Empowered Page 5

  And one of him and Lucas Blackbourne clinking beer bottles together. They were uncharacteristically in T-shirts and jeans, their young visages dating them at least a decade. Sure enough, a banner above their heads said Young Men’s Social, ‘07. Must have been Princeton.

  There was a note on top of it. An old note, based on the stain lining the edge. Not to mention, Mr. Monroe had changed his handwriting two years ago. Just up and decided to make it more legible for the sake of good business. Yet Sarah still knew how to read his old, sloppy cursive handwriting.

  “Congrats on the marriage, Luke. Can’t wait to be your best man. Maybe that will be me one day, eh?”

  Sarah hurried to stack the security folders as neatly as possible, although some were certainly out of place. If she had to, she would blame the supervisor downstairs. She didn’t have time to fix them herself, not with shareholders arriving and a huge meeting about to get underway. Nor did she have time to think about the married man she fucked Saturday night. The one standing only a few rooms away.

  Angel wouldn’t have given a shit if he were married, separated, or chronically single. Sarah, however, had half a mind to drive her $500 executive pen into his jugular and hope his wife had an excellent life insurance policy on the cheating bastard. God, she was tired of rich men getting away with whatever the hell they wanted, the women in their way be damned.

  She already hated the Blackbournes almost as much as she hated most of the Monroes.

  Chapter 5

  Sarah was used to compartmentalizing her demons and personality. It was how she got through the long, arduous workdays full of mundane tasks that had to be done yesterday and the astronomical tasks only billionaires could get away with requesting. It’s also what allowed her to go to sleep at night, even when her brain was stuffed with enough toxic crap to give a girl insomnia for the rest of her life.

  Not to mention… Angel’s existence was born straight from Sarah’s ability to compartmentalize.

  She was grateful for her skill after Lucas joined the Monroe offices for the rest of the foreseeable future. It allowed her brain to break away from the fact she had sex with him. And it made it easier to keep up the façade that she never met him before Monday.

  Lucas Blackbourne, as Sarah came to find out over the course of that week, was the son of a Danish heiress and an American entrepreneur who married almost forty years ago for the sole purpose of creating an empire similar to the Monroes’. Yet while the Monroes mostly dabbled in developing properties and products that appealed to the middle class man, the Blackbournes were hardasses in publishing and technology. No wonder Damon called upon his best friend from Princeton to help him and his wife launch their new tech subsidiary in a world full of tech startups.

  All well and good. Usually Sarah didn’t give a shit regarding the structure of her employers’ business as long as she got paid. But the arrival of Lucas Blackbourne changed more than her general disposition. It changed things around the office as well.

  Mr. Blackbourne was granted a temporary office in the far corner. It was only half the size of Mr. and Mrs. Monroes’ separate offices, did not have its own private bathroom, and had some of the worst lighting after three in the afternoon. This sent Lucas out of his office more often than not, and this did not include every instance of him going to another office, the conference room, or out for work and personal matters. Sarah, who spent half her days at her desk making appointments, arranging schedules, making phone calls on behalf of her employers, and God knew what else, saw so much of the man she last slept with that she was liable to go fucking nuts if she didn’t enact every skill in her compartmentalizing arsenal.

  It’s not bad. He doesn’t even recognize me. Angel had different mannerisms, vocal inflections, and appearances from everyday Sarah. The club had such low light that it was difficult to make out features anyway. Lucas was in the mode men adopted when having casual sex – fuck her and forget her. So what if he had inhaled and impaled her body? So what if he was the only one in the office to stick his dick in her? Sooooo what?

  Besides, they rarely interacted. Even when Sarah had to accompany Damon and Lucas to their meetings, Lucas almost never spoke – and looked – in her direction.

  Still, using that mental power to look past certain facts took up much of Sarah’s energy. Even though her workload hadn’t changed that much since Lucas’s arrival, she went home every night to collapse into bed for a deep, merciless sleep. Just so she could start all over the next day.

