Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways #1)(75)

“Thanks for the I-told-you-so. You’re being real useful right now.” I snapped the wooden chopsticks apart.

“Can you tell her after the trial is over?” Riggs asked, ambling toward my fridge to grab a beer. He looked buff as hell these days, but I knew unlike Arsène and me, he wasn’t one for hitting the gym. Instead, he climbed mountains. Professionally. Had a bunch of companies endorsing his ass. I never understood his fascination with near-death experiences. Life had a 100 percent mortality rate. What was his rush to fall off a goddamn cliff at a 14K elevation?

I shook my head no. “The trial will be over in a few weeks. Besides, even if I tell her after it’s over, she can unveil my identity afterward, which would mean all my work would have been for nothing.”

I’d brushed up on the Rules of Professional Conduct. There was nothing that specifically prevented me from sticking my dick into Arya. But it didn’t look good. And of course, there were those pesky catch-all rules for situations like these. A competent attorney could file a claim alleging my conduct was intended to disrupt the tribunal. And fuck, with my fact pattern, they might just win. Amanda Gispen would have my ass on a platter for ruining her case, and Conrad Roth would too. Either way I looked at it, being with Arya was simply undoable. They were right. I needed to cut her loose. But how could I, after she’d told me she’d tried to write to me? That she thought I’d moved to the other side of the world? That I was the one who’d gotten away?

I’d been so sure she was in on whatever Conrad Roth had done to me, it had never occurred to me he’d fed her a few lies to soften the blow. It twisted me inside out. The revelation she might have not known. Made me lose sleep, cases, and my goddamn mind. All this time—all this rage—and it wasn’t even her fault.

The carefully constructed narrative of my life and my circumstances was a pile of ash at my feet. And I had no one to blame but myself, for jumping to conclusions.

As for Arya, the woman had been lied to by every man she even remotely cared about. It made me feel shitty, but not shitty enough to ruin my whole life to do right by her.

“Great. In that case, dump Arya and move on with your life,” Arsène said, in the same sensible tone he might use to suggest diversifying my investment portfolio.

I tossed a piece of raw tuna into my mouth. “Fine. I don’t even have to do that. All I need to do is never call her again, since she sure as hell never calls me.”

Riggs smiled behind the rim of his beer bottle. “And that obviously doesn’t bother you at all.”

Prick.



Arya didn’t call the next day.

Or the one after it.

I dissected our latest interaction.

The way she’d confided about Nicky. The pain in her voice. The crinkles in her eyes.

It seemed like she genuinely cared. Then again, as established, Arya was a pretty good actress when she wanted to be.

My suspicion that she hadn’t noticed the missing book had evaporated. There was no way something like that could have escaped a woman like Arya. Meanwhile, Atonement burned a hole through the wood of my bedroom parquet. I refused to read it. Doing so was admitting defeat, in a strange way.

I kept telling myself it was a good thing that Arya hadn’t called. I could always send her the book via courier and get this shit over with. I couldn’t see her again. Any more time spent with her brought her closer to the truth. And even if it didn’t—what was the point? I’d wanted to get her out of my system. I had. Case closed.

The trial was going well.

My career plate was full.

So why was I still hungry?



One week had passed.

I went to the gym and the Brewtherhood. She was never there. She didn’t show up in court either. I was beginning to regret the temporary mercy I’d shown her by warning her off the case.

The woman wouldn’t budge. Was it pride or self-preservation? Either way, it earned her more of my admiration.

There was a perfectly good chance I could have carried on like this for another month or so. I was a competitive bastard, just like her. We always made everything a game to be won. Even as kids. But one day, while I was hitting the weight section at the gym, I noticed her on one of the flat TV screens. She was a guest on a morning show.

She looked like a dream. So much so, the first few seconds, I didn’t even decipher what she was saying. Just bathed in the fact I’d had her underneath me, not too long ago, writhing and begging for more.

She wore an off-shoulder dress with a fitted bodice and butterflies on it. I dropped the weights I was holding and strode to the TV so I could hear her better. The hostess, a woman whose age could be anywhere from thirty-eight to fifty-nine with a blonde bob and a lot of fake tanner, asked her about the PR crisis a certain British royal couple was facing. Arya answered all the questions thoroughly and professionally. I wondered what had inspired her to go on TV in the first place, but then when her interview was over, the hostess plugged Brand Brigade and couldn’t stop gushing about it, proclaiming that she was one of their very happy clients.

Free publicity. Mystery solved.

That same day, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of Atonement. They only had the one with the film poster on the cover, white paper instead of crème. But that was sufficient for what I needed. I tore a page from the book, dabbed it in tea, and let it sit to dry on my office window for a few hours before tucking it into an envelope along with a small note.