Sneak Peek Chapter Two of “King of Spades”
The sound of footsteps outside my office sent my heart rate elevating as my hands shook.
Every time.
Every damn time someone approached my office when I didn’t have it on my calendar, I got extremely nervous. Only one person came to my office unannounced, and I never knew for what end it would be. Sometimes, it would just be for a professional meeting.
Other times, that one person might try and coerce me for something more. Something I didn’t want to give. Something I had come very close to giving—and not of my own volition.
Suffice to say, this uncertainty drove me mad, but what was worse was knowing I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. If I left the company, the only way I’d get anywhere was to leave Las Vegas entirely—an impossibility with all my friends and family here.
Such was both the power of and the vitriol drawn by the Morril family.
An unsettlingly comfortable knock came at the door, the kind made by someone who was only doing it for show.
“Come in,” I said, trying to steel my voice.
Some days, I chose an aggressive tone. Some days, pleading. Today, I just felt like being firm and strong; not confrontational, but unyielding.
In stepped, who else, Michael Morril. The CMO—Chief Marketing Officer—of the Morril business empire, an admittedly handsome man with slick back black hair, an impeccably tailored suit, and a smirk that I just always wanted to wipe off his face.
Michael Morril was the most smug, most arrogant man that walked the streets of Las Vegas, and that was saying something.
There were rumors abound of the number of women on staff that Michael had slept with, and there were even darker rumors of what had happened to those who had said no to him.
There was no official channel to go to for support, not in the Morrils’ family business.
Thus far, I’d avoided the worst that could have happened.
But not by much.
“Talia Harper,” Michael said, every word dripping with haughtiness. “Daughter of celebrity and musician Serenity. How are you today?”
“Same as every day,” I said. “Focused, a little tired, but diligent. What can I help you with, Michael?”
Michael chuckled. It wasn’t about things being funny to him the way a good Netflix special would be funny to me. It was about what he thought might try to stop him from getting what he wanted.
“There’s plenty you can help me with, Talia,” he said. “Like, say, why do the Vales always play so dirty with us? Why do they have such pretty boy, goody-two-shoes images in this town? Why are they such a fucking pain in the ass compared to the old guard?”
I shrugged. Michael never truly sought an answer here, and even if I had one, he wouldn’t take it. I didn’t have one, although as my shoulders came down, it did occur to me two of my best friends were now engaged to Vale brothers.
Then again, the other single one of us hated all things billionaires, bikers, and bad boys. The idea they’d ever come up in meaningful conversation was laughable.
“You shrug your shoulders as if you hadn’t the foggiest idea, yet you are the rare woman who combines a nice brain with a nice rack.”
“Very professional, Michael,” I said. And somehow, not even close to your least professional comment ever. But if I could get him out with that and nothing more, it would be a victory.
Now it was Michael’s turn to shrug, and he very obviously mirrored my exact shoulder movement.
“Very professional, Talia,” he said in the kind of mocking voice middle schoolers made. “It’s my company, lest you forget. Which means you are my employee. Which means you must do as I say.”
He undid his tie just a bit. Fuck. He’d come in to push boundaries as hard as he could. It was really fucking telling that we were in my office, not exactly a private suite in the Morril family building, and he was already dropping not-so-subtle hints.
“And as you can probably guess, I did not actually come in here for help with the Vales. They are a nuisance that will be resolved very quickly. No, I came in here for some stress relief.”
“Stress relief,” I repeated.
“You know, just like you gave me at the last company party.”
I froze and pursed my lips. The less I said, the better. The less Michael had what he drunkenly thought had happened shattered by the sober truth, the better.
“That was such a lovely time, Talia,” he said, “but it would be far better if we created a lasting memory, don’t you think?”
“Here in the office?” I said. “No, I do not.”
“Then tell me where you would like to go,” Michael said, leaning forward on my desk, the top three buttons of his shirt unbuttoned.
What killed me was that Michael was the worst person on an objectively handsome body.
Why couldn’t the type of guy come to me who was a little bit of both?
A genuinely good guy who looked like he could be a bad boy in bed?
“I,” I said, standing up, grabbing my clutch, “would like to go to my next meeting, which starts in nine minutes. You wouldn’t want to be known as the person who gets what they wants and can only last nine minutes, can they?”
I had no meeting. I didn’t have anything for the rest of the afternoon, really. Even if I did, it may not have been enough to stop Michael.
But the threat of being seen as a chump was enough to turn off just about any man, even a man like Michael, and it seemed to do the trick here.
“We will enjoy each other very soon, Talia,” he said, “and I assure you that once we do, you’ll be coming again. And again. And again.”
“That’s lovely,” I said, hurrying by.
I made it just to the door when he came up behind me and grabbed my ass. Out in the streets, I would have slapped him, maybe even pepper sprayed him if he didn’t get the hint. In here, I had no choice.
“Don’t forget this promise, Talia,” he said. “I know you have hangups. Don’t we all, before we try something new. But the only hangup you’ll have after is wishing you’d done so sooner.”
I pushed past him and hurried out, pretending to head down a hallway to a conference room, only to take the stairway fire exit. Once I’d gotten down a floor and knew Michael wasn’t following me, I took a deep breath, sat down on the steps, and exhaled.
