My eyes shot to the clock on my desk for about the twentieth time today.
I was barely focused on my reports, but the conversation with Dom was still rolling around my mind for days.
And now he’d left. He’d actually left. After everything he’d said.
Cat told me last night, which meant I had to force myself to wade through all of his unread texts. Hundreds of words about how he loved me, what I meant to him, and how he couldn’t bear to be apart from me, all while feeling sick from his betrayal.
I had cleaned my desk multiple times, but it didn’t make a difference when I could still feel him there.
But it had nothing to do with me. He explained that his sisters needed him, and I couldn’t take that personally.
I’d met his sisters occasionally over the years. Dom was determined to keep me away from his parents as much as possible, and his parents refused to let his sisters visit him.
He had told me what his parents were like, everything he had been through, how much his sisters meant to him.
But it didn’t stop the childish sting of disappointment that he left so quickly. He didn’t say how long he was going for. And I definitely didn’t listen to his last message twice just to see if he’d said how long it would be until I saw him again.
Because I was furious with Dom.
I slowly closed my eyes, my jaw tight, clenching the pen in my hand as that familiar nausea found me, the pain in my heart beating steadily to the rhythm of the clock.
He betrayed me. Molly was coming home soon, and then what?
I knew it would be a struggle, not just because of what happened with Dom, but everything that had gone unresolved from our argument. But, after letting him suck my cock until I came and forcing me in his office, ‘resolved’ barely covered it.
My eyes flicked to the clock again.
I pushed my hair back from my face. Elbows on the desk, I pressed my palm into the centre of my forehead, as if I could squeeze out every awful memory that had gathered since Molly’s goodbye party.
I jumped as the intercom buzzed, letting out a deep sigh. 10AM. They were right on time.
“Mr Fischer, Lord and Darcy Hastings here for you.”
“Thank you, Anita. Send them in.”
I straightened the black binder in front of me, the one that Darcy had handed out in his presentation last week. I was still reeling from everything that had happened, and I didn’t even know if I could talk to them both when chaos reigned inside me.But I was the head of the Foundation, and I couldn’t show any weakness.
They both prowled toward the desk. Even at eighty, Lord Hastings still held his domineering air. But I wasn’t going to be cowed.
“Take a seat, please,” I said, waving my hand in front of me.
They both sat down, and I could tell from the looks on their faces that a plot had been brewing since the last time I saw them.
“A lovely day today, isn’t it?” I nodded to the windows on my left. Small talk was the worst kind of currency, yet it was what paid in the end. Thankfully, Lord Hastings had other things on his mind.
“We need to discuss something far more pressing than the weather.” He pierced his cane into the carpet between his spread legs, his wrinkled palms pressing down on the gold ball at the top.
“Oh?” I tilted my head. “Well. You received our bid, I assume. I thought that was why you were here?”
Darcy threw a smirk at his grandfather. “No, actually,” he said. “We’ve come to tell you that we will be eliminating The Fischer Foundation from the bidding.”
“Excuse me?”
Lord Hastings picked up the baton, his fingers twitching around his walking stick. “It’s clear from the past three years that The Fischer Foundation is unstable. Ironic, I know. But I’ve had a front row seat to the discord sown between you andMallory. And, frankly, we don’t feel confident in putting our project in your hands.”
I took a moment to press my tongue against the top of my mouth, holding back my laughter. I should have expected it. It was another cost of letting myself be swept away by Dom and losing focus on what was important.
“Despite the track record we’ve had with other projects in the past two years?” I asked.