Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I reach between her legs, groaning as her slickness coats my fingers. “That is crazy. The only thing crazier is you thinking I’m going to make you wait. Lay back on the bed and spread your legs, angel. I’m going to fuck you with my mouth before I fuck you with my cock.”
“Anthony,” she says, the way she says my name—like a prayer and a promise— making it the best word I’ve ever heard.
I’ve never been a big fan of my name, but with Maya…
“I would sell my soul to hear you say my name like that every day,” I say as I kiss my way down her stomach. “Like you can’t wait for me to take you. Like you can’t get enough.”
“I can’t,” she says, moaning as I slide two fingers into her hot pussy. “I’ll never get enough.”
And neither will I.
Which is why I have to put an end to the fucking lies.
You’ll tell her tomorrow, I promise myself as I suck her clit into my mouth.
But for tonight, I let myself get lost in the pretend one more time.
This pretend that feels more real with every passing second…
one
Four days earlier…
Anthony Pissarro
A man discovering his perfect life
isn’t so perfect anymore…
I turn right on William Street, heading uptown, the sticky snow slapping me in the face as if to say—wake up, man! Wake the fuck up and turn around before you destroy everything you’ve worked forty years to build.
The voice is right.
This isn’t me. I don’t make impulsive, life-altering decisions. I don’t make impulsive decisions—period.
I’m a logical man with a good head on my shoulders.
Most would say a great head…
As a former math prodigy who graduated high school at thirteen and earned two masters’ degrees—in finance and behavioral economics—by twenty, I had offers to work at the top investment firms in New York City before I was old enough to order a beer at my uncle’s dive bar. By twenty-five, I’d been scooped up by an up-and-coming private equity firm. By thirty-two, I was leading that firm to brave new heights, proving my predecessor wasn’t a fool for hiring someone half his age to steer Baxter and Halloway onward into an increasingly complex financial landscape.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to see the patterns other people miss, to cut through the noise and make the tough calls needed to keep my life—and my career—on course.
So…what the hell just happened back there?
I curse beneath my breath as I pick up speed out of the Financial District, heading into Chinatown. I drag a hand through my snow-dusted hair, wondering where I left my hat.
It’s probably back in my office along with all the rest of the personal belongings I asked my assistant to box up on my way out.
Out…
I’m out.
And there’s no going back…
One hour earlier…
“As you can see from the projections, our Q4 earnings will exceed expectations by seventeen percent.” I click to the next slide, my voice steady and calm despite the strange sense of being in the wrong place at the wrong time that’s haunted me for the past week.
The holidays are always hard.
I lost my grandmother on Christmas Day when I was seven. And though my uncle Chris and aunt Tina took me in and loved me like one of their own, Christmas was never the same. Erica left me in December, too, though her exit was far less expected than Gran’s. My brilliant, kind, hard-loving grandmother had been sick for as long as I’d known her. Even as a young child, a part of me had known that my time with her was limited.
But Erica…
My ex gave no sign that she was unhappy in our marriage, not until the evening I arrived home early on Christmas Eve with surprise tickets to Tahiti to find her in bed with the doorman.
She calmly asked me for a divorce. I just as calmly gave her that divorce—and the penthouse we once called home—and moved on with my signature logic, speed, and efficiency. Still, come the holiday season, my nerves get raw and my feet start to itch.
I begin to dream of exotic places and wild escapes…
Two years ago, I took that trip to Tahiti alone. Last year, I spent December working remotely from a ski chalet in Switzerland.
This year, I thought I was far enough removed from the divorce to stomach the city in all its manic merriment, but for the past three days I’ve felt two steps ahead of disaster.
What kind of disaster?
I’m not sure.
I’m not the kind of man who has breakdowns, but I’m not the kind of man who trails off in the middle of a presentation, either.
And yet…here we are.
“Anthony?” Gerald, a nearly seventy-five-year-old former banker, who can’t seem to quit the finance biz, no matter how many times he’s tried, peers at me over wire-rimmed glasses. “Everything all right, son?”