Page 11 of Not an Assistant (Tales of the Dreggageggon #4)

Shattered Control

G reta, Three Days Later

I should be sitting at my desk.

Instead, I’m watching from the hallway like a ghost—ignored, dismissed, replaced. Reassigned like any other fucking employee, like I don’t matter.

Acheron spoke the words, and I thought I had misheard, but then the email from Human Resources came.

No explanation. No thanks for the years I gave him.

No acknowledgment of the nights I stayed late or the days I shielded him from every hungry social climber and desperate assistant.

Just a reassignment on the furthest edge of his empire.

I wasn’t just his right hand. I was meant to be his. At least that’s what I believed, until she showed up. Zahara Fucking Matthews.

Too sweet and so very shy. Too quiet for her own good. She looked like a deer caught in the jaws of a wolf when she first started cleaning the upper floor. I thought she was beneath notice. But then I caught them.

Her walking into his office like she belonged there. His eyes tracking her every move. The tension between them. The scent overwhelming everything else. But now I see it as clear as day.

I was coming in to collect the last of my things. I wasn’t supposed to be on the floor. But the moment I rounded the corner and saw them speaking outside the boardroom, my stomach twisted.

She leaned in. Smiled at him. And he, Acheron Draven, the man who never let anyone close, touched her lower back. Possessive and familiar with a smile of his own. I didn’t even know he could smile.

And when she turned, her sweater slipped just enough to reveal a dark mark just above her collarbone. A bite. A claiming mark.

My vision blurred. I blinked once. Twice. But it didn’t vanish. The rage rose inside me, like acid. He fucking marked her. He chose the damn cleaner over me!

But I know she did something to him. Used her scent or her heat. She must have tricked him. Because there is no other logical explanation. He’s too smart and too controlled. He wouldn’t fall victim to a little whore like her.

Unless it’s real. Unless he actually wants her.

No. No, I can’t—won’t—believe that. She doesn’t deserve him. She’s a stain on everything I’ve built, everything I sacrificed. She is beneath him and he only needs to have his eyes opened so he can see the truth. I am the one who belongs beside him.

I stumble back into the elevator, heart hammering, and rage boiling beneath the surface. People stare as the doors close, but I don’t see them. All I see is her. And how I’m going to take her apart.

A plan starts to form as I descend in the elevator. I won’t let her trick him. I will set him free of whatever hold she has over him and then we can be together.