Page 57 of Fool's Gold

It’s the last thing I want to hear. She’s the human equivalent of the hourglass, and I’m painfully aware of every single grain falling.

“Zip the goddamn lips, Celeste,” I mutter, booting up my laptop. “I’m not in the mood.”

She pays my words no attention, slinking forward to perch on the side of the desk, a beautiful parrot. “Stanic wants to move up the timeline for release and get the movie out sooner. He’s absolutely adamant.”

“We can’t do that.” I refuse to look at her. “The movie is progressing as fast as it’s physically possible to go. You can’t rush these things unless you push the crew to work twenty-four hours a day.” Which goes against all labor standards.

“Stanic doesn’t give a fuck what you have to do in order to get things done. You’ll do it, and you’ll pull it off with a flourish.” She bites out the last word, and I imagine her teeth gnashing in the air between us.

I slowly push the laptop away from me and say, “You know what? Take your threats and shove them right up your bleached and puckered asshole. Both you and Stanic. I’m doing my best.”

“Well, it seems your best isn’t good enough, is it? Stanic has such faith in you,” she replies.

“And your tone says you have anything but faith.”

“I’ve seen you lose it too often to maintain a high opinion.”

“I also rebuffed you from my bed,” I snap, steepling my fingers. “Not like it bolsters good relations when you’re bitter.”

Celeste lets out a round of laughter, and I finally look up. Her face hasn’t changed.

“I’m not going to hold it against you because you have poor judgment. There are plenty of other men who know how to use their cock and are happy to kneel at my feet. If you’re not willing, then more will move up to take your place.” She sniffs delicately, unbothered. “My sole concern is making sure you get things done, which doesn’t appear to be the case, I’m afraid.”

“Back the fuck off.”

I knew Stanic would ride me harder because of my absence, knew he would take it as a personal affront to how I managed to escape his organization. If this was punishment, then I’d bear the weight of it, as long as it kept the spotlight off Empire.

Pushing up the deadline puts pressure on her and every other person who already works hard.

I refuse to be the one to crack the whip on them.

Tension snaps between us, and my eyebrows arrow down into a glare. Celeste meets it with a mask of ice, and neither of us is willing to yield.

“I’ll do what I can,” I hedge, “but I’ll make no promises. And if Stanic has an issue with the way I run things, then he can come down to my office again and take it up with me himself.”

“It is my job to make sure you’re the one who doesn’t back the fuck off, Marcus,” she bites out. “From what I’ve seen, you’ve allowed yourself to be distracted by some young, tight cunt. Don’t bother denying it.”

In the next beat, she grabs her phone and opens the screen, then holds it out for me.

“Shall we try things my way, or will you continue to dig in your heels?” she adds.

My chest constricts, lungs squeezed of every atom of air. “What the hell have you done?”

Celeste has pictures of Empire naked. Vulnerable. She glides her finger across the phone screen to show the next set, and now I’ve entered the picture, Empire plastered to my bare chest. In the next picture, her legs are wrapped around my waist, and I’ve got two fingers sliding into her.

“If you don’t move things up, then I’ll leak all of them,” Celeste says. “It will ruin her perfect Hollywood princess image. The one you’ve done your best to rebuild after those scandalous articles about the two of you. It wasn’t true then, was it? But now it is. You just couldn’t help yourself.”

I stare at the succession of pictures in horror, unable to look away, a car crash of my own making. The covert photographs move from foreplay to the actual act, where I’ve got Empire on my lap, riding my cock.

Celeste has captured every instance of one night of fucking.

When she reaches the end of the slide show, she clicks a button, and the screen turns black.

“Had to have a taste,” she says in an undertone. “Didn’t you?”

I’ve never hated another human being as much as I hate this bitch. “You’d stoop to this? Asking for the impossible and threatening innocent people? She has nothing to do with this. It’s between me and Stanic.”

“We are in the business of ensuring our assets remain safe. It is in your best interests, and hers apparently, for you to do exactly as we ask.”

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