Page 23 of Shattered Throne
What if I found someone to pretend?
Someone like Kim, preferably. She was smart, composed, and hardworking. Exactly the kind of woman my grandmother would approve of. Maybe if I talked to her, made it sound like a good decision, she wouldn’t turn me down. It could work. It could actually work.
No.
I shook the thought away before it could take root. She was my employee. That was crossing every line, blurring every boundary, putting her in an impossible position. It was also a huge HR nightmare. I couldn't ask her to pretend to love me.
That wasn't the kind of man I wanted to be.
My grandmother rose from her chair, smoothing her jacket. "Think about what I said." She paused by the door, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't quite read. "Don't wait too long, Xavier. Time is running out."
The door clicked shut behind her. I sank into my chair and stared at the ceiling.
I would find someone. A real someone. Someone who wasn't my employee, who wasn't dependent on me for her livelihood, who could enter into this arrangement as an equal.
I was Xavier Dubois. Women couldn’t get enough of me. I just needed to find one willing to play the part.
Through the glass wall, I could see Kim at her desk. She was typing something, phone tucked between ear and shoulder, completely focused.
Someone like your secretary.
No.
I buried the thought and opened the folder Sebastian had given me. That was what I needed to focus on. Not Kim Young.
I had to find someone else.
I would find someone else.
3KIM
The text cameat 5:23 AM, seventeen minutes before my alarm.
Oh Kim, I'm so sorry. My nana got sick and we have to fly to Seattle. I know it's short notice but I won't be able to watch Zoe today. I'm sorry, honey.
I read it twice. Three times. The words rearranged themselves into different configurations, none of them good.
No Dani. No backup. No plan.
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall. The paint was peeling in the corner near the ceiling, a crack I'd been meaning to patch for six months. The radiator clanked and hissed, fighting against the February cold seeping through the old windows.
In the next room, Zoe was still asleep. I could picture her without looking: small body curled around her stuffed elephant, dark hair fanned across the pillow, face slack.
My mind started running the calculations. I couldn't call in sick. I'd already missed two days this month when Zoe had that stomach bug. I'd sat on the bathroom floor with her, rubbing herback, watching my job security circle the drain with every hour I wasn't at my desk.
One more absence and I was done. I knew how this worked. I'd seen it happen to other women like me, women with kids and no safety net and no margin for error. One emergency too many, and suddenly you were unemployable.
The emergency daycare center I'd used once, in desperation, charged forty dollars an hour. I didn't have forty dollars an hour. I barely had forty dollars, period, after rent, utilities, and the grocery bill that kept climbing no matter how carefully I budgeted.
I could call someone. Ask for help. But who?
That was the thing about aging out of foster care. You didn't have a network. No parents to call in a crisis, no siblings to swap favors with, no aunts or uncles or family friends who'd known you since you were small. You had whatever you'd managed to build for yourself, and I hadn't managed to build much.
After Cole, I'd stopped trying. Pulled in like a turtle retreating into its shell. It was easier to rely on no one than to trust someone and watch them disappear when things got hard.
Dani was the exception. She had shown up at my door two years ago with a casserole and a philosophy that single mothers looked after each other.
I sat there for a long moment, phone in hand, options dwindling to nothing.
