Page 80 of Handsome Devil

My jaw tensed, and my nostrils flared. Kevin’s story hit home, because we were going through similar things. I visited Mum at the hospital day in and day out, watching as she drifted further away from me, like a balloon sailing across the sky toward the sun.

“Know what?” I huffed, standing up. “You’re not sacked. In fact, I have a job for you.”

Kevin wobbled to his feet, scratching his head uncertainly. “You mean, like…here?”

“Yes,” I said brightly. “We’re going to start a workers’ union. I need you to help me put together an employee survey and send it across the company, to all twelve thousand employees.”

“S-start a union?” he stuttered, eyes flaring in a panic.

“Start a union, Kevin.” I nodded briskly. “We deserve one, don’t you reckon?”

Later that day, after reading a gazillion online articles about the process, I worked on the four-page survey for all GS Properties’ employees and its sister companies in the building.

In order to start a union, I had to get most of the workers’ signatures, no small feat for a company with over twelve thousand personnel. I felt positive I could do this, though. It would help people like Kevin—everyone, really—and I wasn’t mad about the fact that people would stop treating me like the Wicked Witch of the West.

If they saw I was still one of them, still fighting for what’s right and what’s good, they’d understand I was the same Gia.

I typed along different questions—What would you change about the company? Roughly how many overtime hours do you work per week?—when I caught sight of the elevator sliding open and Tate stepping out of it in my periphery.

Fumbling my laptop shut, I accidentally spilled my iced coffee all over my dress, which made me squeak.

Shoot. I forgot to visit him upstairs for our daily romp.

Two days had passed since Tate and I had returned from the Hamptons.

My husband and I seemed to slip into a routine where, sometime during the workday, he’d call me into his office, flip my skirt up as I braced my forearms over his desk, and eat me out from behind while he was on his knees.

He’d make me come so hard I started bringing an extra pair of knickers to work. He always dismissed me from his office by giving my arse a little careless slap.

When we returned home, we ate dinner in silence. He did not ask after Mum, how my day was, or if the bodyguards he assigned to me—Enzo and Filippo—were doing their job.

(They were. Too well for my liking. They suffocated me with their looming presence. But they had this weird, nonthreatening vibe of two frat boys giddying up together on initiation week.)

Tate never asked for his own release.

In fact, he seemed completely unfazed about not getting his rocks off, to a point where I began to suspect he wanted to fuck me just for the notch on his belt and not because he was mad with desire.

I didn’t know why I was so hell-bent on not sleeping with him. Perhaps I still clung to this one, single power I had over him. Something I could control.

The HR crowd cleared the path for him like Moses parting the Red Sea. He sauntered toward me, ignoring the coos and the greetings of people around him.

Expressionless. Cold. Frightening.

He opened my office door, closing it behind him. It was surrounded by glass, so everyone could still see us.

Enzo and Filippo were on either side of me, staring hawkishly. He gave them a curt nod, which they didn’t even acknowledge.

“The fuck happened to your dress?” he bit out, examining the giant coffee stain on my garment. “Are you five now? Incapable of drinking from a straw?”

Smiling calmly, I retorted, “I’m not five, though I doubt if I were, it’d have stopped you from strong-arming me into marriage. In fact, I believe if taking candy from babies was a profitable occupation, you’d have pursued it.”

Enzo looked up, trying to cover his laugh with a cough.

Tate arched an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

I wanted the workers’ union to be a surprise. The type that might be followed by a minor heart attack and send Tate to his eternal slumber.

I fell back into my seat and grinned. “Oh, this and that. Slammed with work.”