Page 19 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Thirteen

ROS

I didn’t sleep.

Not really. I drifted, tossed, turned, tangled the sheets around my legs until they felt like a trap. Every time my body sagged toward rest, I jerked awake again, heart still wired from what I’d done last night, shame and need curling hot in my chest.

By the time sunlight blazed through the blinds, I’d given up on the idea of rest altogether. October in Alabama didn’t believe in soft mornings. The air was already warming, the cicadas screamed like chainsaws outside, and somebody a few streets over had a mower going. Normal. Too normal.

That is, until I heard the voices.

“…what do you mean you want to dissolve Stonewood Living, sir?”

I froze.

That voice wasn’t some neighbor on the phone with their boss. It came from the kitchen. Panicked. Male. And then came the reply — his reply.

Knox’s voice was eerily calm.

“I mean exactly what I said. I want to dissolve Stonewood Living magazine, and I want to do so immediately.”

I crept toward the hall, pressing into the shadows as though I could melt into the drywall, pulse hammering as I eavesdropped.

I risked a glance around the corner. A mirror hung on the hallway wall, tilted just right to catch a view of the kitchen island. My breath stalled.

There he was.

Not the brooding neighbor in hoodies and boots. Not the man who grilled burgers barefoot on the back porch like he didn’t have fifteen million dollars in the bank. No. This was someone else. Someone infinitely more dangerous.

Knox was shirtless, his shoulders broad and carved like he’d been born for battle, gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, bare feet braced casually against the floor. A mug of coffee sat within easy reach. He took a slow sip, calm, as if the men on the call weren’t panicking for their livelihoods.

And the craziest part? His camera was off. All they saw was his profile photo — stone-faced and immaculate in a suit — while he got to see all of them .

The imbalance of power made my skin buzz.

“Sir, dissolving Stonewood Living over one incident is extreme,” someone begged.

“Extreme?” Knox’s voice was steady, almost lazy, but the edge under it could cut glass.

Sam Myers’s voice bled through, oily and defensive.

“Rosalind Cooper came onto me. She?—”

Knox set his mug down with a controlled click. Not loud or dramatic, but the sound still crawled up my spine.

“Don’t lie to me, Sam.” His voice was quiet, lethal. “You told her she should be on her knees if she wanted the job. That isn’t a misunderstanding. That’s you being a piece of shit.”

“Sir, with respect,” another voice cut in, “can’t we just fire Sam and move on? Shutting down the magazine entirely?—”

“Is non-negotiable.” Knox’s voice didn’t rise, but it turned cold and calculating. “I was up all night reading the issues you’ve put out in the last year. I also pulled the security footage after Rosalind told me what Sam suggested she write. I took notes.”

Sam broke in, desperate, oily.

“She twisted my words. I only said she’d be more successful if she leaned into what sells?—”

Knox snorted and shook his head.

“I’ve lived next door to Rosalind Cooper for the past seven years.

I know exactly what kind of woman she is.

I’d take her word over yours in a heartbeat.

Don’t make me email the board the security footage to prove it — because I will, and when I do, it’ll be your face plastered all over the internet as the reason this company is being dismantled. ”

“You can’t fucking do this over one goddamn joke that got taken the wrong way,” Sam whined.

Knox cut him off, cold and precise.

“No. I heard every word, and I watched the security footage myself. You skimmed her résumé with barely disguised boredom and said, and I quote: ‘You’ve got some chops. But all this serious shit? No one here reads that. You wanna make it in this town, you gotta write what sells. Sex sells.’ ” Sam made a strangled noise, somewhere between shock and frustration, but Knox wasn’t finished and kept talking over him.

“Then you told her: ‘Blowjob breakdowns. Confessions from your latest fuck. You could be the face of a new section. Local girl gives the people what they want.’ That’s not advice, Sam.

That’s harassment. And it tells me everything I need to know about the culture this board has been enabling. ”

A nervous throat cleared.

“Mr. Knox — surely your mother wouldn’t want?—”

“Don’t you dare invoke my mother.” The words landed like a nuclear bomb.

“She founded Stonewood Living to showcase this city’s brilliance.

Its art. Its history. Its people. She’d be ashamed of the slop you’ve been publishing lately.

I let you run it for four years. That ends today.

You’ve gutted her vision and turned it into a rag. You’re done. All of you.”

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.”

That was when he finally moved.

He stepped closer, his movements slow, controlled, and utterly dangerous. The muscles in his arms flexed as he lifted his mug again and took a sip of coffee, his eyes locked on mine. My gaze tracked the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want for you, Ros.”

