Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Feathers floating down from the ceiling fan caught my attention.
She had actually busted either the comforter or the pillows, probably both, judging by the sheer number of feathers blanketing the destruction. “Why? Don’t most girls go through this rebellious phase much earlier?”
“Because I thought maybe if I weren’t your perfect little trophy wife, you wouldn’t want to marry me. That maybe if I ruined this perfect little girl that you decided to steal from, that maybe my father’s money wouldn’t be worth having to put up with me.”
“Having to put up with you? Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Isn’t it? The only reason I’m here is because you want my father’s money, and you thought, why not fuck his daughter at the same time. The only reason I’m here is because he died, and you saw an opportunity to add to your immense wealth.”
“You think the only reason you’re here is because of your father’s money? I thought you were smarter than that.”
I was actually a little dumbfounded and very insulted.
How could she think this was all about her father’s money?
It was absolutely not the only reason she was here.
Her father could have been dead broke.
In fact, from what I’d learned about his business, I was amazed he wasn’t. Of course, that was before I realized how much money was coming from shady dealings.
“Yes, and you can’t have it. It’s mine. I swear to god, I will take you down. I won’t just be some toy you use and take out for parties while you spend my father’s money. I will make you pay for everything.”
She was hysterical now, screaming and stomping around the mess she had made.
“With this?” I asked, taking the stolen ledger pages out of my breast pocket.
Hamilton had given them to me when I arrived home.
The maid had found them, and he felt the proper thing was to hand them over so I could deal with the ‘wailing banshee’ myself.
Her eyes got wide as she saw the pages, and then she looked back at the bed like she couldn’t believe they weren’t still there.
A scream of rage and frustration tore from her throat as she grabbed one of the Tiffany lamps and threw it at me.
I managed to dodge the lamp, but the cord still hit my thigh.
That little infraction would be dealt with later.
At that moment, I was more concerned about what she thought she was doing here.
“Do you really think I brought you here to steal your money?” I asked.
“Why else would you want me? I have no skills, I have no experience, I have nothing but my father’s wealth. I am absolutely useless.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and I didn’t know how to handle this.
“The only thing I am good for, the only thing that I can do is to be a good trophy wife. Isn’t that why you want me? So I can look pretty on your arm and in your bed, and you can show me off at parties to all your other old pervy friends, and brag about how you like to put me on my knees or on my back. I bet you laughed in the steam room before the match about how you planned to take me to the stables after the match and punish me for being so incompetent.”
I was rarely in a situation where I did not know exactly what to do.
Put me in a boardroom, and I would dominate it.
Put me in a firing squad, and I would make every single one of those men with guns piss themselves and somehow think that I was the only one with real power. Put me in any situation where someone needed to be broken, and I broke them down to their core elements.
If there was a war to win, I won it.
But when I saw a crying woman in front of me, one that I had unintentionally hurt, I was lost.
I thought she knew.
Looking back at everything, it was clear she had no idea.
For the first time ever, I knew what it felt like to be an idiot.
I had been assuming she had the same resources, the same level of information and back channels that the other men I worked with did.
There was no way she had that, and I just didn’t bother to realize there was no tongue-in-cheek with her. She didn’t know anything. I had been acting like it was all some kind of torrid game. But for her, it was her life.
Fuck.
“Stella, sit down.”
“No, I want to stand.” She stuck her chin up in the air, making her new pink hair fall back, exposing her long neck and showing off the new piercings in her ears.
“Fine, but I am going to sit.” I went to the armchairs that were covered in feathers but otherwise unharmed, dusted one off, then sat. “First, I don’t give a fuck what you do to your hair. Dye it a new color every day. Get as many piercings as you want, but if you decide to get your pretty little clit pierced, it had better be a woman doing it.”