Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
“I’m out in the sunlight with him, playing a role, and I play it well. But I belong in the darkness, truly and utterly. I have to pretend to love the sunlight and a regular life because I’m terrified of what I’ll uncover about myself in the darkness.”
It took me a long time to get hold of myself. I wanted to rip the phone from his hand. Wanted to rip his limbs off, piece by piece.
But no, that was not how I was going to play this.
I could not show my hand. Felix’s face expressed his interest. He knew well and good we didn’t accept women as payments for debt. We accepted two things: blood and cash.
As much as I trusted Felix, with my life, I did not trust him with my wants. My fucking needs.
And I needed her.
In this business, I knew needing a woman was the first step toward destruction.
Despite knowing this, knowing this all too fucking well, I looked in Peter’s ruddy brown eyes.
“You have a deal.”
Sienna
“Pete, this is my fourth message,” I grumbled as I walked into the luxurious office building, eyes zeroing in on the numbers next to the elevator bank. Edwin had given me the address of the venture capitalist firm when he told me about the meeting but he hadn’t given me the name. I’d thought it was odd once I got in the car, but not odd enough to look it up. My mind was elsewhere, as it had been for the past week.
My mind was on him.
And when my eyes focused on the name of the company I was meeting, I was sure I was hallucinating.
Bella.
Goose bumps danced across my skin. It had to be a coincidence. It was a common name. I was just searching for coincidences, searching for him where he wasn’t.
This was business. He was out of my life. That’s what I wanted, wasn’t it? One night of torrid, exquisite sex I could carry around with me in my ordinary life.
Bella was on the top floor.
Was the top floor.
The entire top floor.
Swanky.
Very swanky. It should not have been a paralegal coming to this meeting, it should’ve been a partner with at least one associate with them. Now I understood why Linda Huntley had worn such a sneer when she’d told me about the meeting. She was a second-year associate who fucking hated me. She hated that I’d been at the firm for five years and that I was treated with respect despite being a lowly paralegal.
She hated me because I triggered many insecurities she held about herself.
“I’m getting worried,” I said, heading toward the elevator. I bit the inside of my lip after I spoke.
Was I really worried? Did I really care? I was making this call because this is what a worried fiancée would do, same with all the other calls. But there was no pit at the bottom of my stomach. I’d barely thought about him all day, except for when an internal alarm went off, telling me it was time to call, to play my part. My fiancé hadn’t come home last night, I hadn’t seen him since yesterday morning, since the dry, half-hearted kiss he gave me before he walked out the door.
“I’m going into a meeting,” I continued. “So you might not be able to get a hold of me for an hour or two. But hopefully I’ll see you at home. I—”
I cut myself off as I was about to say the three words that had become more and more rancid lately. I wondered how long I’d been saying them without meaning them. I wondered if I’d ever meant them at all.
“I hope you’re okay,” I said quickly, hanging up and walking into the elevator.
By the time I got to the top floor, Pete had disappeared from my mind entirely.
The offices were huge. Classy. Everything was decorated in dark, warm browns. The sofas in the waiting room were not cheap and worn. They were plush, expensive and comfortable. The coffee table didn’t have a speck of dust, and instead of worn, year old magazines on top, there were books. The classics. I picked up Wuthering Heights, flipping through the pages. A first edition sat on the bookshelves at the apartment—when had I stopped thinking of it as home? It was one of my favorite books. I loved how dark, hateful and unlikeable the characters were. That the dead never really died, they haunted the living, stalking their steps. Heathcliff digs up Catherine’s bones so he can be closer to her. That kind of love was sick. Unnatural. But fascinating. Alluring. Twisted up with their need for revenge, for the upper hand, they both die miserable, longing for one another, cursed by the choices their love forced them to make.
It was a real ending. Their love was insatiable. They desired everything from each other, to their very marrow.