Page 62 of Degrading Her

He must have had work to do, then. “What about my car?” I asked.

“It’s been taken care of,” he said. “Another car is parked in your complex. One that doesn’t require any extra maintenance to drive.”

“Sawyer,” I started, but he put up a hand.

“If you can’t get to work, then how can I use you?”

Use me?Did he mean sexually, or as an employee? I let those words sink in. I loved being his plaything, his toy.

But buying me a car? I had to mean more to him.

I wanted to be more than that.

He nodded at the door. “Finish up, and my driver will take you home.”

Chapter 14

Sawyer

A new recruithad given us information on how to find Roth, but by the time I left Fiona at the restaurant, Roth had moved on. We needed to find him; it was crucial to dismantling his company. But since we had no new leads, I was itching to see Fiona again.

That next afternoon, I immediately went to her apartment, driving myself. Her new car was gone, but she was supposed to be off from the library.

Where are you?I sent the message, waiting for those three dots to indicate that she was typing. Finally, they appeared.

At the library,she sent.

I sent back a question mark, waiting for her explanation.

Gotta beat my rival one way or another,she responded.

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. When it came to what she wanted, Fiona wasn’t simply smart; she was also stubborn and ambitious. A day off didn’t mean relaxation; it meant that she had things to accomplish. It had been like that since I first started watching her. And that was the fire that I enjoyed messing with so much. I hadwanted to ruin her. To make her question why she tried anything. I wanted to teach her how none of her worries actually meant anything. It wasn’t the kindness of helping people that mattered like she so desperately believed. The only control that mattered was power over others.

But that desire for power didn’t seem as strong anymore. It seemed… off.

Perhaps that was because I hadn’t taken control of Fiona yet. But once I did, everything would fall back into place.

By the time I got to the library, she was still messing with the encrypted file. It was pride; she didn’t want to ask anyone, including me, for help, because that would admit defeat. But what she needed was another mind. Someone else to work with. To see things from a different angle.

“You’re stuck,” I said. Her shoulders sank. I settled into the seat beside her. “Part of success is knowing when you can’t win by yourself,” I continued. “And knowing when you need to ask for help.”

“Do you ever ask for help?” she asked, her words blunt.

“No.” She rolled her eyes, and I grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at me. “But I also don’t set myself up for failure. When I look at my family’s business, I see exactly what each person is capable of.”

“And what am I capable of?”

There were so many ways to answer that question. Building her up, telling her the truth—that she was strong and ambitious, that there wasn’t much in this world that could stop her—was what she wanted to hear right then. And I wanted to tell that to her.

But she needed the whole truth, not just the good parts.

“You were never going to be a doctor,” I explained. “You set yourself up to fail. You were never going to follow through with it.”

Her face reddened. “I tried my hardest?—”

“But you knew you couldn’t keep a full-time job at the library and go to medical school. But you also couldn’t tell your parents ‘no.’”

She shrank inside of herself. “They had already gone into so much debt to put me through college.”

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