  Her brother quickly noticed her change in mood.

  People often mistook Nigel as the “submissive” twin due to his habit of deferring to his sister’s voice whenever they were in a room together. Sarah never saw it this way. Not only was the idea of a dominant twin vs. a submissive twin absolute bullshit in her opinion, but Nigel was simply observant. When they were a team at work, Nigel was the one who would take his sister aside and share his observations about what their boss asked them to do. Sarah balanced his work with her own by taking his observations and giving them a voice. While their marks had always been similar in school, she did have slightly higher oration scores. Besides, the men they worked with preferred listening to “soothing” female voices. While Nigel was taken more seriously thanks to his penis, of course.

  So to come home to find her brother often standing in his bedroom doorway, arms crossed and eyes intensely focused on his sister’s haggard form? He had noticed.

  He also did not ask. Sarah’s descent into having an affair with their boss’s father and the trauma they both subsequently suffered had driven an uncomfortable rift between them. Perhaps one day it would be bridged again. Until then, Sarah had to deal with Lucas on her own.

  If she chose to deal with him at all, of course.

  “How deplorable do you think cheating is?” she asked her brother one night over dinner.

  Nigel looked up from his texting. A wooden bowl full of salad sat between them, Sarah picking at her leafy greens and completely ignoring the baked chicken breast on the side. Nigel ate his dinner with a bagel, but Sarah groaned at the thought of the extra bloating PMS already foisted upon her. “What kind of cheating? Relationship cheating?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Well, it’s pretty bad.”

  “Like… assume Dad cheated on Mum. How mad would you be?”

  “I’d be bloody pissed.”

  “Right. But is it worse than other things he could have done?”

  “Come on, there are way worse things than cheating.”

  “Right. Ah, never mind. I’m not making sense.”

  Nigel put his phone down and looked his sister in the eye. His were surprisingly sharp. “Are you having an affair with a married man?”

  “What?” Sarah dropped her useless fork.

  Her brother steepled his fingers before his face. “When you go to New York. You’re seeing men, aren’t you?”

  Sarah fixed her posture and shoved her food around her plate. Her haughty airs came directly from their British mother, who could clear a room with her sense of self-importance and inability to ever be in the wrong – a characteristic she was thankfully aware of and only utilized when actually in her favor.

  “So, yes?”

  “I hate you sometimes.” What was the point in hiding it? If her brother was right, he was right. The man was impossible to successfully lie to. Likewise, he rarely got away with lying to her. “It’s none of your business.”

  “It is if it’s upsetting you.”

  Sarah stole her brother’s wineglass and helped himself, since her glass was empty. “Fuck you, Nigel.”

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “If you were, I’d call you a jealous bitch because you only nut in one girl.”

  “So defensive.” Nigel slipped off his stool at the island counter, taking his empty plate to the kitchen sink. “Who gives a shit as long as you’re taking care of yourself?”

  “You don’t think I am.”

  He sto
pped halfway toward his room. “If it’s making you act like this, then no.”

  Sarah hated her brother in that instance. Where did he get off acting so flippant about her promiscuous lifestyle? Wasn’t he supposed to be her savior? The man who protected her safety and honor, or whatever crap he put himself through a few months ago? “Different man every time I go!” she called after him. “Sometimes more than one!”

  Nigel waved at her before closing his bedroom door with a soft click.

  “You ever been gangbanged?” Sarah launched off her stool, but stopped at the end of the counter. “You ever taken…” Her yell fell to a defeated whisper. “Four dicks at once… damnit.”

  She cleaned up the dishes as music began to play in her brother’s room. After that, she retreated to her own room, and the two of them didn’t speak for the rest of the night. Aside from a text from Nigel that said, “Please take care of yourself,” and nothing more.

  Sarah threw her phone across the room.

