Page 8 of Sinful Attraction

It’s me again. Just being honest. I know you’d figure it out anyway, so I might as well be upfront.

Good job on the heist, and I’m sorry to take your hard-stolen cash and run. But orders are orders, and I’ve got mine.

Your code’s amazing. Go ahead and try again. But maybe you should beef up your system security first.

Michael

I stare at the ceiling, rolling the words I’d left for her through my mind and wondering if I should have been more serious. Explained more. But that email hurt me to write. I want to get it over and done with as fast as possible. Now, I’m wondering if I should have pushed myself harder to apologize and explain.

Too late now. Besides, it doesn’t really matter in the end. I ruined her plans. Now, she’s going to hate me no matter what I say and do. I’m usually a genius at getting out of trouble with women, but this one? It fucking kills me to admit it, but now I know for sure that she’s completely out of my reach.

And I probably deserve that.

Chapter 5

Arya

The day after my big chance to prove myself got stolen out from under me by the biggest bastard on the Internet, I’m still in shock. At breakfast, I’m silent, eating my food without tasting it, while my whole insides feel hollow and cold.

Michael grabbed all the money out of my hands before I could transfer it safely into the family’s overseas accounts. One moment, the money was safely in my hands, and then, it was gone. He lay in wait, monitoring me somehow without my noticing, and struck at the exact right moment.

Which means he had been watching me closely for a while—or having someone else do it.

My father has been watching me the entire breakfast. I know what’s coming, and it terrifies me. I know it’s going to be mortifying. I know my mother’s going to gloat. I know it’s going to make everything I am going through all that much worse.

Finally, he sets down his fork, and the little ring of the metal on the table makes me stiffen.

“So, how did it go last night?”

I look down. “We have a problem.”

“What’s that? You didn’t get the money?”

“I did get the money!” I snap defensively in spite of myself. “I even have a record of it.”

My mother looks so surprised that I want to throw something at her. Of course, I don’t. Instead, I focus on my father, who is staring at me thoughtfully.

“If you got the money, why isn’t it in our overseas account? I checked first thing. No five million. Were you lying about all of this?” His voice has that light tone it takes on when he’s really, really angry.

“No, I wasn’t lying. I can show you all my work, everything I did, and the financial records.”

“So, what happened?” His eyes search my face. My stomach clenches around the croissant and berries I’ve eaten so far, and my lungs feel like they’re being squeezed.

“Michael Rossi was monitoring me last night. He broke into our systems, and when I did the transfer, he used some of my own tricks against me to grab it. Someone must have been informing on me to him—”

“That’s a stupid excuse, and you know it,” he cuts in, and I stop dead, staring at him.

“What?”

“All I’m really hearing is that you fucked up. You got the money, but your system security wasn’t good enough because you don’t know what you’re doing, and because of that, you lost the money.” His voice rises with every sentence. By the end of his rant, he’s practically shouting at me. “You’re a woman. You should never have been in charge of our computer network in the first place!”

Tears fill my eyes.Oh, you absolute asshole.My mother picks at me all the time; I’m used to it. But when my father goes off and suddenly turns full misogynist, it is really hard to take. “You wouldn’t even have a computer network or any security at all without me. And even if you were right, which you are not, it doesn’t change that we’ve got a spy—”

“That’s bullshit!” he roars. My mother is glaring at me and shaking her head. My two unmarried brothers, Paolo and James,are suddenly very busy with their breakfasts. “There’s no spy involved. Stop making excuses for your incompetence!”

I stare around at my family with a mix of crushing grief and growing disgust. At this moment, all I want to do is get up, pack my things, and walk out the door. I’ve tried to prove myself to them my whole life. I shouldn’t have to, but I’ve tried. And it’s never worked. It’s never going to work because they’re a bunch of small-minded, stubborn bigots.

My father is still screaming at me. I stare at him through a curtain of tears and then suddenly stand up and walk away.

---