Page 16 of Bona Fide

“Always were a confident son of a bitch,” she croons with a smirk. “One of the many reasons why I liked you, Wade.”

“So, what, you just keep hovering this bullshit over my head?”

The pad of her finger skims the top of my desk. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

“And who says anyone is going to believe you?” She watches me closely, challenging me, really, because we both know what she’s saying is right.

I fucked up, and she was there. The worst sort of person to witness my darkness when my world was crumbling around me.

When she was the cause of it. All while rooting for me to veer in the wrong direction and way of doing things.

I listened to her when I shouldn’t have.

I craved her insight when I should’ve batted it away.

I fell into her crooked ideas when I knew what they were.

“It takes one leak,” Demi advises slowly. “And one investigation and—poof—say goodbye to everything.”

“All it takes is one bullet,” I seethe. “And I can have it to where you’re never found or fucking heard from again.”

“So politician of you.” She props her hip against my desk. “Idle threats from men when they’re forced in a corner. You all use violence and scare tactics—” She air quotes me with her fingers. “—to cause some sort of panic. I don’t startle easily, my love.”

“Done?”

“No.” She begins to round my desk, skimming her middle finger along the wood again until she’s just within arm’s length of my frame.

She’s not totally a moron.

“I want you to get rid of that whore, Reagan Shelton.” Her name seizes my heart from its next beat.

My Sox, Shelton, the woman who wants nothing to do with me. The one who haunts me at night and taunts me by day because she’s here—fucking everywhere in my head.

My brows knit when my legally called wife perks hers, waiting for me to respond to her weak-ass demand. “Now you want to run my employees?”

“I know you’re sleeping with her.” She says it so matter-of-factly like there is no denying the fact that I’ve owned Reagan in a moment once, twice, or a dozen times before.

And since I don’t have shit to say about it…

Flanking around Demi’s body, I start for the closed door of my office. “Good for you, Demi.”

“You’re not going to deny it?”

This is where she fucks up—right here.

If Demi was certain I was sleeping with Reagan, there would be no question. This is your case of jealousy, envy, and competition, all rolled into one.

Demi is the mean girl who purposely made ugly friends so that she was always the pretty one. She never did well alone, she always needed praise. Forever craving to shine wherever she wanted because she was a daddy’s girl who received it for most of her life.

Until he died.

And I showed up months later, stricken by her beauty and landing right into a spot where I could fill that void for her.

I replenished it until she took shit too far.

“Sounds like you know everything,” I call back, my hand on the doorknob. “But remember with every reaction is a counter reaction.”

“If you’re sleeping with her, Wade, it needs to stop now. Having your wife stand by your side at important events will only help empower you to—”

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