Page 7 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

From: Kimberly Chen

To: Alice Cloutier

Hi, Alice!

I just heard about you being let go at J.EnK—so disappointing!

I’ll start keeping an eye out for opportunities that better align with your experience and skill set. In the meantime, I do have something available for an immediate start to help fill the gap on your resume:

We have a twenty-six-year-old client who is looking for a full-time housekeeper to start immediately. The place is newly built. 7 beds, 9 baths. Absolutely gorgeous property! There is no base pay, but tips will be provided at the client’s discretion for “good behavior.”

He’ll also require you to wear various provided costumes as you carry out your daily duties (how fun!), and says he’ll be happy to train you himself!

I understand it’s not the most conventional job. But the client is extremely well-known and has a lot of connections, so a recommendation from him could go a long way when you’re ready to move on to other opportunities!

I’m here if you have any questions.

Kim,

KELP Staffing

I was going to deck him.

I’d never hit anybody before—never felt the urge to—but I was going to deck the foul, condescending son of a bitch right in his pouty mouth, and it was going to be the highlight of my life.

“We can do the interview as early as tomorrow, if you’d like,” Dominic teased, reaffirming his wish for a prolonged, excruciating death. “I can only imagine how desperate you must be forsomethingto fill the gap on your resume. Anything that sticks, really. Unless you’re willing to run to your brother with your tail between your legs and ask him for a job… but something tells me that’s not what you want. Otherwise, you’d have done it by now.”

My nails. His jugular. I was going to watch him bleed out, then drag him back down to hell myself.

I was filled with so much white-hot rage that my jaw was locked. I couldn’t speak, breathe, or formulate a single thought that didn’t revolve around lethal amounts of his blood pooled at my feet.

I wanted to yank on his forked tongue and strangle him with it.

All those applications. All those interviews. All the training and first-day jitters and wondering what thefuckwas wrong with me that I couldn’t hold on to a single job for longer than two weeks no matter how hard I tried.

All of it because of him.

“It’s only fair, don’t you think? My mother changed your sheets and cooked your meals for fourteen years; you come and do the same for me for thirty days, and we’ll call it even,” he drawled with lazy arrogance. “Then again… you wouldn’t last a day.”

The intentional downplaying of the job didn’t escape me. Changing sheets and cooking meals didn’t even skim the surface of what depravity he had planned for me.

“You need so much fucking therapy, it’s not even funny,” I spat.

“I suspect the image of you on your knees, scrubbing my toilets, will prove to be very therapeutic for me.”

I pushed to my feet. “Go fuck yourself, Dominic.”

His grin twitched. “I’ll see you Monday for your interview. Ten a.m. sharp.”

I flipped him off on my way out the door, fire raging up and down my spine.

I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know when, but I was going to make that man weep on his knees like a little boy.

Mark my words.

3

Maybe Gamps can call Ms. Rivers and convince her to let us switch seatmates. He claims he’s really good at convincing people to do things and says the trick is to make them think it was their idea.