Page 49 of Possession

I don’t wait for her to say anything else. I leave her in the hall, turn to the office doors, and shut her out.

Fuck the cameras. I’m so damn sick of the remnants of Damian’s irrational paranoia. I’ve spent two years working my way up in this organization, knowing I’m being watched every single moment unless I’m on the shitter. In fact, that used to be the only place I could text Carson.

I’m surprised he gave us privacy in there.

I open the laptop and pretend to focus on market futures. I need to get to Manhattan and check on the east coast business that Damian ran for Alamandos. But now I have the added stress of keeping tabs on Landyn, on top of watching my own back.

There are people who hate me. And now that I’m sitting in this chair, they hate me more. Hell, the target on my back is probably bigger because I was the one who landed the Alba girl.

Landyn Torres.

She’s pissed.

And I deserve it. There is a reason for boundaries.

If you annihilate them, they blow up in your face.

12

FUNERAL

Landyn

Idon’t have a lot of skills.

I dropped out of college because I finally decided that I would rather have my toenails plucked out, one by one, than sit in statistics for one more excruciating minute.

Horrid.

My major was marketing, only because I couldn’t decide on one, and I loved my job as a stylist. I figured it tied in somewhere, right?

Wrong.

Probability and data distributions have nothing to do with understanding that pairing black and navy can be stunning when done right. Or to say fuck it to the rules your mother crammed down your throat about white pants after Labor Day. Or avoiding a style you love because society says it’s a no-go for the body God gave you. Or, the biggie, that thrifting a pair of perfect jeans that have already been washed a million times, letting someone else do the work to break them in, is like finding gold on the side of a mountain.

So satisfying.

Not like orgasm-level satisfaction, but it ranks right up there with a girls’ trip to Napa.

An orgasm is always at the top of the list.

Which gets me back to my short list of hard skills in life. Nearing the top of myThings I’m So Good At, I Dare You to Come at Melist is my delivery of the silent treatment.

I can rock a silent treatment with the best of them. Just ask my parents. My last marathon of silence started when my father informed me I was to marry a drug lord because Dennis Alba is an idiot.

If anything has ever deserved the silent treatment in the history of the world, it’s that.

From the time we were delivered to the Marino resort in Tijuana to the moment I was made into a reluctant—and I use that term loosely—bride, I spoke not a word.

Not one fucking word.

He deserved it. My mother … not so much. But I was going through some shit, having to save their lives by giving up my own and all. I wasn’t worried about anyone’s feelings at the time but my own.

Which gets me back to orgasms and the silent treatment.

My husband is hot. Like, hands down one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever witnessed in real life. I mean, hot is hot when someone looks like him, but his looks are only fifty percent of it.

In the short time we’ve been together, Boz Torres rescued me, protected me, defended my honor, and became so possessive, I’m sure most therapists would consider it unhealthy.

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