Page 49 of A Smile Full of Lies
And he took a slow sip of coffee, as if he hadn’t just ended a legacy in less than five minutes.
“Sir, please. You’re putting so many people out of work over one guy’s fuck-up. It’s not fair?—”
“Stonewood Living is dissolved as of today,” Knox went on, calm as a man discussing the weather. “And when the press calls, you tell them why. Tell them one of my editors was a fucking misogynist pig who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and that I will never run a division where women are treated like commodities.”
His profile picture — that black-and-white headshot of him in a suit, stone-faced — stared back from the laptop screen. The men on the other end couldn’t see the reality: Knox half-naked in his kitchen, sipping coffee like he hadn’t just salted the earth beneath Sam Myers’s career.
And me? I couldn’t look away.
When none of them responded, he smiled to himself, that dangerous smile that made me shiver.
“This meeting is over. I’ll expect a report, tomorrow, on the steps in process to close things down.”
He clicked the ‘end meeting’ button, then lifted his coffee to sip again, as if he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary.
I stepped into the kitchen, then, arms wrapped tight across my chest.
“Did you really just do that?”
He didn’t bother pretending not to know what I meant. His gaze flicked to me, sharp and steady.
“Destroy Stonewood Living?”
I nodded once.
He reached for the coffee carafe and poured a second mug like it was nothing.
“Yeah.”
He slid the cup of coffee across the counter toward me.
I curled my hands around the mug, letting the heat ground me even as my stomach twisted.
“You shut down an entire publication because one slimeball editor upset me.”
“No.” He set his own mug down with a quiet click. “I shut it down because it was my mother’s legacy, and they were spitting on her grave with the shit they’ve been publishing the last couple years. And because Sam crossed a line that never should’ve been in his reach in the first place.”
“You didn’t even ask me?—”
“I didn’t need to.”
The words stung, sharper than he meant them to, and I flinched.
“Knox — this is too much. You burned a company to the ground on my behalf.”
“I barely had to touch it.” His voice was flat and absolutely lethal. “It was already a mess. I just lit the match.”
I cringed.
“You’re going to get backlash.”
His mouth curved into a humorless smile.
“I welcome it.”
I shook my head, still reeling.
“You’re not supposed to do this for me.”
