”
“Why? Because you so generously left mine out of it?” He was sitting close enough that I had to tip my chin up to maintain eye contact.
He loved it—lording over me in all his unholy glory.
Making sure I knew I was beneath him. “Tit for tat, Alice. You spread lies about my family; I’m more than entitled to do the same with yours. ”
“I never lied.” That was the difference. Not that he believed me. Not that he was even willing to listen.
“Oh, but you did,” he muttered, his tone drenched in contempt. His dilated pupils were pure onyx now. Two black holes sucking the light out of anything unfortunate enough to draw their scrutiny. “She never stole from you, and we both fucking know it.”
“There was evidence,” I wanted to say. “And she didn’t deny it.”
But there was no point.
I could scream. I could yell. But he still wouldn’t hear me.
Dom’s head tilted ever so slightly to one side as he studied me.
“Was it everything you dreamed it would be? Finally getting what you wanted?” He was too close.
The warm, opulent notes of his cologne were starting to slowly squeeze my airways like a python constricting around its prey.
“Was it worth stabbing her in the back and humiliating her the way you did, just to get rid of me?”
“That’s not what happened. I loved Rosie. I would’ve never—” I cut off when he laughed.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Are you capable of stringing together a single fucking sentence that isn't complete bullshit?”
I could get rid of him now if I wanted.
I could talk to my parents. My brother. The extensive team of specialized lawyers my family kept on retainer, and have a restraining order filed against him with a snap of my fingers. I could end this whole thing—permanently eradicate him from my life—and all it would take was one phone call.
Dominic may have been taking full advantage of the perks, power, and influence that came with building a multibillion-dollar empire from scratch, but he was still new money.
There was a difference. He just didn’t know it yet.
So do it.
Leave and make the call. Right now.
I reached for my bag but paused when an eerie, familiar sense of unease and restless panic crawled down the back of my neck.
“Come on, Alice. It’s just us,” he drawled with a bitter smirk.
“It’s you and me. There’s no one else here, so just fucking admit it.
Admit you lied—that you set her up to get rid of me—and I’ll go away.
Forever. No more toying with your life behind the scenes.
No more revenge-seeking or messing with your family…
all you have to do is tell me the truth. ”
My molars ground as I held his gaze, refusing to back down. “I am telling you the truth. I didn’t set her up, and I didn’t lie.”
We were at a stalemate. He wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me, and I wasn’t stupid enough to want anything else from him.
“Are we done here?” I asked.
He held up a finger and glanced down at his watch. Then, almost as though he’d willed it, the shattered contents of my purse rattled against a brief, vibrating bzzz.
Dominic’s mouth slanted into a slow, wolfish grin. “You might want to check that.”
As tempted as I was to brush him off, I knew better. There was a good chance whatever fucked-up thing he’d done had an added time-sensitivity buff.
Still, I took my time, brushing aside a broken lipstick cap and my keys to fish out my phone. I swiped at the screen, unbothered by the fresh crack running down the middle.
What did make me stiffen, however, was the notification that had popped up.
It was an email from the employment agency.
The one I’d been working with over the last fifteen months.
The one that had landed me every one of the seven jobs I’d been fired from.
The one that had randomly reached out after I’d quit Charmed, claiming that employees from there were really sought after, given the matchmaking firm’s ultracompetitive nature and status, as well as the founder’s name recognition.
“We’ve been reaching out to the few employees who recently left.
I’m not sure what your plans are for next steps, but we’d love to keep your resume on file, especially if you’re interested in exploring opportunities in different industries. ”
God fucking damn it.
He hadn’t been acquiring companies just to have me fired from them. It was the other way around. He’d been using the employment agency to lure me to the ones he’d already acquired.
Crafty motherfucker. How hadn’t I put the pieces together earlier? How the hell had I fallen for it in the first place?
Keeping my expression blank, I scanned the email.
From: Kimberly Chen
To: Alice Cloutier
Hi, Alice!
I just heard about you being let go at J.EnK—so disappointing!
I’ll start keeping an eye out for opportunities that better align with your experience and skill set. In the meantime, I do have something available for an immediate start to help fill the gap on your resume:
We have a twenty-six-year-old client who is looking for a full-time housekeeper to start immediately. The place is newly built. 7 beds, 9 baths. Absolutely gorgeous property! There is no base pay, but tips will be provided at the client’s discretion for “good behavior.”
He’ll also require you to wear various provided costumes as you carry out your daily duties (how fun!), and says he’ll be happy to train you himself!
I understand it’s not the most conventional job. But the client is extremely well-known and has a lot of connections, so a recommendation from him could go a long way when you’re ready to move on to other opportunities!
I’m here if you have any questions.
Kim,
KELP Staffing
I was going to deck him.
I’d never hit anybody before—never felt the urge to—but I was going to deck the foul, condescending son of a bitch right in his pouty mouth, and it was going to be the highlight of my life.
“We can do the interview as early as tomorrow, if you’d like,” Dominic teased, reaffirming his wish for a prolonged, excruciating death.
“I can only imagine how desperate you must be for something to fill the gap on your resume. Anything that sticks, really. Unless you’re willing to run to your brother with your tail between your legs and ask him for a job…
but something tells me that’s not what you want. Otherwise, you’d have done it by now.”
My nails. His jugular. I was going to watch him bleed out, then drag him back down to hell myself.
I was filled with so much white-hot rage that my jaw was locked. I couldn’t speak, breathe, or formulate a single thought that didn’t revolve around lethal amounts of his blood pooled at my feet.
I wanted to yank on his forked tongue and strangle him with it.
All those applications. All those interviews. All the training and first-day jitters and wondering what the fuck was wrong with me that I couldn’t hold on to a single job for longer than two weeks no matter how hard I tried.
All of it because of him.
“It’s only fair, don’t you think? My mother changed your sheets and cooked your meals for fourteen years; you come and do the same for me for thirty days, and we’ll call it even,” he drawled with lazy arrogance. “Then again… you wouldn’t last a day.”
The intentional downplaying of the job didn’t escape me. Changing sheets and cooking meals didn’t even skim the surface of what depravity he had planned for me.
“You need so much fucking therapy, it’s not even funny,” I spat.
“I suspect the image of you on your knees, scrubbing my toilets, will prove to be very therapeutic for me.”
I pushed to my feet. “Go fuck yourself, Dominic.”
His grin twitched. “I’ll see you Monday for your interview. Ten a.m. sharp.”
I flipped him off on my way out the door, fire raging up and down my spine.
I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know when, but I was going to make that man weep on his knees like a little boy.
Mark my words.