Under His Authority

Chapter 4

Maren's POV

"What did you do?" Bex asked the second she picked up.

"I didn't do anything." I was already walking fast down the corridor away from the conference room, phone pressed to my ear. "Someone sent me a picture. Me and Dorian. In the conference room. Someone was standing outside the whole time, Bex, with a camera, and I didn't even notice."

A pause. Then, "Send it."

I forwarded the photo and counted the seconds. Three. Five. Seven.

"I knew it!"

"Bex."

"You like him."

"I do not like him," I said. "He is my boss. He is my boyfriend's father. That picture is misleading, nothing happened, and whoever took it knew exactly what angle to use and I need you to focus because this is serious.”

"Your boyfriend," Bex repeated, in the voice she used when she was about to say something I didn't want to hear. "You mean the same one who spent over a year f*****g your sister and then had the nerve to call you boring? That boyfriend?"

I didn't answer.

"He should be past tense, Maren. Long past tense." She clicked her tongue. "And besides, if he could do that to you, why not f**k his father? Honestly, that's just balance."

"I can't do something like that," I said. "Dorian doesn't even like me. I'm just there. One annoying secretary he tolerates and besides, if Kaden hadn’t stepped in this morning, I’d already be fired."

"Does he?" Bex asked. "Look at that picture and tell me that man looks like he's just tolerating you."

I didn't look at the picture. I already knew what I would see.

I thought instead about the first day I walked into his office as a new intern, barely twenty-three, folder clutched to my chest, absolutely certain I was in the wrong room. He had looked up from his desk and looked at me for exactly two seconds before looking back down at his documents. Two seconds that had made my whole nervous system rearrange itself for reasons I immediately buried.

And then the day Rafe brought me home for the first time. Introduced me across the dinner table as his girlfriend. Dorian had looked at me from the other end of that table and something in his expression had closed off completely. Back then I told myself it was because I was human. Because I didn't belong in their world. Because I was not enough for the kind of life his son was supposed to be living.

But now, standing in this corridor with a photo on my phone that told a very different story—

"No," I said, mostly to myself. "I'm not doing this. I'm not getting delusional over a man who just made a fool out of me."

"Maren—"

"Track the number for me. Please." I forwarded it to her. "I need to know who sent this."

She sighed. "Fine. I'll dig. But this conversation is not over."

Dorian didn't come back to the office for the rest of the day. I sat at my desk and stared at documents I read four times without absorbing a single word.

After closing, I went straight to Bex's place.

"Anything?" I asked when she opened the door.

"Number's masked." She stepped aside to let me in. "Whoever sent it knows what they're doing. But I'll keep digging." She picked up her phone from the couch and looked at the photo again, and the smirk that crossed her face made me want to confiscate the device. "Still looks like you want him though."

"I don't."

"Sure."

"Bex."

"Fine," she said, putting the phone down. "But he doesn't look like he hates you either. That's all I'm saying."

I sat down and stared at the floor for a moment. "I need to go get my things from Rafe's."

She looked at me. "Tonight?"

"Tonight."

She grabbed her keys without another word.

The house was quiet when we pulled up. Lights on upstairs. His car in the drive. Bex stayed at the car and I went in alone, up the stairs, down the hall toward the bedroom. The door was pushed halfway open and I heard them before I saw anything, the moans coming through the gap in a way that turned my stomach over completely.

I stopped walking.

My first instinct was to turn around. Go back down the stairs. Get in Bex's car and leave and come back for my things another day when the house was empty and I wouldn't have to see or hear any of it. I had already turned and made it halfway down the staircase before I stopped myself.

I had run this morning. I had walked out of this house, grabbed my bag and left without saying half of what I should have said, and spent the whole day swallowing it. I was not doing that again. I was not the one who had done anything wrong.

I went back up. I pushed the bedroom door all the way open.

They scrambled apart so fast that Rafe nearly fell off the bed. Jade grabbed the sheets. For a moment nobody said anything and I stood in the doorway looking at the two of them and felt something settle in my chest that was colder and quieter than anger.

"You could've knocked," Rafe said, pulling himself together with a speed that told me he had been practicing this exact scenario in his head.

"You could've closed the door," I said.

I walked past both of them to the wardrobe, pulled my bag down from the top shelf and started packing. Folding things properly. Taking my time.

Jade didn't say a single word and I didn't look at her once. Because falling apart in front of them was the one thing I had decided I was not going to do.

"Maren, can we not make this a whole thing—”

"Your father asked me something today," I said, zipping the front pocket of the bag.

I heard Rafe go still behind me.

"He asked if I was going back to you. I didn't have an answer then." I picked the bag up and turned around. "I do now. We're done."

"Maren, come on—"

"After everything I did for you. I sat with you through every rejection before your business took off. I believed in you when you didn't believe in yourself. Seven years—" My voice stayed steady and I was proud of that, prouder than I had been of anything all day. "And you paid me back with my own sister, Rafe. In our bed."

"Oh, don't act all holy." Something shifted in his face, the guilt burning off and leaving something nastier behind. "I saw how you looked at my father at that company dinner.”

"Watch yourself."

"Oh please." He waved. "You want to talk about loyalty? You look at my father like he's a whole meal and you call yourself a loyal girlfriend? You're more disloyal than I ever was. At least what I did, you could see. You—"

The slap came before I even decided to do it.

The sound cracked through the room and Jade flinched. Rafe's head turned with it and he stood there for a second, jaw tight, hand going slowly to his cheek.

"How dare you," I said. "How dare you stand there and blame me for what you did. Seven years, Rafe. Seven years and I never once thought of another man. Not once. You want to talk about disloyal? You were in my sister while I was in the next room." My chest was heaving but my voice didn't break. "Now I see why your father thinks less of you. I really do."

That landed differently.

"Don't," he said, and his voice dropped in a way that told me I had finally found the thing that actually stung. "Don't you bring my father into this."

"You brought him in first."

"I swear to God, Maren—" He stepped forward and then caught himself. "My father is not your business. My issues with him are not yours to throw in my face. The only person who ever had the right to talk to me about him was my mother, and she's gone. So take your opinion and shove it."

Silence.

Jade was looking at the wall.

I picked up my bag.

"I hope you're happy," I said, and looked at Jade one last time. She was staring at the sheets. "Both of you."

I walked out.

I made it down the stairs, through the front door, down the steps, all the way to where Bex was leaning against the car, and then something behind my ribs just gave out. The tears came fast and I couldn't get ahead of them.

"Maren." Bex was already moving toward me.

"Don't go in there," I said. "Please, just get me out of here."

She got me in. We drove. I leaned my head back and breathed through it while the city went past the windows and Bex kept quiet, which was the most generous thing she could have done.

My phone rang. Rafe's name on the screen. I watched it ring three times. Then a text came through and I made the mistake of reading it.

If you apologize to me, I'll take you back. Stop acting like you don't love me anymore.

I stared at it for a long moment. Then I blocked his number for good, put the phone face down on my lap, and looked out the window.

A few minutes later the phone buzzed again. I picked it up ready to block whoever it was.

Kaden.

I opened the message and read it. Then read it again.

"What?" Bex asked.

"Dorian has a business trip. Out of state with a Chinese firm. Kaden can't go, his wife just had the baby." I looked up from the screen.

“And?”

"I'm going instead.”

Bex turned to look at me slowly. The grin that spread across her face was the most unhelpful thing I had seen all day.

“The flight leaves in an hour.” I added.

She laughed.

"So let me get this straight," she said, amused.

"You just broke up with your cheating boyfriend." She glanced over at me. "And now you're traveling with his father."

She faced the road again.

"That's convenient.”