Chapter Four
Looking back now, the way Victor and I met really was straight out of a cheesy soap opera.
That year, I'd just graduated from college and moved to the concrete jungle of New York, only to find out that the boyfriend I'd been with for years was cheating on me. He'd moved right on to someone new without missing a beat.
Crushed between Manhattan's insane rents and a broken heart, I dragged my best friend out to a bar downtown to drink it all away.
It was the first time in my life I'd ever had that much hard liquor.
By the end of the night, the whole world was spinning, and I was completely gone.
I was the kind of girl who could barely bring herself to ask a stranger for directions. But that night, with all that liquid courage, I marched up to the bar and hit on a gorgeous man.
That man was Victor.
That night he was sitting at the bar alone in a well-cut dark shirt, cool and striking.
His face was so handsome he looked like a model who'd stepped straight off the cover of a Wall Street magazine.
I watched him coldly send away the eighth pretty girl who tried to chat him up.
And then, for some reason, I picked up my glass, sat down next to him, and blurted out the most ridiculous thing.
"Are you going to take me home?"
He lowered his head and took a sip of his bourbon, and a low laugh rumbled out of his throat.
"I've never met anyone with that much nerve."
That night, in my tiny, cramped rented room in Brooklyn, we spent our first scorching night together.
Before that, I'd never lost myself so completely.
Once I'd had a taste, I couldn't get enough.
I figured we were both adults, and after the sun came up we'd never cross paths again.
Until the next day, when I walked into my interview at Summit Media with the résumé I'd stayed up all night revising, looked up, and saw the man in the suit at the head of the long table.
My heart clenched so hard it almost leapt out of my chest.
Once I recognized Victor, I dug my nails into my palms, forced myself to stay calm, and stumbled my way through introducing myself.
The second the interview was over, he stood up, leaned over to say something quietly to the HR people beside him, and walked straight out of the conference room.
Not long after, I got an official offer from Summit Media in my inbox.
On my first day, the company held a welcome party on the rooftop terrace, and Victor gave a speech as one of the top executives.
When the party ended, he cornered me in an empty elevator lobby.
"You're Ella, right?"
"Could you handle a long-term arrangement? Just sex. No feelings."
I'd never been a free spirit. Deep down, I was actually very old-fashioned.
But that night, under those eyes as deep as the ocean, my mouth made the decision before my brain could.
"I... I could handle that."
The moment I heard my own voice,
I knew I was done for.
I'd fallen hopelessly in love with this dangerous man.
After that, it was as if a blade had sliced my life cleanly in two.
During the day, at the office, we were boss and employee, nothing more, strictly business. At night, when all the titles fell away, we were two bodies that fit together perfectly.
Every time afterward, Victor would transfer a generous allowance into my account, and give me more Hermès bags and expensive jewelry than I could count.
Of course, what he gave me went far beyond the material—
Under his personal guidance and training, I went from a rookie who couldn't even read a PR report to a rising star at the company.
Every step of my career was soaked through with his influence.
Little by little, my restless heart started hoping for something it shouldn't.
I always naively imagined that maybe one day, when he looked at me, there'd be even a little real love in his eyes.
Until today, when I finally woke up from that dream.
So the endings in fairy tales are all lies. Putting on a pair of Jimmy Choos doesn't turn you into a princess.
Only when I was kicked to the curb like some useless idiot
did I finally, sadly see how wrong I'd been.
Something that was never mine to begin with would never be mine in the end.
