The Billionaire's Fake Fiance by Annika Martin

Author:Annika Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Annika Martin

Twenty-One

Lizzie

* * *

I spend the night baking cookies, plain vanilla round ones. Most of them I frost as frown emojis, but a few are sob ones.

I watch Funny Face twice and sing along with my favorite songs. Cookies don’t typically go with beers, but they go with them tonight.

Mia gets home around ten. Wordlessly I hand her the plate.

“Nooo,” she says. “Fired?”

“It’s not technically a firing when you’re still on your probationary period. I learned that today.”

“Honey.” She grabs a sob cookie, takes a bite out of the cheek. “What happened?”

I tell her about the duplicity of Sasha and the betrayal of Mr. Drummond as she eats three entire emoji faces.

“I liked him. I trusted him. It felt so…real. But it wasn’t. How did I not learn my lesson about trusting guys like that?”

She curls her legs under herself, smooshing into my arm. “Screw it. Trust is an act of bravery. So he can just fuck himself.”

“I felt brave around Mr. Drummond. I went places with him I never even went with Mason. But it wasn’t really about that—it was like I had this feeling of discovery with him. Like Amelia Earhart, traveling through new territory. Except not alone. We were a team in a way I can’t explain. That’s how it felt, anyway.”

“Amelia Earhart perished over the Pacific.”

I groan and grab a frown cookie. “And I perished over Lexington Avenue. Because he takes what he wants. He warned me, even. He took and took and took, and then he didn’t even bother to fire me personally. What kind of an idiot am I?”

“It’s beautiful to trust. It’s beautiful to open your heart. Don’t let that asshole take that away. He’s small and mean, and you’re huge with your beautiful, amazing heart.”

“And in the end it’s the least of my problems.”

“Blow jobs for a buck?” she says with a wistful, hopeful smile.

“It’s not even funny. I’m so sorry,” I say.

“What do you have to apologize to me about?”

“Um, being the cause of angry loan sharks about to invade our home when I don’t have their money? I have two days until thugs with pinky rings and guns come to collect money I don’t have. I don’t want you in the crossfire.”

“Crossfire? What crossfire? Don’t tell me you’ll be packing heat, too.”

“Not funny.” I stare at the ceiling.

“If they think they’re gonna clip you for that fourteen G’s, they’ve got another think coming,” she says.

“What are you even saying?”

“I’m boning up on my mobster talk,” Mia says.

I roll my eyes.

“There’s a smile,” she says.

“That wasn’t a smile. I want you to start thinking about where you’ll sleep while I deal with them.”

“What do you mean, deal with them? What does that mean?” she asks with a horrified expression. “Lizzie…”

“Not that,” I say. “I only whore to strange men on the phone.”

“Mr. Drummond should pay. He’s the one who got you fired. Make him help you.”

Sasha’s words run through my mind. He’s disgusted…. “I’m the last person he’d help. He’s not who I thought he was.

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