Robert froze in place, his face blanching in surprise. “Billings?”
“Yes, Billings, you fucking moron. What the hell did you do?”
This time, his surprise gave way to an anger almost as fierce as mine and an ego that did not know how to back down. As the words echoed between us, he stormed around the desk, till he was face to face with me in the center of the room. “Listen, Della,” he said, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but under no circumstance do you have the right to burst into my office and speak to me in that tone, in those words. You’re worried about your friend, but it is you who should be sacked!” He shouted every word just an inch from my face, all six feet, two inches bearing down on me.
On most days, I would have found him intimidating, but that was not the case on this day. “So you admit it then?” I screamed back. “You’re going to fire her?”
Robert stiffened and leaned away with the hint of a sneer. “It was quite irresponsible of her to lose the Billings account. We cannot afford to keep staff who—”
“You lost Billings, you unmitigated asshole! Sack yourself!”
“I’m the arse?” he said with a look of sheer fury on his face. “You led me on for months, only to blow me off, and not in the good, fun way either. Then, to rub salt in the wound, you screwed my fucking brother, and you call me the asshole? No, Della, I don’t think so.”
I tried to rip myself away from his grip, but it was no use. That was lucky for him, because in spite of his size, I would have torn him apart with my bare hands. “Is that seriously what this is about?” I shrieked, looking at him with pure disgust. “Because I refused to have sex with you, you’re firing my partner? Now who’s being childish and unprofessional?”
“You do read English, don’t you? Did you not when you came in, the one with my name on it?” he said. “In no possible dimension would you ever have leverage here. You don’t have the privilege of telling me where to get off, Della, and you certainly didn’t help me do it, did you? I’m the fucking CEO. You cannot come in here and—”
A swinging fist came out of nowhere and knocked him right in the jaw. There was a blur of color as I dropped back to the floor, and the next thing I knew, James was flying between us, tackling his twin brother to the
ground.
“James, don’t!” I cried, but it was too late. The two men were already ripping into each other like a pair of wild dogs, and there was nothing I could say or do to stop them.
“What the fuck are you doing, Robert?” James cried, throwing his brother into the wall while angling his body between us to protect me. “She’s an employee, someone who fucking works here. How dare you touch her like that?”
Robert hit the plaster with enough force to crack it but pulled himself quickly to his feet as a trio of pictures fell off the wall. “You can’t be serious, James,” he said, then flew at his twin like an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler, body-slamming him into the desk. “You have no right to lecture me about being appropriate with my employees.”
“They’re Dad’s employees, you power-hungry little fuck!” James’s eyes flashed pure loathing as he wrenched himself free, then hit Robert again in the face for good measure. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
“And why not?” Robert fired back, rearing back to kick his brother in the stomach. “You’re always swooping in to take everything—my job, my title... Of course you’d also take my girl.”
His girl? Our violent confrontation back in the penthouse wasn’t enough to convince him that I will, in no way, ever be his. And what’s this about James being after his position in the company? Why, because he made that one Japanese phone call to save his brother’s ass?
James took a step back, panting silently, a stream of blood dripping into his eyes. “That isn’t true, and you know it.”
“She’s a lovely kisser, isn’t she?”
“Stop it!”
“She brought me gifts and flirted with me constantly. And the time we got all hot and heavy, let me tell you, she was all over me, wanted to fuck my brains out.”
“Is that right? Then why did she leave in the middle of your heated kiss?”
“What can I say? She’s a head case.”
“That’s enough!” James stepped back again, lifting his hands slightly in a gesture of peace. “If this is really about Della and me, then you should take it up with me, not her and certainly not heaped upon Madison. You’re just mad you never had a woman reject you.”
“Oh yeah?” Robert’s eyes lit dangerously as he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “Is that what you want, to fight it out right here?”
I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing, but I was powerless to put an end to it. With a look of both terror and disbelief on my face, I backed to the door, trembling involuntarily as James placed his body between us once more.
“No, I don’t want to fight it out,” he replied in a quiet voice that seemed as dangerous as his brother’s. “I want to go home and fuck the girl you like so much, but if you’d like to do this first—”
There was a mighty cry as Robert launched himself off the wall to collide with his brother in the middle of the floor. Furniture shattered, papers scattered, and the coat rack in the corner went crashing to the floor.
With a muted shriek, I reached for my phone to call security downstairs.
A series of sharp cries punctured the air, and the carpeted floorboards literally trembled beneath their feet as they crashed into each other again and again. They were moving so fast that it was actually hard to see who was who; only their clothes differentiated the two, and in that whirlwind of combat, they were nothing more than a blur of color.