Chapter 3
For the sake of my health, I took the white pills Edward handed me without a second thought.
Those pills made me dizzy all day long. My brain felt wrapped in cotton, my memory started slipping, and my fingers felt clumsy whenever I tried to type on a keyboard.
Looking back now, I realize those weren't vitamins or anxiety meds. They were a slow poison, a custom cocktail designed by Edward to shut me down.
I pulled open the drawer of my nightstand and took out the white bottle.
There was no pharmacy label, only a sticky note written in Edward's handwriting: [One in the morning, one at night.]
I shook one pill out into my palm and stared at it.
Then I walked into the bathroom and dumped the entire bottle into the toilet bowl.
I watched the water swirl and carry those white pellets down the drain.
He called me crazy? Fine. Let's see how much damage a crazy woman could do when she stopped playing nice.
My phone rang again.
This time, it was the office assistant, and her voice was shaking. "Olivia, can you please come down here? We have investors in the office today, and the conference room projector won't connect.
"Mr. Grant is losing his mind. He told us if it's not working in ten minutes, we're all fired."
I couldn't stop the smile that spread across my face. The projector wasn't broken. I had locked the connection settings to the unique address of my laptop for security months ago.
Nobody else could connect unless I was there.
In the past, I always showed up early to set everything up, so the meetings ran without a single glitch.
They got so used to things working perfectly that they thought the equipment was magic.
"Don't panic," I told her. "I'm on my way."
It was time I visited the office.
I wasn't going there to fix the projector. I was going to get a real look at the woman behind the "Hot Romance Latte."
*****
The moment I pushed open the conference room door, the tension hit me like a wall.
Edward stood at the head of the table, his face a storm cloud, gripping a laser pointer so hard I thought it might snap in two.
A row of investors in expensive suits sat across from him, whispering to each other with looks of pure irritation.
The admin director was sweating through his shirt, frantically jabbing buttons on the projector. Standing next to him was a girl in a white dress, looking helpless with red, teary eyes.
I knew her face instantly.
I had never met her in person, but I had seen her selfies in the deleted photos folder on Edward's phone.
Sophie Lane. The girl who drank a double hazelnut latte.
She was pretty in a soft, harmless way. Her eyes were big and dewy, like a scared rabbit's. The kind of look that could make a man want to step in and save her.
When Edward spotted me, a flicker of disgust crossed his face before he wiped it clean.
He walked over quickly and hissed under his breath. "What took you so long?
"Didn't I tell you to stay home and rest? And who told you it was okay to show up looking like that?"
I glanced down at myself. White button-down shirt, black pants, flat shoes. My standard work uniform.
But to Edward, it must have looked shabby and embarrassing.
"You said the projector was broken," I said, brushing past him and walking toward the podium.
As I walked by Sophie, I caught a whiff of her perfume.
It was that expensive new scent everyone's been wearing, mixed with the faint smell of tobacco. Edward's brand of cigarettes.
My stomach clenched.
Instead of fiddling with the cables as they expected, I walked straight to the computer and plugged a small USB drive from my purse into the port.
"What are you doing, Olivia? Fix the connection!" Edward barked from behind me.
I turned around and looked at him, then at Sophie, who was standing there looking pitiful.
"Mr. Grant, the projector isn't broken," I said, my voice cold and clear. "The person trying to use it is the problem."
Sophie's face went pale the second I spoke. Her eyes filled up with tears that spilled down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. I'm no good with technology."
The moment she started crying, Edward's tough act melted away.
He stepped in front of Sophie like a shield and glared at me with pure hatred. "Olivia, have you lost your mind? Sophie graduated at the top of her class from an Ivy League school.
"She's one of our brightest management trainees. Who are you, a woman who stays home all day, to call her stupid?"