Page 79 of Broken Boss

Seeing these two men in the same room—one I used to love, and the one I—well, I don’t want to think about that right now. It sends my heart crashing in my chest, beating against my ribs as if it’ll burst.

This Chris Sharpe is exactly who I imagined him to be back when I still hated him. He sits across from Kieran and is the picture of a heartless shark. Cold. Uncaring. His eyes, which I’ve spent so much time staring into, are flat and black.

And though, on the surface, it might seem like Kieran is unaffected, I know him well enough to see how nervous he is. His right knee jiggles under the table even as he grins at Chris, and he’s picking at the jagged scar that runs from his wrist to his elbow.

“This is a courtesy.”

The first words out of Chris’s mouth make Kieran laugh, but it’s a crazed and shaky laugh.

“A courtesy? Pretty sure I’m doing you the courtesy by agreeing to see you.”

Silence. It drags out long enough for Kieran’s knee to start jigging again. Although he doesn’t show it, I’m sure Chris notices, and he takes this moment to continue.

“You have one chance to tell me what happened at The Parlour.”

The grin widens into a smirk. Kieran sits back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I know the detectives have already shown you the footage. You know what happened to Alex Gilmore that night.”

“Oh, the girl on the news? I didn’t have anything to do with that.” He shrugs, a callous trait that’s so familiar to me, a shiver runs down my spine. “But you know women, if someone decided to teach her a lesson, she must’ve deserved it.”

That shiver bristles back into a rod of indignant outrage. All the times he ever hit me, choked me, surge through my mind, and my hands grip the ledge of the mirror window tightly.

“No woman deserves what happened to Alex,” Chris says in a menacing whisper. Kieran stills. “If you saw the news, then you know she survived. There’ll be hell to pay for whoever did that to her.”

Kieran sneers, looks away. Another characteristic I recognize, and my shoulders drop. The conversation ends here. He won’t talk anymore about the girl or the bar.

Chris seems to sense this and changes topics.

“Tell me why you’re stalking Autumn Cooper.”

That has Kieran’s attention again. His lips shift from a sulk to a smirk again.

“So, you know her real last name. On your firm’s website, she’s listed as Autumn Cavendish. Can you believe that shit? As if anyone would believe she’s something more than white trash?—”

Chris’s fist hits the table once. Hard.

His chest rises in a deep breath, the loss of control gone just as quickly as it appeared.

Kieran is considering Chris with fresh eyes. He’s propped back in his chair, that surly look back on his face, like a young lion beaten out by a dominant.

“You know a lot about her, huh? She tell you everything?”

My stomach twists with alarming butterflies. I’m terrified Chris will give Kieran the attitude right back—tell him just how well he knows me. Every inch of me.

Instead, Chris stays calm and only gives Kieran a fleeting glance. He seems disinterested, unfazed. In the beats of silence, Kieran is working himself up again, scowling. The hollows of his cheeks deepen and from here it’s easy to see that some of his teeth have rotted.

“You seeing her tonight? Taking her out to dinner again? A girl like Autumn in that restaurant. She can keep pretending, but you can’t put lipstick on a pig, man. She’ll always be trash.”

This time Chris doesn’t react. There’s a triumphant gleam to his eyes as Kieran keeps ranting.

“Autumn and me were together for a long time, man. She knows me. She knows what I’m capable of.” He leans forward, less than a foot between them now over the tabletop. “You tell her that if she says anything, I’m coming for her. I’ll finish her off if she opens that pretty little mouth of hers.”

“Aside from empty threats, is there anything else you want to say?”

A flat, dead tone, just like his expression. Kieran eases into a slow, frustrated sneer again.

“No.”

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