  ***

  “Hey!” Sarah walked into the conference room, thinking it was empty. Unfortunately, Lucas was in there, having a private phone call. He ignored her as she swept by and cleaned up the debris from that morning’s meeting. “How goes it?”

  He wasn’t talking to her. He wasn’t even acknowledging her presence as he stared out the window and at the sunny winter weather.

  “Great, great! Yes, I miss you a lot too.”

  Sarah glanced up from her gathering. No, the man still wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. There was a class ring on his right hand, but nothing on his left. Bastard. Does your wife know you’re not wearing one while you’re here? All Sarah knew about Lucas’s personal situation was that his permanent address was in Copenhagen, with a family home in Chicago. The night they “shared” in New York was him escorting some Danish friends from Copenhagen, where he had been staying the past few months.

  “I promise I’ll see you soon. I’m going to buy you a present before then. What do you want? Anything you want. What? Disneyworld? Well, don’t know about that…”

  Sarah showed herself out. Lucas’s smile as he spoke with his wife made her sick. What would Disney characters say about his adultery?

  To think, Sarah had considered going back to New York that weekend to wash the taste of his cum-covered dick out of her mouth. Instead, she would probably stay home and get drunk off the wine she and her brother otherwise refused to drink.

  ***

  “I need you to go to the Estate today, Ms. Clayborn.” Damon Monroe finally looked up from his papers on his desk. “I’m sorry. I hate to ask it of you, but Ms. Oduya took today off.”

  “It’s not a problem.” Sarah picked up the notes her boss had left for her to take. “I’ll type these up and then head over to the Estate.”

  Mr. Monroe studied her blank reaction before accepting her compliance. “Very well. Take my car. I don’t need it until I go home, and you should be back by then.” He turned his full attention back to his computer. “Send my wife in on your way out, would you?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sarah hustled out. Mrs. Monroe sat on a couch in the main office, her body language pointed directly to Mr. Blackbourne, who sat on the other end of the couch. Sarah hated that she had to approach them both. At the same time, even.

  “Yes?” Alice asked. Lucas sat with only a complimentary glance in Sarah’s direction.

  “Mr. Monroe requests your presence in his office, ma’am.”

  While Alice smiled, Sarah briefly made eye contact with Lucas. He was the one who broke it when he turned his attention to his cell phone screen.

  Sarah was not in a hurry to head to the Monroe Estate far out of town, but what choice did she have when it was an order from the boss? She needed to be back before the end of the work day, anyway. Best to leave as soon as she could.

  In the back of her boss’s car, while the driver maneuvered through traffic, Sarah texted her brother. “I have to go to that place.”

  His response was almost instantaneous. “I’ll bring home an extra slice of pizza for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m here if you need me.”

  Sarah put her phone away. She’d rather do work than dwell on what she couldn’t prevent.

  Like facing the man who had caused so much of her pain.

  Russell Monroe was a shell of his former self. After surviving a major stroke last summer, he was now mute and bound to a wheelchair – which a nurse or his fiancée had to push for him. The man had aged thirty years overnight. Gone was the powerful businessman with silver hair and lines on his face that suggested vast experience and a voracious sexual appetite. He looked older than his own father would have been if he were still alive.

  Even so, he always recognized Sarah when she ascended the beige steps leading to the massive foyer of Russell Monroe’s retirement estate.

  His fiancée, the Japanese heiress Natsuko Matsuda, was in residence. Much too young – and too smart – to be embroiled in this mess, she had agreed to marry the man in return for a handsome allowance and a plethora of benefits for her family back in Osaka. (And being allowed to keep dating her Japanese boyfriend.) The Monroes, in turn, were excited to have the stepping stone into Japanese markets on their side. The fact the woman approached Sarah with a smile before recognizing her did not make things easier to bear.

  “Ms. … Clayborn? How nice to see you. I was expecting Ms. Oduya.”

  “She’s out today.”

