Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 980(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 980(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
“He loves you? Or, you mean he loves fucking interns.”
I think about the promotion. Did he just pull strings so I’d stay inside his little game a bit longer? When he’s tired of me I’ll be discarded?
Silly girl with Daddy issues from Nowhere, West Virginia.
I step back, bumping into the table behind me, listening to Sasha’s vindictive laugh. I turn around fighting the tears as the sore spots down low remind me of all the places Jack’s been.
He took everything from me. I gave it to him. Things I’ll never get back…
I step out into the cool drizzle and inhale deeply, stifling the tears from pouring down my cheeks as the wind whips my hair into my face.
As I pass the office building, my stomach turns and that horrible sharp bile taste burns my tongue, but I keep walking.
I turn in to a coffee shop, suddenly dizzy as the drizzle turns to rain and I need to sit. To breathe. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Before I pull open the door to the shop, I stop thinking I’m hallucinating. I shake my head and look again.
It’s him. Jack sitting at a small table in the corner.
The stunning blonde across from him looks impassioned and intense, a heated discussion making them unaware of anyone else around them.
Jack looks defeated, but he’s arguing back.
A lover’s tiff.
She’s beautiful. Polished. That feeling of being a Hobbit next to the glamorous women in this city covers me like a defeated cloak.
Then, the death blow is delivered. Jack pulls a box out of the inside pocket of his jacket, and holds it between them.
A red velvet box.
She gasps, her eyes widening, as she pulls the ring out.
The sound of Sasha’s evil laughter is following me. I cup my ears and turn my back to the glass, new tears streaming down my face mixing with the raindrops.
This is why he insisted on always calling the shots, on always being in charge. Everything had to be carefully coordinated, didn’t it? Because clearly, he has another life. Clearly, he has lots of red boxes with rings inside.
Diamonds. I huff. They are probably cut glass and he orders those collars and promise rings by the gross.
Silly girl.
You fell right into the game.
I always wanted what we have. I just didn’t think what I wanted existed. I thought it was all guilty pleasures, the things I wrote in my diary just for me.
Until Jack.
Jack made me think I could have it all. For the briefest flicker of a moment, he was my Daddy and I was his little girl. And now my heart is breaking into a million pieces as I turn and run. And run.
And run.
CHAPTER 19
JACKSON
“What the hell are you thinking?” Isabella is losing her shit drawing a few stares from a table of uptight looking teenagers next to us.
Isabella Monroe isn’t just my attorney. She's also an advisor of sorts. She’s like the sister I never had. A pain in the ass too, but sometimes that’s what I need. Between her and Alice, I’ve got the pain the ass thing covered.
“I don’t know how to explain it. It just happened. But, she’s the one. I have zero doubt.”
“It just happened?” she snaps. Her hands slap the table, her gold bangles clanging against the wood top. “I can’t believe this. You’re digging a deeper ditch for yourself. This absolutely cannot happen. She’s nineteen, Jackson. Cut all contact. Like, right now.”
I smile as the memory of eating Chastity’s pussy while she slept just hours ago crosses my mind. She woke with me fucking her, trying to figure out if it was a dream, and I told her I’d take her when and how I wanted, conscious or not. No fucking way I’d tell Isabella that because I’m pretty fucking sure it’s illegal as hell.
My baby liked it, she even pretended to go back to sleep while I drilled her damn near through the mattress. We came together like freight trains, then laughed about her playing possum like anyone could really sleep through that kind of fucking.
“No fucking way I’m breaking anything off with her, Bella.”
“I’m not giving you an option. I'm your attorney. I'm fighting you hard on this. You’re drowning in sexual harassment cases. Which you deny, and I believe you. But the evidence seems to be piling up and I don’t know what to say…this morning I saw it had been leaked somehow into the low-level internet news, it’s just a matter of time before it’s a real story.”
“What can I do?” It doesn’t matter what I say or do. I know in my heart that I’m digging myself a deeper legal grave with this. But I don’t give a shit. They probably just want money and I’ve got plenty of that.
Isabella loses the color in her cheeks. “I don’t know how to get this through your skull. I'm worried about you. Our whole defense against this is weak to begin with, and that’s no secret. And now you’re in a relationship with another employee? No, sorry, not an employee, an intern, for God’s sake. An intern who, by the way, is half your age. There’s nothing good about this, Jackson.”