Page 3 of Why Cruise

Justice Twill

“This is fucking bullshit, and you know it. They’re perfectly fine pushing me to the edge, goading me, when there’s a new IPO that’s going to put zeros in their offshore accounts. I will tear—”

“And this, my darling Justice, is exactly the problem.” Daisy’s sharp tone stopped me mid-sentence. “You’re three seconds from trashing that hotel room, aren’t you? What are you smashing this time? A bottle of booze? A mirror? Marble countertops?”

I eyed my reflection in the mirror. My arm was cocked back, ready to launch the glass tumbler. My vision dimmed with rage because she fucking clocked me. We didn’t have a pack bond, never would, but she didn’t need to feel my aura to predict my behavior. And that was the fucking point.

I put the glass back on the wet bar, next to the miniature globe, using two shaking fingers to nudge it back into place.

“It’s not a hotel room. It’s a fucking cabin,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust.

“A stateroom, to be precise,” she corrected. I could picture her behind her vast desk, her beat-up combat boots propped on the corner. Daisy was a designer-suit-and-shitty-boots kind of alpha. “I’ve got taste, remember? I’d never stick your claustrophobic ass in a cabin.”

I cringed at her choice of words. Then I took a slow, measured breath to shove down my pounding pulse. “This kind of sadistic punishment…”

“And you deserve to be punished, and not in the fun ways,” Daisy cut me off again. She was the only person on earth who could pull that off.

“You’re forcing me…”

“Damn right. Listen, cupcake,” she said. I didn’t even crack a smile at her pet name. “This is what you get after firing your entire staff and taking a crowbar to the server room.”

“If they had only just…”

“A forced vacation or a mental hospital with tasty, tasty drugs to shove you into rut. You choose.”

“Daisy,” I growled, pitching my voice low.

“Justice,” she whined back, her only effective way to end our brewing dick-measuring contest. “Do you want to be right, or do you want to beright?”

The last word stung more than my eardrums.Fuck you for throwing my own words back at me.Sometimes you had to sacrifice beingrightin the moment, to berightat the end of the game. But I wouldn’t admitshewas right. Her gloating would be unproductive at this point.

I stalked around the stateroom. It was spacious enough not to trip my dislike for small spaces. There was a sitting area with a wet bar and a small dining table. Two bedrooms branched off to the left and right, and a balcony wrapped around the collection of rooms. My luggage was already stacked in the walk-in closet. The room steward or butler or whatever had said he’d be back tounpack for me. I grabbed my backpack and pulled out my laptop, fishing out the bundles of cords.

“Right,” I finally said. It was the only answer that mattered.

“Okay. Now get your shit together. Relax for twelve days so the board doesn’t fire your ass.”

“They can’t fire me.” I muttered, knowing that wasn’t fucking true. “And it’s fourteen, not twelve.”

“Maybe not, but they can limit your options, including your stock options. You and I both don’t want those consequences.”

I hit the speakerphone button and set my phone on the dining table as I sorted through the cables. There was a short white one I didn’t recognize. Frowning, I opened my backpack wider. A small black package with a white ribbon tied around it caught my eye.

“Leaving me secret admirer gifts?” I asked. Daisy and my executive assistant, Glenn, had packed my bags for me last night. Glenn sure as fuck wasn’t leaving me gifts tied with bows.

“Relax, cupcake. It’s an e-reader. Fully charged and loaded with every bestseller your workaholic ass has ignored for the past decade.”

I tore the paper off, taking time to coil the ribbon into a neat bundle. I felt along the edge and toggled it on. I scanned the page.

“Chantell Dominico? Does this thing have her entire backlist?”

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it. Coming out of this trip with a newfound fetish for smutty pack romance novels would do you a world of good.”

I rolled my eyes loud enough for her to hear over the phone.

“Don’t worry, I’m not an asshole. Glenn put Bob Rider’s entire sci-fi collection on it too.”

I swiped to the main menu. “There’s no browser.”

---