Page 46 of Handsome Devil

Many errands were done poorly or forgotten altogether. Everything had to be explained five hundred times. And I had to patiently decline a blow job offer if I got her and her friend good tickets toHamilton(“Before you brush up on your history, learn to use an Excel sheet”).

I craved my structure with Gia. Her razor-sharp punctuality. Her ability to predict in advance my schedule commitments, needs, and wants.

But not enough to pardon her from her fate of firing people for a living.

If I couldn’t kill her body, at least I’d kill her soul.

I peered on from my office with a scowl as Gia taught Rebecca the ropes with the patience of a saint and the cleavage of a nymph.

Yes, she was still getting back at me by wearing next to nothing. I had already fired three men who looked at her the wrong way.

One of them wasn’t even my employee.

Trying to teach Rebecca the craft of running a billionaire CEO’s life was akin to trying to teach a monkey how to perform open-heart surgery while blindfolded.

While Rebecca’s uselessness annoyed me, Gia’s elusiveness downright enraged me.

The only time I’d seen my future wife was when she came up to my floor from her new office in HR to help Rebecca extinguish the fires she’d started. I was aware she was living in my penthouse. I had surveillance cameras monitoring the main door. But whenever she was home, she didn’t leave her room at all.

It infuriated me that this average, ordinary woman didn’t make peace with the idea of marrying a handsome fucking billionaire.

Sure, a murderer and an asshole too, but she didn’t know about all that.

Fine. She knew about the asshole part.

Hey, no one was perfect.

She could only avoid me for so long. We were scheduled to marry at city hall in two days, come hell or high water.

Rhyland and Row seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder over extorting an innocent woman into marriage. That was rich coming from an asshole chef who fucked his waitress in the kitchen after hours and a gigolo who decided to settle down only after sampling the entire female population of New York.

Tate: You are formally invited to our wedding.

Row: You’re fucking high if you think I’m going to stand there and encourage this charade.

Tate: This is foul. I gifted you an Andy Warhol original when you got married.

Row: Yes. Because it was to a willing woman. I didn’t hold a gun to her head.

Rhyland: I think you just unleashed an untapped kink for me…

Row: DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE.

Rhyland: I’ll come.

Row: The hell you will while pointing a firearm at my sister’s head.

Rhyland: I MEAN I’LL COME TO THE WEDDING.

Rhyland: (but now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ll ask her if she is game for the other thing.)

Row: Why?

Rhyland: Because I am an advocate for women’s rights and because my sex kinks are none of your business.

Row: No, dickwad, why are you going to the wedding?

Rhyland: Oh. We need to protect Gia at all costs. This wedding is happening whether we approve of it or not. We must monitor him.