"Hi," I say softly.
She rubs her eyes, and my chest clenches anew. Everything about her is fucking adorable, and it's making me want to lock her up inside of me, so I'm the only one who can worship her.
I catch her yawning, and this, too, is adorable as fuck.
"Go back to sleep," I urge her.
Francesca shakes her head. "Only if you're coming back to bed."
"I will."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
I bend down to kiss her, and Francesca sighs. By the time I pull away, she's already fast asleep, and I shrug into one of the hotel's bathrobes before stepping out of the bedroom.
After making a call to security, I answer a couple of emails on my phone, and several minutes have passed when I hear a knock on the door.
"Here you are, sir." My bodyguard hands me Francesca's belongings.
"Thanks, Tyler."
I've just placed her purse and camera on the coffee table when I hear her phone's alarm go off, and after a moment's hesitation, I open her purse to take her phone out.
All I'm thinking of is to hit snooze on her alarm, but then I see a preview of Mary's messages on her screen—-
It's at that moment I realize I've been fucking played, and the woman I saw as this delightful paragon of honesty...was nothing but a goddamn liar.
Mary
I normally don't have lunch out of the office, and when I do, I normally don't spend it in Starbucks.
But today's an exception, and the emergency comes in the shape of a pale-faced Francesca, who for once is completely indifferent to the mug of hot vanilla latte in front of her.
The fact that she's barely taken a sip tells me just how bad things really are, and it's making me want to give a certain billionaire a nice hard kick to his balls.
It's been a week since that night, and even though Francesca keeps insisting she's fine, I know her well enough to know she's been crying every night because of my incredibly evil boss.
"Tell me what happened, Che," I say softly. "It's been a week, and I'm really worried about you."
She shakes her head, but this time, I'm determined to get something out of her.
"I can't help you if I don't know what's going on."
A smile wobbles over her lips, and it's the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen.
"I don't even know where to start," Francesca says stiltedly. "The night of the launch, we were...fine. And the next morning, he woke up early, told me he'd come back to bed, but he never did."
"And after that?"
"I still didn't think anything was wrong at that time, and then I remembered..." Francesca breathes hard. "We had this talk the night before. I told him I had a hard time believing he found me attractive, he told me he did, and...long story short, that was why I did that."
Her voice catches, and the sound makes me feel so helpless.
'That' was Francesca sharing a selfie on social media, and captioning it with a question: 'Am I hot?' It's something she's never done before, but what's more devastating than anything else is Francesca tagging my boss in the photo...and then Nicolaas publicly blocking her a few seconds after.
I look at my friend, and the way she forces herself to smile for my benefit makes me want to start crying.
"I'm so, so sorry about this, Che. I wish I knew how to explain this, but I don't. He's never been cruel like this—-"
"Maybe for him, it wasn't cruel."
Francesca's tone is dull, and I've never seen her this...unreachable. She's always been the type of person who's as quick to laugh as she's quick to lose her temper, but now even her eyes seem lost.
"If you'd like me to talk to him—-"
Francesca quickly shakes her head. "No."
"What if there's some kind of misunder—-"
"All I want is to move on," Francesca tells me quietly, "so can we just stop talking about him?"
I want to say so many other things, but when I see the way my friend's hands start to shake as she reaches for her coffee—-
Everything becomes painfully clear.
"You're in love with him," I whisper.
Francesca quickly takes a gulp of her coffee, but it doesn't hide the way her tears have started to fall.
Guilt eats me alive, but I can't think of any way to comfort my friend, and my heart is still heavy by the time Francesca and I part ways.
Stone and Nicolaas are already in the conference room when I get back to the office, and when I see the latter reading a document like today is just another ordinary day, and he hasn't ruined someone else's life—-
I swing hard, and I hear both my bosses curse.
Nicolaas' lip is bleeding while Stone stares at me like I've gone mad.
And maybe I have.
I can't believe I've just slapped Nicolaas, but instead of feeling awful, I hear myself yelling, "Asshole!"