The Devil Wears Black

“Mad,” he said, tucking himself back in. There was something surprisingly pitiful about watching Chase still hard and wanting, trying to console me. I knew he hadn’t wanted this to happen. That he’d tried to warn me when he’d heard the door. “Whoever it is doesn’t know that it’s you. Your legs were wrapped around me, so they couldn’t see your shoes. All they heard was moaning. For all they knew, there was someone constipated in this cubicle.”

“One of my legs was wrapped around you,” I countered, while we stood in the stall, which suddenly felt so much smaller than it had been when we’d first entered it. I wanted to get out of there but dreaded leaving at the same time. “Just the one. The other was still on the floor.”

“Your shoes are not that recognizable,” he tried to reason. We both looked down at my shoes. I was wearing flowery heels with a yellow bow at the front. Pretty darn recognizable unless you lived on a Eurovision set.

“Maybe they didn’t look down,” Chase suggested.

“After hearing a couple having sex in a bathroom stall?” I laughed bitterly. “Fat chance, Chase.”

“Mad.” He bracketed my face, pressing his temple to mine.

I shook my head, trying to escape his touch. “Whatever. You got your way. Wasn’t it your bottom line today? Getting your way?” I sounded bitter and not myself.

“Mad.”

“What?” I snapped.

“Don’t worry. Whatever’s gonna happen, we’re going to deal with it together.”

My knees high-fived each other the entire way to my office. I tried to give myself an internal pep talk. Tell myself Chase was right. There was no reason to believe people knew what we’d been doing or that it had been me in the stall.

I returned to gather and dump all the food containers in the kitchenette. There a note was waiting on the fridge, typed out in a Word document so no one could recognize the handwriting:

Riddle me this: She is cute, small, and a little MAD,

but her milkshake still brings all the boys to the yard.

More specifically, I just caught her with her pants down, having sex with Black & Co.’s big boss.

The one who wears BLACK and normally dates the likes of Kate Moss.

With this kind of lip service, no wonder she just got a promotion.

So much for being Martyr Maddie, full of goodwill and devotion.

I ripped the note from the fridge and threw it into the trash can. Storming to my station, I glanced behind my shoulder. Nina was busy filing her nails, humming an Ariana Grande tune with a smile on her face. She caught me glaring at her, picked up a pint of milkshake on her desk, and took a noisy slurp.

Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. Aha. It didn’t take a private investigator to see this as an admission of guilt. I was so embarrassed I’d gotten caught I wanted to cry. I fished my phone out.

Maddie: We’re busted.

Chase: How do you know?

Maddie: There was a note on the fridge.

Chase: Shit. Do you know who caught us?

Us. He’d said us. That made me hopeful he saw this as a mutual problem.

Maddie: Nina Na, I think. Of course it would be my archnemesis.

Chase: Her name is Nina Na and you taunted ME for having a made-up sounding name?

Maddie: She’s quarter-Korean, I think. Focus, Black.

Chase: I’ll deal with it.

Maddie: That sounds cryptic and super shady. What are you going to do?

Chase: Leave it to me. I’ll see you tonight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHASE

Overall, if I had to rate yesterday, I’d give it a will-not-visit-again, I-want-my-money-back zero-star review.

Other than me not dying in a freak subway accident, everything had gone south. Mad and I got caught boning on her floor restroom (my fault), Katie nagged me about asking Mad if it was okay if she went out with Ethan (this man was hell bent on screwing his way into my close circle, or so it seemed), and—the cherry on the shit cake—Dad gathered Julian, our CFO (Gavin), and me and announced he was going to work remotely from home from next week forward. What he really meant was he couldn’t even stand on both legs anymore. He still hadn’t shared his medical situation with the board, and I guessed I did see Julian’s point at this stage, but I would rather die than side with the asshole.

Dad had lost twenty-three pounds in less than two months and was looking a lot like death. Keeping the illness to himself was straight-up dumb at this point. And still, I couldn’t exactly judge him. There was something embarrassing—almost humiliating—about dying. And he was a powerful man.

Julian had been the first to react to Dad’s news. He’d hugged him, said he understood, and asked if retirement was in the cards for him. This time, Dad hadn’t seemed so against it. He’d told us he’d invite us over to discuss it further.