Page 28 of Craving the Edge

The office door opened and Rhys stepped inside. He held a phone to his ear and gave me a curt nod.

“I have to go,” I said into the phone and hung up on Gary mid-sentence. I glared at Rhys. “Excuse me, I was on a private phone call.”

I braced for the inevitable confrontation, my defence already forming.

Rhys finished his call, his thumb tapping the screen before he slid the phone into his trouser pocket. He looked around the cramped office, his gaze taking in the stacked files and the cracked paint on the window frame.

“Charlotte,” he said, not even bloody apologising. “I know you had nothing to do with this.”

I blinked.

“They’re paparazzi,” he continued. “This is what they do. They find a crumb and turn it into a frenzy. They aren’t your responsibility. As long as they remain off the premises, there’s not a lot we can do.”

He was annoyingly calm. It threw me completely off-balance. I’d been ready for a fight, but now there was nowhere for my anger to go.

“Tipping off the press isn’t in your profile, so don’t worry about blowback.”

I balked. “What does that mean?”

“It’s standard procedure for us to run a background check on anyone who’ll be in Declan’s proximity for an extended period,” Rhys went on, his dark eyes fixed on me. “Just due diligence. There are no red flags, of course. I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”

A background check? The thought had never even occurred to me. He’d dug into my life without my knowledge or permission. All the messy, broken parts of my life, the things I kept locked away and never spoke of, were probably in a file on his phone. He’d know about Dad walking out on us. He probably knew about Mum’s drinking and her new ‘self-discovery’ life in Bali. He knew Carla left. He knew I was alone. He knew all of it.

“And what page is that, exactly?” I drawled.

Rhys’s expression remained unchanged. “Declan is at a critical juncture in his career. He has a major bout in four weeks. His entire year pivots on this win. Concurrently, we are in the final stages of closing two significant sponsorship deals. One with a major automotive brand, the other with a global sportswear company. The optics of a public entanglement right now are…challenging,” he said. “His brand is built on discipline and focus. Anything that suggests otherwise can spook sponsors. It creates a narrative we can’t control.”

He paused, letting the silence hang. It was a well-practised move on his part, designed to make the other person confess or agree. I said nothing. I just watched him.

“I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong, Charlotte,” he added. “But this situation, the paparazzi camped outside, can be misread. All I’m asking is that you remain mindful of how things can be perceived.”

I heard what he was really saying. It was a language I understood perfectly, even with the slimy corporate jargon. You’re a complication. A dirty little money grubbing whore from a Brunswick backstreet gym that could cost us millions.

He wasn’t asking me to be mindful. He was telling me to stay the fuck away from his prize fighter.

“I work here,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “This is my job. Declan trains here. If my presence is a problem for your sponsors, you should find him somewhere else to train. Simple as that.”

I was marking my ground in the only language a shark like him would understand. I wasn’t some weak girl he could scare off with his big, scary words. This was my turf.

Rhys didn’t flinch. He just watched me, his narrow eyes searching my face. He was looking for a crack in my resolve, a flicker of fear he could exploit. He was trying to find the girl whose file he’d read, the one left behind by everyone she’d ever counted on, but he wouldn’t find her. He’d find a woman who’d smack him down the moment he crossed the line.

Finally, he just nodded and stepped out of the office, pulling the door closed.

The moment he was gone, a tremor ran through me. “Fuck.”

The audacity of him. The self-assured way he’d tried to put me in my place was disgusting. Rage shot through my chest and I wish I’d kicked the maggot in the balls.

I kicked the chair back from the desk, the legs screeching against the floorboards, and stalked out of the suffocating little room.

Declan stood just outside the office, his big frame taking up most of the narrow hallway. He looked like he’d been waiting. A muscle in his jaw worked over and over, and his green eyes were heavy with exhaustion.

I walked straight past him, not giving him a single glance. I needed to get back to my desk, back to the one small patch of ground in this place that was mine.

He followed me into the open space of the foyer. A wave of heat rolled off him, prickling my skin and raising the hairs on my arms.

“Char,” he murmured. “Whatever he said…”

I didn’t slow down. My gaze fixed on the familiar battered surface of my desk. “Rhys didn’t say a single thing I didn’t already know.”