His voice was soft but it hit like a blow, and he held my gaze like it was a dare.

Suddenly, my knees felt like jello. I sank onto one of his bar stools, gripping the mug he’d given me, but my heart wouldn’t stop racing.

“This is crazy, Knox. Everyone who just lost a job today because of what Sam Myers did is going to fucking hate me. They all know you did what you did to protect me.”

“You’re safe,” he said, lowering his voice until it wrapped around me like a command. “You don’t have to panic. Just… sit with me. Let’s have breakfast.”

I stared at him for a long moment, but then my stomach growled and I nodded, knowing he wouldn’t let it go.

The hiss of butter on the skillet was all wrong.

Too soft, too domestic, too normal for the fact that he had just leveled a magazine with the same calm he now used to crack eggs.

The sound of the shell splitting, the sight of his broad shoulders shifting as he worked — my brain couldn’t reconcile them.

I perched on the stool at the island like an intruder in my own life, arms wrapped tight around myself, watching him move around the kitchen like this was Sunday brunch.

The muscles in his back flexed when he reached for the salt, fluid and casual, like he hadn’t just detonated a bomb over an entire staff’s careers.

The smell of sizzling butter mingled with coffee, grounding and suffocating all at once.

He slid a plate in front of me a few minutes later, eggs fluffy, toast perfectly golden. His voice was maddeningly calm.

“Eat.”

Like it was that simple. Like it wasn’t laced with possession. He was feeding me. Grounding me. Claiming this space in the most ordinary, intimate way imaginable.

I stared at the plate, guilt pressing hard against my ribs. Sam deserved it — God, he deserved worse — but the interns? The copy editors? The designers who’d just lost their jobs? My stomach churned.

But underneath the guilt was something worse. A sharp, shameful relief that Knox had chosen my side so ruthlessly. And with it came a dangerous, secret thrill that he’d done it for me.

I hated how much I liked it.

The scrape of my fork against porcelain sounded too loud in the quiet. He ate like it was nothing, like he hadn’t just set fire to an entire legacy.

Finally, I couldn’t take it.

“Why?” My voice cracked, soft but sharp enough to cut. “Why would you do that — for me?”

He didn’t look up right away, just took another bite, chewed, swallowed. Then those dark eyes lifted to mine, steady, unflinching.

“I don’t weigh costs the way other people do,” he said, voice even, almost bored. “A company? A legacy? Reputations? They don’t mean anything compared to the people who matter.”

I stared at him.

“The math is not mathing for me, Knox.”

He didn’t blink, didn’t soften.

“You matter. That’s the math.”

The words landed like a blow. My chest tightened until I could barely breathe. Terror prickled under my skin, cold and hot all at once. He was unhinged. Absolutely unhinged. Who destroys a company like it’s nothing? Who makes that kind of call without flinching?

And yet — something inside me cracked open at the same time. Something raw and starving. God help me, I wanted to be worth that kind of fire.

I dropped my gaze to my plate, hands shaking just enough to rattle the fork. My heart thrashed against the cage of my ribs. I should’ve run. Instead, I swallowed hard and whispered, “That’s fucking insane, Knox.”

But the worst part? My voice didn’t sound nearly as sure as it should have.

I couldn’t take another second of it — the way his gaze pinned me like I was the axis his whole world spun on, the certainty in his voice when he said people like me outweighed companies, legacies, reputations.

My skin felt too tight, my heart ricocheting against my ribs.

I needed to breathe. To think. To not drown in him.

So I blurted the first thing that came to mind.

“Why do you even go by Knox instead of Philip?”

His eyes narrowed just slightly, as if he saw straight through me. Still, he answered.

“Because I’ve never liked my first name.”

That should’ve been the end of it, but the blunt honesty snagged me. I curled tighter around my mug.

“Why not?”

He leaned back against the counter, arms crossing over his bare chest, voice low and almost mocking.

“Because my mother named me after her favorite Disney prince.” He paused, and it was deliberate… weighted. “Philip. Can you picture me in a fucking crown and tights, Ros?”

A startled laugh broke from me, shaky around the edges. The image was ridiculous and yet, God help me, I could picture it, which only made the heat in my cheeks worse.

“That’s not the worst mental image I’ve ever had.”

But Knox didn’t laugh with me. His gaze held mine, sharp and unflinching.

“That’s not who I am, sweetheart. Never have been, never will be.”

The words sat heavy between us, daring me to argue.