Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways #1)(21)

I let out something between a bark and a snicker. “Mr. Miller, at least have the decency not to pretend you weren’t born into good fortune and dubious scruples.”

Something passed across his face. It was brief, but it was there. I’d say I’d hit a nerve, but I doubted this man had any.

“Do you have legs, Ms. Roth?”

“You know I do. You made a point of ogling them in the elevator.”

“I suggest you make good use of them now and take a hike before security escorts you out. Then the only fire you’ll have to quench is the one perishing your career.”

“This is not over,” I warned, mainly because it sounded really good in the movies.

“I wholly agree and advise you to get the hell away from it before it explodes all over you.”

Then the bastard slammed his office door in my face.

Stunned, I marched back to the conference room. By the time I got there, Dad and his lawyers had already left.

“My apologies, Ms. Roth. There’s another conference scheduled in twenty minutes in this room.” Claire offered me a venomous smile as she collected her documents. “I told them they could wait for you at the lobby downstairs. You don’t mind, do you?”

I smiled just as tightly. “Not at all.”

I headed straight to the elevator bank, my head high, my smile intact.

Christian Miller was going to go down, if the last thing I did was drag him to the pits of hell.



“They’re in, and they love us more than the Oscars love Sally Field.” Jillian slapped the signed contract on the nightstand by my bed later that evening, proceeding to do a little dance. I was buried under the duvet, still hiding from the world after the disastrous afternoon at Cromwell & Traurig. A stomach-turning vision of my father standing in a courtroom, shriveled into paper-thin pieces of himself, flashed through my mind.

My family life had always been complex. I’d lost my twin brother before I could even get to know him. My memories of my mother throughout my childhood were a revolving door of rehab visitations and missed birthdays, graduation ceremonies, and other landmark events, as well as a lot of public meltdowns. Dad had been the only constant in my life. The one person I could count on who didn’t cut a nice paycheck from being there for me. To think he was going to go through something so mentally exhausting as a public trial made me want to scream.

“Yoo-hoo. Arya? Ari?” My friend rubbed my back, hovering over my figure. “Did you come down with something?”

I groaned, peeling the duvet down to my waist and turning to face her. Jillian gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth.

“Have you been crying?”

I propped my back against the headboard. My eyes were the size of tennis balls, but I think I’d run out of tears, energy, and damns about a couple of hours earlier.

“Allergies,” I mumbled.

Jillian’s delicate eyebrows twitched. She had the maddening skin complexion of a Kardashian after the Photoshop treatment, curly black hair, and eyes the color of toffee. Her dress, a lilac tweed number, was borrowed from my closet.

“What’d the clients say?” I sniffed.

Jillian and I had incorporated Brand Brigade, our public relations consultancy firm, when we were both at a crossroads. Jillian had been working for a nonprofit organization as a PR specialist and got hit on by every privileged douche in and outside her office, making her life miserable and her then boyfriend jealous, while I’d interned my way through two political campaigns that had ended in a scandal and annihilation respectively, clocked in forty-five-hour weeks, and gotten paid mainly in compliments.

Finally, we’d both decided we’d had enough and could do better on our own. That was four years ago, and we’d never looked back. Business was booming, and I was proud of my ability to provide for myself, even if my mother viewed it as an act of defiance.

Now I was doing what I did best—getting people out of the pickles they’d gotten themselves into. Because as Jillian had said, there were two things we could always count on in this world: the IRS cashing in our checks every April 15 and people’s unique talent for making mistakes.

“They said that we’re hired and that they loved the Real Bodies presentation you made for Swan Soaps.” Jillian plonked next to me, grabbing one of my pillows and hugging it to her chest. “They want a three-month trial run, but they signed the contract and paid the advance. They’ll go over the fine print tomorrow. It’s a huge opportunity, Ari. Stuffed is the biggest reusable-diaper company in the world.”

I cooed and gushed over Jillian nailing this client, but my heart wasn’t in it. It was still bleeding all over Christian Miller’s limestone office floor.

Jillian bumped her shoulder against mine. “Are you going to tell me what happened? Because we both know the allergies were just an excuse so I could talk about the deal.”

There was no point keeping secrets from Jillian. She had the instincts of an FBI agent and the ability to smell bullshit from continents away.

“Dad’s case is going to court.”

“You’re kidding me.” She reared her head back, her mouth dropping into an O shape.

“I wish I was.”

“Oh, honey.” Jillian rolled out of my bed and returned a few minutes later with two glasses of red wine. She toed off her heels and discarded them in the hallway. “Promise me one thing—don’t overthink this. They have nothing on your dad. You said so yourself. We’ll spin PR gold around this case and make him look like the angel Daddy Conrad really is.” She handed me one of the glasses, which I noticed could double as a bucket and was completely full.