Page 66 of Total Abandon

“Well, I did consider breaking into his apartment on Tuesday to sniff his underwear, but I just about managed to resist.” My voice is laced with heavy sarcasm, but I keep my face neutral.

Dr. Pierce purses her nude painted lips, dropping brown eyes meticulously shadowed with autumnal colors to the notepad infront of her to scribble something down. “You know, this is our sixth session, and you still refuse to acknowledge what happened.”

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I stare at her blankly. The deal negotiated by mine and Anthony’s attorneys is that I have to attend ten therapy sessions, nothing less and nothing more. He knows me well enough to know my aversion to anything too neat and orderly, and I’m sure that him sticking me in a painfully clinical setting like this is nothing more than a sick joke to him. I see no point in trying to explain to a total stranger that my ex is a manipulative mastermind who twisted the whole situation to make me look crazy, so I keep my jaw wired shut.

My mind flits back to the moment when I walked into Anthony’s bedroom to find a hooker bouncing on his balls. He’d blustered and raged, and then turned to desperate promises of change. I’d walked out of the two story skyrise apartment feeling numb and having no intention of ever seeing him again. Until I remembered he owned the company I worked for.

Three weeks of cornering me at the office, turning up on my doorstep, leaving flowers and gifts for me in places I would find, and heartfelt apologies had me questioning if I was being hasty. Rants about me being unforgiving, excuses that he wasn’t a perfect human and that his relationship with his abusive mother drove him to seek validation in unhealthy ways followed. And before I knew it, I was thinking that perhaps throwing three years together away for one mistake was unreasonable of me.

It’s a strange thing, being manipulated. Before you find yourself in a position with someone close to you skewing your perception of reality, you would swear no one had the power to do that to you. Over time, everything you know to be right is chipped away, replaced with the seeds of doubt they plant. Maybe it was just for our privacy that he kept me a secret from the world the entire time we were together. Maybe it was just good for business appearances that he takes Manhattan socialites as dates to media events. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe I wasn’t loving enough, wasn’t understanding or empathetic enough. Maybe what I expected from a partner wasn’t realistic. Maybe I pushed him away.

A swarm ofmaybeclouds your vision and it isn’t until you wake up and smell the roses that you see it all for what it really is—a shitty person saying and doing anything they can to get their own way. After tentatively agreeing to work on things, the late nights at the office started again, the evenings when he was mysteriously unavailable without explanation, the silenced phone calls that he hid as soon as they came in.

Sure enough, my suspicions grew that he wasn’t the person I thought he was. So, I did what any logical and rational human would do. Not. I followed him and gathered enough evidence of his whoring that he wouldn’t have any room to wriggle out of it.

Unfortunately for me, my final mistake was that I underestimated just how calculating and malicious he could be. Say what I want about him, Anthony Sweeney is a smart fucker who outmaneuvered me game, set, and match. I can only conclude now, that when I initially left him, his fragile little ego was so wounded that he set up an insurance policy to get his revenge if he couldn’t pull the wool back over my eyes.

He asked me to call him multiple times because he “couldn’t hear his phone ringer.” He asked me to meet him at his house at times when he conveniently forgot to let me know something came up and he wasn’t there. And all of these requests he kept astutely to phone calls, which were later framed as him pleading for me to stop stalking him. It was a perfectly crafted plan, which all ended with me sitting here, staring at the perfectly shiny locks of Dr. Pierce so that I don’t get slapped with a restraining order and a criminal record. Pure, unadulterated rage burns in my gut, turning it to leaden stone.

“Will I get a straight answer out of you if I ask more questions?” Dr. Pierce looks up at me, her lips pressed into a flat line.

“Nope. Want to play I spy instead?”

Chapter 28

Lucian Driver:I have something. I’ll be back stateside after the weekend.

Zeke:Is it enough?

Lucian Driver:Enough for him to be extradited to Columbia and imprisoned, if that’s what you want.

Zeke:Call my assistant when you land and set up a meeting.

ZEKE

It's Saturday night, two days since Lucian delivered the good news that he will be bringing back what I need to strong-arm Miguel out of the picture. I should be happy, but every time I think about it, I’m left with an inexplicably sour taste in my mouth. On top of that, Diego is sick and has subsequently passed it on to his nanny, Maria, and Chloe is going out to celebrate her sister's birthday tonight.

All in all, I’m going to be left with very little to occupy my mind tonight but work. Which does little to ease my tension as my biggest problem right now is that Anthony fucking Sweeney’s company, X-tech, reportedly has a competing software about to launch in our most lucrative sector. The cork in the bottle of red in my hands pops softly out of the neck, and I twist it off the corkscrew as I scowl at the wall. Discarding it in the bin, I then sling the stainless-steel screw back into the drawer and pour myself a glass.

On the plus side, Chloe has proven an excellent outlet for my frustrations. Since that day in my office last week, as soon as Diego is asleep, we’ve been at each other like rabbits. I’ve made good on my promise to fuck her on every surface in every room of this place. She’s like a drug I can’t get out of my system, all fiery passion and sharp claws. I keep waiting for the novelty to wear off,for the inevitable indifference to hit and sway my interest elsewhere, but it hasn’t. If anything, it just gets better.

The soft click of heels sounds from beyond the kitchen doorway. When she appears, it feels like I’ve taken a steel-capped boot to the gut.

“Did I miss the part where Tilly’s birthday is being hosted at a rodeo?” I ask hoarsely, my eyes drinking in the wide rim of a brown cowboy hat and a denim bandeau dress that clings to every curve and finishes just below her ass. I groan quietly as my eyes land on deep red leather cowgirl boots with a small heel that make her look like she’s just stepped out of a farmyard fantasy. She grins, which makes my dick twitch, and walks around to the island to stand beside me.

Plucking the wine glass from my hand, she lifts it to plump lips painted the same color as those damned boots. “She chose the theme. I’m just doing as instructed.”

I watch her throat work to swallow the sip she takes, plagued by thoughts of stuffing my cock so far down it she can’t breathe. Fuck. How can the most benign thing from her send me into a sex-crazed spiral? Reaching out, I hook my finger over the banded top of her dress that sits across her cleavage and tug her softly toward me. She holds the wine glass up, squeaking as she tries not to let the deep plum liquid slosh over the sides. Sliding my arm around her back and down to her ass, I press my body against hers.

“I think you look too good to be going out without me,” I growl, dropping my lips to within an inch of hers.

Her eyes flash, but she turns her head as she lets out a shaky laugh. “No messing up my lipstick!”

I groan, burying my head into her soft neck instead. “I can’t even kiss you?” My grumbled words are muffled against her silky skin, sweet peach making my mouth water as I squeeze her ass roughly. My cock throbs painfully between us in my jeans, standing at full mast and begging for her attention. She lets out a husky moan in that smoky little voice that drives me wild, her free hand jumping up to curl into the back of my hair.

“Zeke!” she yelps in protest as I sink my teeth into her flesh, but even if I didn’t feel her thighs squeeze together against mine, Iknow by now my girl likes it when I’m rough with her. I pull back and give her a lazy smirk. Her hand drops from the back of my neck and her fingers tentatively trace the marks my teeth have left. Something dark and primal unfurls in my chest, confident that it will mark her for a good while.

“You did that on purpose,” she scowls halfheartedly, but I see the corner of her lips flicker.