“What’s going on?” she asks me, her eyes narrowing. “How did…what just…what’s going on?”
I love it.
“That,” I say to the screen and pause. “Is what happens when people try to fucking play Ethan Kane.”
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Brittney
“That,” Ethan says, pointing to the screen and looking at me. “Is what happens when people try to fucking play Ethan Kane.”
Oh my God.
What is he talking about?
But Ethan doesn’t say anything else. He reaches over to the tablet on the coffee table and pushes some buttons and turns it toward me.
I get up, my knees on the couch supporting me.
I squint. It’s closed circuit television and it takes me a minute to realize…
Oh. My. God.
It’s Ethan’s office.
And that’s me. At his computer.
“Walter, his terminal looks similar to what we went through, but I’m going to need you to walk me through it,” I hear myself saying on the video.
I don’t know about you, hun, but I’m starting to get really worried every time I see myself on a screen. First it was whatever went on in Times Square. Taking a glance at the television, which is on mute right now; the crowds are chanting and celebrating and cheering and lining up to buy Illicit Escapes. Wicked Wear is most likely out of this market for a very, very long time.
It’s almost as if this whole thing were…
“Planned?” Ethan asks me, and I snap out of my reverie.
“That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” he asks me with a smirk.
On his tablet, I look at myself furiously clicking at the keys and talking to Walter through my earpiece.
He knew!
He knew this whole time! And yet he kept me around. He knew I was betraying him as he made love to me. He knew my goal was to deceive him the entire time.
“Yeah, babe,” Ethan says to me. “That day I left the prototype on the table…I thought you’d take it to Simon,” he tells me.
“You played me?” I ask him, all my sorrow at deceiving him starting to melt away. “You’ve been fucking playing me the whole fucking time?!”
Yeah, I’m pissed. He’s been lying to me the entire time. While I’ve been falling in love with him and feeling sorry for deceiving him!
My hand raises up and I know where it’s going.
I’m going to slap that fucking smirk off his face right now.
And I would have too, if his hand hadn’t raised up and caught mine. With the strength of ten men, he pulls me closer.
“No, I don’t fucking think so, babe,” he says as he pulls me to him and I smell his cologne mixed in with his man smell and I realize that he’s won. “And yes, I fucking knew. But I had to make a decision as to what was best for you. And for us.”
He’s tamed me. The Man Chaser.