Page 9 of Forbidden Boss (Manhattan Billionaires)

I wasn’t going to let some lipstick-wearing, black-haired viper take it away from me.

I grabbed my suit jacket from the coat hanger where it hung in the corner of my office. “I’ll handle it,” I told the two other men, then threw open my office door. “Clara!” I called out. “Bring the car around to the front and find out which hospital is treating Nikita Jordan. I have to have a conversation with her.”

“Sure thing,” she said, pressing a button on her phone to organize things while I headed for the elevator.

This woman had wormed her way into my business and my brain, but I wasn’t going to let her destroy everything I’d built. If she was feeling litigious, I’d make sure she knew exactly who she was going up against.

And I wasn’t going to go easy on her.

THREE

NIKKI

My right ringfinger was sprained. The X-ray showed me an unbroken bone, but the thing hurt so much I wondered how it could still be whole. Besides the sprain, I’d needed three stitches on my leg. All in all, things could have been worse. I could have been crushed. The glass could have cut an artery. I could have died in the Blakely Advertising Agency studio, killed by a six-foot penis.

What a way to go.

By the time I got my discharge paperwork, it was just after eight o’clock. I’d been in the hospital for nearly ten hours, most of it spent waiting. My injuries were minor, but I was ready to collapse in bed.

Tomorrow, I’d deal with the fallout. The job search. The rebuild.

The hospital bill.

I’d had a lovely conversation with the hospital’s insurance representative when I was lying in a bed waiting to get stitched up. And by “lovely,” of course, I mean “short,” because I didn’t have insurance, and I’d made too much money at my old job to qualify for Medicaid.

Now, falling between the cracks of two jobs, I was screwed.

I didn’t know how much the bill would be, but I knew I couldn’t afford it. Hell, I couldn’t even afford tolive. And how would I find a new apartment if I couldn’t show proof of employment or old paystubs? How could I pay off my stupid, idiotic loan without an income?

Three stitches and a cheap plastic splint on my finger were going to put me in more debt than I’d been in my entire life.

Stupid Rome Blakely and his stupid perfume penis. Buff and polish the giant glass dildo, they said. Do it out of the way so we can keep shooting, they told me.

I’d worked for less than seven full days at that place, and it would cost me all my financial stability. I’d been a placeholder and a fool.

The glass doors whirred as they opened for me, a tired-looking doctor brushing past me as I stepped outside. Cool, damp air surrounded me, but I couldn’t take a deep breath. I couldn’t seem to think straight.

Apparently, this would be the thing that sent me over the edge. I sank onto a bench under the hospital’s high awning, white, fluorescent lights spilling onto the pavement around and in front of me. The emergency department wasn’t far away, just on the other side of the parking lot, and I watched an ambulance come in with lights and sirens blazing.

I saw the shape of a person on a stretcher, and I hoped for their own sake they had insurance.

I tried to pull myself back from the brink. It was just a bill, and I didn’t even know how much it would be. For all I knew, by the time I got it, I’d have a new job and a new apartment. At worst, it would be a debt that would take me a few years to pay off. I could handle that. Logically, I knew.

But my eyes stung, and, horribly, humiliatingly, I felt myself begin to cry.

It was getting fired from the vintage clothing store, and then getting the notice to vacate my home, and then getting broken up with, and then the stupid giant dildo-that-wasn’t-a-dildo, and then getting fired again. And now this.

How could I ever get ahead? I didn’t even know what that meant! Getting ahead? Ahead of who? I didn’t want to be ahead of anyone. All I wanted was a bit of stability. As I leaned back against the cool metal of the bench, watching the paramedics close up their ambulance to make space for the next arrival, I wondered how everything had become so bleak.

The logical thing to do would be to ask one of my friends for money. Penny had married a man who made a fortune in tech, and she ran a successful small business of her own making dog clothes. They could probably pay my hospital bill with the loose change from their couch cushions.

Besides, Penny would understand. We’d reconnected a few years ago, and she hadn’t been much better off than I was now.

There was Dani and Layla, but I wasn’t that close with them, and I hated asking them for money. Then there was Bonnie, but Bonnie was in just as much of a bind as I was. She’d had to take a job as a nanny for a man she’d slept with years ago at a business conference. The only silver lining for her was that he hadn’t remembered her.

She wouldn’t have the means to help me. The logical choice was to call Penny for help. I’d known her since college, and we were close.

But I stared at the blank screen of my phone, and it wasn’t the hour that stopped me from messaging her.

---