It was getting tiring, honestly, working at this place, constantly having my ass grabbed, my breasts ogled, and my body cornered either in the hallways or in my office.
It was getting tiring having no recourse at all, aware that those who complained were at best ignored and at worst mysteriously fired within the week for “performance issues.” If I wasn’t so damn tied to Vegas, I would probably have quit in this stairwell, moved literally any place else—the remote desolation of Alaska or the woods of Arkansas were better options—and lived a far simpler life.
But I couldn’t.
Not with what was here and whom I needed to be here for.
I drew in a breath and stood. It had been a minute since I had done something simply for the pleasure of it; after days like today, I’d take out my anger at an MMA class, go for a run, lift weights, or something physical.
But I always framed it as preparing for a confrontation in which I’d need those skills.
It wasn’t stress relief, it was battle prep.
If Michael ever realized what had actually happened—or not happened—at the company party he was referring to, those skills might save my dignity.
They were extremely useful. But I felt like doing something that was just pleasant, with no other utility behind it.
And then I knew exactly where I would go.
As I walked in the garage to my car, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
It probably wasn’t by Michael Morril, at least not directly.
He was probably hunting some other poor girl in the office or jerking off to deepfakes of one of us somewhere.
But he almost certainly would have cronies who would trace our steps; certainly there were security cameras, although several of the guards quietly swore to us no one ever came to their office asking for footage.
Fair enough, perhaps. But it still didn’t erase the feeling that even if I’d never been raped, I was still trading my dignity for dollars.
I got to my car, locked the doors, and sighed.
Safe, finally. Yes, someone could bang on my car doors, but even an asshole like Michael knew how that would look in public.
It wasn’t easy letting the tension in my head and my shoulders dissolve, but as I played some of my mother’s music—what could I say, I liked supporting family—I gradually found myself unwinding.
When I finally felt like I could drive without cursing or getting a headache, I punched in the name of my next destination.
Sunny Side Up.
The restaurant that Sarah, Delilah, Bridget and I so loved to frequent.
The love for that place had started simply because they had great brunch that they served all day, and there were absolutely multiple days where we’d get dinner at six p.m. or even eight p.m. Over time, as we needed a place to get away from the chaos of work or even men, we appreciated its relatively remote location from the Las Vegas Strip.
Of course anyone could go there, and it wasn’t dirt cheap like a fast food chain, but it also didn’t scream “luxury” to the billionaires in town.
It was the perfect place to get away from a man who thought he ruled everything but in reality only wanted to have the so-called finest things in life attached to him.
I pulled out of the parking lot somewhere between “faster than a normal person would” and “too fast for the confines of a parking lot.” My hands weren’t shaking like before, but I noticed I had to actively breathe out to release the tension in my shoulders.
Only when I got free of the parking deck and out onto more public roads did I feel completely free.
Using my Bluetooth, I asked if Bridget wanted to join me for dinner.
Alas, she said, she was meeting her sister and her “asshole biker husband,” so she was out.
Sometimes I wondered if Bridget was being too harsh on her brother-in-law—admittedly, it was kind of hard to be soft on someone who said his public name was Crush—but after days like today, I found myself agreeing with her.
Men with too strong a power streak needed corralling, not appeasement.
Granted, I never heard Sarah or Delilah describing their respective husbands as “assholes” or anything close to it. Sometimes, they said, they’d get a little too ahead of themselves. But they swore up and down that they were changed men, better men than anyone they had ever met.
I believed it. But I also didn’t believe lightning struck three times; improbable enough it had happened twice.
I pulled into Sunny Side Up about fifteen minutes later, already feeling a world apart from the Morril’s corporate office.
I parked as close as I could to the restaurant just in case someone had indeed followed me, hurried inside, and closed the door behind me.
Sunny Side Up was a seat-yourself restaurant, and unsurprisingly, at a little after five p.m. on a weekday, it was not particularly crowded.
Of the main tables, maybe a third were taken; there was a bar that people typically drank mimosas at around brunch, but it was empty today.
Worked for me.
I went over to the bar, sat down, and smiled at the bartender.
“Oh, sorry, someone’s sitting there, he just went to the bathroom.”
“Oh, she’s fine.”
I turned, embarrassed.
But when I turned, I saw a man that I could only describe as simultaneously incredibly handsome yet also incredibly understated.
He had a strong jawline with a clean-shaved look; black-framed glasses; a well-fitted red-polo shirt, almost colored as if a ruby; and blue jeans that were also very well fitted.
To someone just glancing by, they’d see a fit, attractive man, but the more I looked, the more I saw a man who clearly knew how to dress and present himself.
“I’m sorry, really, I didn’t mean to—”
“I have no stake in this chair, other than having come about five minutes before,” he said. His tone was gentle, warm, but not at all provocative. Not like Michael Morril. “Although, I must admit, if this is an in for a pleasant dinner conversation, I won’t be too upset about it.”
I laughed, surprised at how genuine the interaction felt. If you had told me before I walked in I’d be talking to a stranger, a handsome stranger roughly around my age, I would have stressfully scolded you. With whoever this guy was, I was the exact opposite.
“I think a deal’s a deal,” I said.
“Excellent,” the man said, taking a seat to my right. “You are?”
“Talia Harper,” I said, extending my hand. He took it, a firm handshake but not an overly bearing one. “And you?”
“Luke Vincent.”