  Natsuko stopped a few feet away, her practiced heiresses’ smile almost an insult to Sarah’s stoic disposition. “Suppose you want the tour and reports, then?”

  “If you would.”

  Every Friday, a representative of Damon Monroe’s office went to the estate to check in on the criminal invalid and to make sure everything was in order. This usually fell on Alisha’s shoulders, since nobody wanted to send Sarah there after finding out what happened between her and Russell. They said it in such a way that they thought they were protecting her.

  Everyone wanted to protect poor, fragile Sarah. It made her sick, sometimes.

  The tour included a brief interview with the full-time staff at the manor, glancing through the expenditures for the past week, and ensuring that there were no unsavory leaks, since the senior Mr. Monroe once had a lovely habit of using his extensive network of goons and nefarious individuals to light ex-wives on fire and to shoot unwanted daughters-in-law. His convalescence prevented him from achieving that level of evil these days, but the Monroes were taking no chances now that a baby was on the way. This was a man who had forced his ex-wife to have a miscarriage as well… all because he decided the child was too “defective.”

  Why or why did Sarah have to think about that when she walked into the sunroom and found her ex-lover sitting in his wheelchair?

  His amber eyes lit up in instant recognition. The man could no longer speak or even thrust his finger in her direction, but he could bore a hole in her with the daggers in his eyes. He blamed Sarah for this. Her and Alice Monroe, that she-devil.

  “As you can see,” Natsuko said with the usual sarcastic tone she used when around her future husband, “my fiancé is doing quite well for his predicament. I consider it a blessing every single day when I wake up and he’s still with us.”

  Russell shot her an insidious look before settling on Sarah again.

  What was he thinking about? Fucking her? Having his baby beaten out of her?

  “My employer won’t be satisfied unless I take a photo.”

  “Of course.”

  Sarah pulled out her work phone and reluctantly took a picture of the man sitting by the window. As soon as she lowered the cell phone, Natsuko took her by the arm and steered her toward the door.

  “Speak with me for a moment. In private.”

  That meant away from Russell’s trained ears. The nearby library would have to suffice.

  “I’m going to bring this up with my future son-in-law the next time I have dinner with him,” Nats
uko said as soon as she sat down at a small table, “but I found a clause in Russell’s will that implies I don’t get anything when he dies unless I have a child by him.”

  There were many ways to get around the fact Russell was no longer fit for sexual activity. He probably had material on ice, since the man was narcissistic enough. Unfortunately, Sarah was also privy to knowing that Natsuko was infertile – one of the reasons she found this arrangement good for her and her family.

  “And?”

  “It’s a problem. I need my lawyer to take a look. If it’s unavoidable, I’m going to have to come up with something.” Natsuko shrugged. “A surrogate will have to be used.”

  “If I may…”

  “Please.”

  “Don’t use his genetic material. Don’t inflict that on some poor woman out there, no matter how much money you give her for the dubious honor.”

  “I figured everyone would say that. Damon turned out fine, I suppose, but who knows? I think it’s best if Damon agrees to father the child and let me legally adopt it.”

  Sarah didn’t think she could be taken aback any more, yet here she was, raising her eyebrows at that suggestion. “He’s not going to like that.”

  “No kidding. Neither will that wife of his, what with all their talk of raising an empire.” Natsuko rolled her eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you gently broached the subject with him before I do. I’m sure he’ll tell me no, but it’s his problem to fix since his father managed to get that clause in there. This marriage arrangement is no good to my family if I’m not guaranteed the inheritance I’m due for dealing with him.” Natsuko shuddered. “He may not be able to talk, but those eyes… he hates me. Hates that I won’t change my clothes in front of him, hates that I have a boyfriend while being engaged to him, hates…”

  “That you’re not white?”

  Natsuko laughed, her breathless airs both surprised and satisfied with Sarah’s response. “He’s a eugenic, isn’t he? I’ve seen some of his journals.”