Chapter Four
889 Words
It was obvious that she'd just had a not so good conversation.
It was in everything, her jaw, her pace, the way she held her bag like it had personally offended her. Ryan spotted her from the rest area and moved quickly, crossing to the car and pulling the door open before she reached it. She got in without a word. He closed the door, walked around to his side and fastened his seat belt.
"How did it go?" He asked
Silence.
He observed for a moment — the set of her mouth, the eyes fixed straight ahead and then he started the car and drove. He didn't ask again. That was the thing about Ryan. He always knew when asking again would do more harm than good.
They arrived at her place and she got out, turned back to him with a smile that was clearly a facade.
"Thank you for today."
It was the kind of smile that was meant to close a conversation, and Ryan recognized it for exactly what it was. He watched her walk away, watched until she disappeared through the door, and then he drove away.
Naya paced around the apartment unable to do anything as her thoughts trailed back to Damian.
Damian. Damian. Damian. She would give a gut wrenching kick to his balls if she could.
How could someone be that annoyingly calm.
Kitchen to window. Window to couch. Couch back to the kitchen. The anger had nowhere to go and her body knew it so it just kept moving, replaying the meeting in a loop — his face, his voice, that document sliding across the desk like she was a transaction being processed. “Sign this. You're to resume tomorrow morning.” No conversation. No acknowledgment that she was a person with a life that had just been rearranged without her permission. How dare he.
Her phone buzzed. Ryan.
She watched it ring and put it face down on the counter and kept pacing.
It buzzed again a few minutes later. Her mother.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Hey Mom."
"Hey baby. How's your day?"
"Good," she said, and her voice came out warm and easy the way it always did when she was protecting her mother from something. "Just tired. Nothing serious."
They talked — her mother's shift, a neighbor's drama, something she'd seen on television. Naya responded in the right places and made the right sounds and when they hung up she stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment and breathed.
She would tell her. Just not yet. Not until she had figured out how to say it without making it sound as bad as it actually was.
She pulled the yellow blanket from the basket.
She was going to finish it tonight. She had promised the order and Damian Voss had disrupted enough — he was not getting her reputation too. She sat in the corner of the couch and worked steadily, the rhythm of the needles managing to get her mind off Damian for a while. She folded it carefully, set it with the others. Done. At least one thing completed tonight.
It was pretty late into the night when she finished. She decided to go to bed, not to sleep but to research more about the annoying personality that had refused to leave her thoughts.
She picked up her phone instead and typed his name.
Damian Voss.
The previous day she had looked him up briefly and stopped when the results intimidated her. Tonight she went deeper — scrolling through profiles, articles, and financial coverage. The business picture was exactly what she already knew. Ruthless. Brilliant. Untouchable.
But then she kept scrolling.
And to her greatest surprise he was pretty scandalous when it came to women. She couldn't believe she had missed it the previous day — it was not hidden, not buried. It was right there, spread across gossip columns and social pages and blind items that weren't really blind at all. A different woman at every event. Never the same face twice. Never anyone who looked like they meant something.
And then she found the picture.
It was blurred — clearly taken without permission, the kind of shot that got posted and reposted until it lost quality. But it was clearly him. Damian Voss at some industry event, a woman against a wall, his tongue buried down her throat like they were the only two people in the building. In public. At an event. Without a single apparent concern for who was watching.
Naya stared at it.
She thought about tomorrow. About sitting at a desk outside his office. About the document she had signed. About the fact that she was now legally tied to a man who apparently conducted himself like this in full view of cameras and felt no particular need to adjust his behavior for anyone.
She put her phone down.
Picked out her outfit for tomorrow — something casual, clean, nowhere near the effort of today. If he wanted a professional employee he should have hired one properly. He had forced her hand and she was going to play it however she chose.
She got into bed staring at the ceiling.
She had a feeling tomorrow was going to be a very long day.
- Writer
