Page 77 of My Forbidden Boss

I turn and look at our home. I see shambles; bare essentials and second-hand scratches and dents. I see embarrassment, so I shake my head. “Say what you have to say and then you can go.” He doesn’t have to torture me anymore. I’m doing a good enough job of that myself.

“Please, Adeline. Let me come in,” David says. He’ll stand there all night if I don’t. He didn’t get to where he is because he gave up. It’s not in his DNA and I’m his number one target for all the wrong reasons.

I glance over my shoulder at Mom, taking in her mangled legs, the walking frame, her baggy clothes and her air of confusion that will turn to disappointment.

I close the door. Press my forehead to the wood, wishing something — anything — would happen so I don’t have to open this damned door, and when it doesn’t, I slide the chain off the lock. My hand shakes like I’m coming off an addiction.

I am.

But this addiction will never leave my blood. David is well and truly in every cell in my body. My DNA is changed. I’m a different person than I was a few weeks ago. Irreparably, irreversibly changed.

I inject steel into my bones as the door opens. David is still in the clothes he wore from Florida. He must be chilled in this weather, but he doesn’t show it. He does nothing. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Simply looks down at me with a stare that flays me to my soul.

My eyes devour his face. His body. While he still lets me study him, I’ll steal every moment I can. Then his gaze raises over my shoulder and I know what he sees. I’m not blind to it, but my heart crumbles that he has to see this.

This is where I come from. I live here. This is where I’ll never be able to leave until I’m thrown out of it because where I’m going, this is a castle.

This is who I am.

I notch my chin when his eyes return to mine. I don’t know what I expect to see, but it isn’t the softness. The understanding. Something hard sucker punches my chest and my breath whooshes out with the force. My shoulders curve, my chest caves and a flood of heat rises from the pit of my stomach, turning my mouth sour. I turn my face, step back, study the floor at my feet as he enters.

“Good evening. I’m David Chandler.” He fills the room, steps the distance to Mom and shakes her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, shooting me a confused look. “I’m Lira Rayner, Adeline’s mother.”

“Why are you here, David?” I have to ask, because I’m breaking under the strain. I have to know how much time I’ll have left with Mom. If I can secure her some help to survive before I’m carted to jail.

“Why did you lie to me?” he says.

I freeze. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t expect him to come out with it in front of Mom. I still need time to digest him in our home. It’s a place someone like him should never be.

“I…” I choke up. This is too much. It should be obvious why I stole company information. He’s standing in the reason right now.

“Why did you lie to me about where you live? Why did you lie about your life?” My breath hitches at those hoarse words. The way they run together as though he pushed them out. The aching pain that fills each syllable.

“I…don’t understand.” I should be facing fury. I should be facing retribution, but instead he’s asking why I didn’t tell him where I lived?

“Why did you tell me you had a family? That you lived in a nice house? Why didn’t you tell me about this?” He gestures around him before his hand falls to his side in a fist. “I thought you trusted me, Adeline. Instead, you hid everything from me. Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me the truth? Who is SD, and why is he blackmailing you?”

“How did you find out?”

“Your cell,” he says.

The cell I left in his case because, of course, he would have looked through it. He’s seen the messages. The texts. It’s all there, sordid and bared. All the evidence he needs.

I fold in the face of David’s anguish. My knees buckle and I fall to the floor. He’s on his knees beside me in an instant, his sheer presence as physical as the grit beneath my legs.

He folds his fingers around my shoulders. A knuckle beneath my chin tilts my head up. I take in his crumpled face. The hurt and the distrust and I can’t stand it.

Rage bubbles up from the cavernous pit inside me. The place where I shove the hurt, the anger and the shame of my life. The anger that the little piece of heaven I found with David had to end because I fucking didn’t want it to. That just once in my shitty little life, I could have a splash of happiness. Of love.

I take it all and form it into a fiery ball of anger that lashes out of me. My words are a cracking whip. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you. Because people don’t care about people like us. All they want to do is use us, chew us up and spit us out, and if we ever have the audacity to step out of our role, they hate it and do everything they can to shove us back down. We’re expendable, David. I’m expendable. I exist to be used. To be society’s fodder. The worker. The abused. The overlooked. The unloved. Who would listen if we asked for help? Who would even care? I didn’t tell you, because no one wants to know the truth.

“To be perfectly candid, I tried to tell you, but you did what people have done to me all my life. You didn’t want to hear. Set what I wanted to tell you aside for another day, but that day never comes.”

I drag a hand across my face, wiping away the hot tears falling down my face. Exhaustion flows through me as the ball of rage burns to ash. My fingers curve inwards as I rest them on my thighs. I’m calm as I tell him. Accepting of the fallout because it was always inevitable. I force my heavy gaze to his. “You want to know who SD is? SD is my sperm donor. My father. He was the one who forced me into your life. He was the one who set me up for this fall.”

Mom gasps. Her hand flies to her mouth. “Max blackmailed you? Oh, my beautiful daughter. No!”

---