How could I have gotten so lost in her fucking eyes that I didn’t see clearly? I always see clearly and know exactly what’s going on in my life.
“Lucy,” I say, calling her apartment—I’m not the least bit surprised when she answers straight away. She’s getting what she wants, after all. Plus, I have security at the front to make sure she doesn’t run. Lucy likes to run and then come back to fuck everything up.
“Atlas, the baby is getting so much bigger,” she coos over the line before even saying hello. Lucy likes to get me to bite, to lure me into her, but I am aware of her devious ways.
“Lucy, why have you been making calls to my clients?”
She goes quiet. Lucy’s deceitful, there is no other way to describe her. She worms her way into your life until she gets what she wants. And it’s always the same two things—attention and money.
If you’re paying attention to her and you have money, you are a winner as far as she is concerned.
Just like Benji.
Fuck, poor Benji.
“I want to find out more about you. Is that so bad?” she whines. “You are going to be the baby’s father, after all.”
No. No, I am not.
I pull the cell away from my face before I say something I shouldn’t.
That baby had a father, and he was someone whom I cared for deeply. Benji was one of the only people left in my life who didn’t use me—that was until the day he met Lucy. Then he fell victim to her conniving, calculating, and cunning ways. How he managed to fall into her trap, knowing full well what kind of woman she is, is completely beyond me. Benji was smarter than that.
“Lucy… Benji is the baby’s father isn’t he?” Silence greets my question. At least, I believe he is the father, but then again who really knows with Lucy.
“Yes, but you will take his place, right?” she asks, her voice hopeful.
“I’m helping you because that baby you are carrying is family, Lucy. You, however, are not.”
“You will change your mind when I have the baby. You will,” she says with determination.
“I’ll never be what you want me to be, Lucy. I see you for who you really are. Now stop contacting my clients, or I will be forced to take further action.” I hang up on her before she can answer and spew out some more shrewd bullshit.
The fucking nerve of that woman. She’s digging, asking for money from people she shouldn’t be discussing anything with. The next person she steals from will kill her. She’s lucky I didn’t, and the only reason for that is because of her sister.
Now, look where that’s gotten me.
My office door is pushed open again, and Sydney walks back in, without knocking as usual.
“They’re all incompetent! Thea trained them, and yet they are still calling her. And when they can’t reach Thea, they call me. What the fuck, Atlas… as if I fucking know the answers.” Sydney places a profit report on my desk, pointing to the figures in the right column—the numbers are all red. “As you can see the daily income was impressive when Thea worked for you, now it’s plummeting.”
“Get the figures back in the black,” I tell her, pushing the paperwork away from me like it’s burning my fingers. I don’t have time to run a clothing business, Theadora was meant to do that, I was supposed to have nothing to do with it.
Chloe and Jesse had no idea how to run that business. They had Thea doing all the work, and well now, Jesse, he’s dead. I let him off, only to have him scheming against me the following week. I couldn’t let that slide, so I took care of business. A bullet to his head, while his wife wept next to him. It was no less than what he deserved, and it’s exactly what he got.
What Chloe doesn’t realize is I did her a favor. Having a man like that in your life isn’t what a marriage should be. Jesse cheated on her any chance he could get.
It’s a Benji and Lucy situation.
How are people so dumb to stay with someone who uses them.
Sydney crosses her arms over her chest as I look up at her.
“You need her back,” she says, her eyebrows raised above her glasses line. “Apologize, then offer her job back. We need her.”
“No,” I tell her firmly.
Sydney is one of the only women in my life who hasn’t used me. And because of that, I have kept her around for so long she seems to think she has a right to talk to me the way she’s doing.
“It’s going to fail then.”
“I don’t need it, I earn enough money without that line.”
Sydney lets a breath go and shakes her head. “You do need it. It makes you good money, and one day, you’ll want Thea to come back to her job. Trust me, when you’re over this… this-is-her-fault shit and start seeing things more clearly, you’ll want her back.”