Page 6 of Ruthless Ambition
“No.” He shrugged. “He didn’t really mention you at all.”
“All right, people, let’s get this Monday on the road. Glenn, how are you doing with that hockey player?” Neil asked, and the Monday board meeting began.
My eyes stayed locked with Onyx until his smirk became a wide grin. I was going to kill him if I stayed here, or I was going to make a fool of myself, and I refused to give him the satisfaction. Pushing back from the table, I stood, halting Glenn mid-speech.
“Sorry, I have a call I need to make,” I mumbled as I met Neil’s curious stare. “I’ll catch up with you,” I told him and swiftly headed to the door. But not before I heard one of my colleagues say it must be my time of the month, and I faltered when I heard Onyx shut him down with a stern reprimand about equality in the workplace.
I may hate him, but he didn’t fuck me over whenever he got the chance because I was a woman in a man’s game. No, he fucked me over because it was personal between us; my gender was irrelevant.
That was the charm of Onyx Santo: he didn’t discriminate; he hated everyone equally.
As I closed the office door behind me, I let out a deep breath, feeling that I could finally breathe again. I had been dreading seeing him this morning. I got the message late last night that Hudson had signed with Onyx, and I hadn’t been sure which was worse, seeing it on ESPNews or the fact that I had spent hours yesterday afternoon finalizing the contract.
I couldn’t even blame the client fully. I had been on the receiving end of Onyx’s charm. He bamboozled you with his personality, his sharp wit, and his flawless flattery. Even when you were sure he was a con artist, his blunt honesty contradicted everything your gut was screaming at you, and you fell into his trap. Added to that, he was intelligent and educated; it was no wonder he was as successful as he was at his age.
I had the displeasure of meeting the snake at college, and then he got his law degree at the same school as I did too. I was older than him, but of course, he had to add insult to injury by being ridiculously intelligent. He didn’t flaunt his wealth, but he owned this building, and the company I worked for was, for all intents and purposes, his. In the beginning, he was just a silent partner. Most of our co-workers thought his uncle was the driving force behind the agency’s success, but it had little to dowith Kage Santo. The mastermind behind our success was Onyx. It helped that Kage was an ex-professional and was well known — it attracted clients — but it was the poison-tongued nephew who trapped them.
Or stole them.
Bastard.
“Let it go, Angel, you’re better than him,” I reminded myself as I crossed the plush cream carpet to my desk. Iwasbetter than him . . . maybe not when it came to bullshitting clients, but as aperson, I was better.
I hoped.
Opening the contract I had for Hudson, I read it over carefully. God, it was a good deal. Dragging the document, I hesitated over the “trash” icon as I considered my options. When I started here, my one advantage that I’d had over the prick was that I had passed the bar and was a lawyer specializing in contract law. He had his JD, but he hadn’t yet passed the bar exams.
I hadn’t even known he was preparing for the exams, and then one morning he just announced in the boardroom that he had passed the bar, and my one thing — myonething — I had over him was gone. The run-up to my own bar exam had been so intense that I gained about eight pounds through stress eating. Onyx spoke about it in the same manner as he would as if he had been telling us he ordered a morning coffee and they had made his order with soy milk instead of almond.
Tilting my head back, I considered the ceiling, wishing it were blue skies and a million miles from Nashville, where my most hated rival sat a few offices down from me.
So many times, my friends asked me why I stayed here, and the answer was, depressingly, that I loved my job. I really liked my co-workers, and Neil was fantastic. I just despised the guywho owned the company and who made it his mission in life to steal my potential clients.
Sitting forward, I placed my elbows on my desk as I rubbed my temples. I could try to be nicer to him. College was a long time ago, and what should be in the past really needed to stay there. I just had a hard time letting go of my resentment of the guy who played me for a fool in front of all his friends . . . for a bet.
I transferred colleges during my undergraduate studies. I’d heard of Cardinal Saints College — prestigious, elite, with an almost Ivy-League-like status. They said if you got your undergrad degree there, the East Coast colleges liked you more for your graduate degree. So, when the opportunity came up to do my final two years at Cardinal Saints, I jumped at the chance.
A few weeks into my third year, I had the incident with the masked thugs and Dave. All these years later, I was still of two minds about the outcome of all that. I may only be a contract lawyer, but we had law and order for a reason. It was not the right of the man on the street to be the judge and jury of their peers. It definitely wasn’t their right to take the law into their own hands, especially hands that were armed with baseball bats.
But at the same time, I had no idea of the horror that Dave’s victims had been through. To inflict that level of abuse on one person as if it were a game, against their will? No, I couldn’t honestly say he didn’t get what he deserved at the hand of the Devils that night. And that there was my problem. I believed in the law, but I also believed that the punishment the Devilsgave out was justified.
In the following weeks after Chrissy and I had spoken to the girls, we heard rumors that there were a few more “unexplained” dropouts of seemingly popular, successful male students. We knew they must have been Dave’s friends who took part in the attacks. Over the years, I had heard that some of them werearrested and charged for similar crimes or their actions when at college, but all of it was kept so quiet and hushed up, making it difficult to get the right story.
Nevertheless, by the time Christmas was approaching, I had felt the anxiety leave me when I walked the campus, knowing the threat was gone. A threat I never knew existed, but still, Ifeltbetter. All thanks to a handful of guys who called themselves Devils. The stories about them were ridiculous. It was impossible to believe that a group of guys caused so much trouble, or mayhem as they called it, and got away with it, and not only got away with it, but did all that and remained anonymous.
It seemed that no one spoke aboutwhothe Devils were. I’d heard one story that said they were never constant. It was a rotating group, and the members never knew who each other was either. Which was obviously ludicrous, as I knew one of the guys’ names from the night of the attack, Jer. He’d been named by his friend, and I had been determined to find him.
I’d never been a party person. I liked my own company. People, well, people were odd. And demanding. And intrusive. Chrissy was the best roommate ever because she literally left me alone for days and never needed to “check in” or randomly share her day with me. But my desire to find Jer and ask him questions was burning in my gut.
In the following weeks, I learned about Mayhem. Pranks, ill-timed stunts, usually some form of violence, and this God-like quality that students on campus revered. There was to be a huge party at the football house, and the rumors were rife that the Devils were going to turn up and mayhem would be wrought.
Shocking the hell out of my roommate when I asked if she was going to the party, I’d shocked her even more when she said she hadn’t been invited, and I told her I would get us both invited.
Five guys who were capable of beating up people and cars, and strategic enough to cut off escape routes, and clever enough to keep it contained? They had to be sports guys. Jocks may get a hard rep for being dense, but these were the guys earning millions while the nerds pushed paper. I knew that because I was one of the nerds. Sportsmen and women were disciplined. Committed. Dedicated. All five of them may not be athletes, but I was betting that some of them were, and I only needed one. Jer.
Jeremy Pittman. Tight end for the football team, six-five, broad-shouldered, soft-spoken. Bingo. It took me longer than it should have to track him down. He was slippery for a big guy, but find him, I did.
“Jer?”
