Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways 1)

My next stop was her apartment. This time, I got a little farther than the buzzer. All the way to her apartment’s door, in fact. I knocked frantically. Jillian threw the door open, leaning a hip against the frame, her face slathered in a green mask of some sort. “Yes?”

“I’m here to see Arya.”

“Ambitious.” She made a show of checking out her fingernails. “You know, considering the circumstances.”

“Is she not here?” I narrowed my eyes. I couldn’t imagine her anywhere but home on a day like this. Maybe her mother’s apartment. But unlikely.

“Oh, she is here. But she can’t see you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re dead to her.”

My teeth ground together. “I can explain.”

“I’m sure you can, Nicholai. Feel free to do it to the door while I call the police. Which is exactly what I’m about to do if you don’t evacuate the premises in the next three seconds.”

With that, she slammed the door in my face.

Nicholai.

Nicholai.

Nicholai.

Jillian had called me Nicholai. As I made my way home in a taxi, I tried to gauge what, exactly, I was facing. It seemed like whatever Arya knew was a lot worse than the fact that a few of our sloppy kisses had been plastered on some news websites.

It seemed like she knew the truth.

And the truth was unbearable, to both of us.

When I got to my apartment, there was no room for doubt. Arya had raided the place while I was gone, most likely sometime after I hadn’t taken her calls and she’d realized we’d been outed by the media. The place was a dumpster fire, sans the pretty flame. The tragic part was I knew she hadn’t looked for the truth. She’d looked for her book. Searched for it everywhere. The garbage can included. Or maybe her flipping it over had just been the final, screw-you touch. Like an exotic flower on a pretty dessert at a restaurant.

Either way, what she’d wanted was clear—to take away the piece of her that had temporarily belonged to me and make sure that I’d never have access to it again.

I headed toward my bedroom, my soul in my throat. Even before I walked in, I knew what I was going to find. The manila envelope I’d kept a secret for all those years was open, the documents scattered everywhere. I didn’t have to crouch down and look for the book to know that it was gone. Atonement was no longer mine.

I’m sure you can, Nicholai.

Arya knew.

She’d told Jillian.

There was no reason to think Arya hadn’t told her parents too. Her father’s lawyers. But somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to give much of a damn about that part. My ungraceful second fall.

All I cared about was that she’d found out and not in the way I had wanted her to.

There was no point calling her. She wasn’t going to pick up. Whatever I could salvage of our relationship—of my life—had to wait until tomorrow.

She needed time, and I needed to respect that, even if it killed me.

I picked up the phone and called one of the very few people in the universe who knew.

“What?” Arsène barked out groggily.

“She found out,” I said, still frozen to my spot at the entrance of my room. This was the time when he was going to tell me that he’d told me so, that he’d warned me.

“Shit,” he surprised me by saying.

“Indeed.”

“Grabbing my keys and coming. Beer?”

I rubbed my eye sockets. “Go north. Way north.”

“Brandy?”

“More like a bullet.”

“A bottle of A. de Fussigny and a full metal jacket coming right up.”

That night, I didn’t sleep. Wasn’t dumb enough to even try. I ended up polishing off that cognac Arsène had brought over, then hitting the indoor gym in my building. I hopped into the shower, got dressed for work, went through the same predictable motions . . .

Only I didn’t go to work.

The firm—the company I’d wanted to take over more than anything else in my life—had become trivial, laughably inconsequential. A shiny toy that had kept me occupied while life happened in my periphery. Every time I tried to muster the motivation to haul ass to the place that deposited seven figures into my bank account annually, I couldn’t help but feel like a hamster getting ready to hop on a wheel. The constant spinning got me nowhere. More money. More wins. More dinners I didn’t like with clients I loathed.

It occurred to me that I wasn’t only jaded; I was dizzy from solving other people’s problems all the time. Well, now I had a problem of my own to solve. Arya knew I was Nicky and that I’d kept it a secret from her.

Even more horrifying—she knew I was Nicky and therefore that I was worthless.

I went straight to Arya’s office that morning, arriving at eight o’clock sharp. An hour before opening. I’d spent enough mornings with Arya to know she was an early riser and liked to be at the office before the birds arose.