Chapter One

“Willow!” 

I shook as I heard my name being shouted. Of course it was my boss. Of course the intercom was right there, but the odious man chose to scream like we were in some kind of medieval horror movie. I sighed and walked to his office, making sure to make my expression neutral. 

I had been working here for five months and I was contemplating leaving… The pay was extremely good, but from the first day this man hired me, he had been nothing but a dickhead to me. I was sincerely tired and I didn’t know how much longer I was going to cope in this aggressive environment.

“You called, sir?” I said, with the most professional tone I could muster.

“What the hell is this?” Dimitri Rustanov, my boss, and inarguably the most hateful man I had ever encountered, threw papers at me, confusing me.

I picked them up. “Sir, the accounts you asked me to work on…”

“Do those look worked on to you?” he asked in a deadly tone.

I didn’t know what to say to him. I had had sleepless nights because of the project and here he was telling me I had not worked on them? I blinked fast, trying not to cry.

“I worked on them…”

“So I’m blind?” Dimitri asked rhetorically, then he sighed and continued, “I want them on my table in an hour’s time. You can leave.”

I was caught between the urge to run behind his desk and give him a piece of my mind. But I thought of the pay and all the benefits I was getting and I held my tongue. I had moved to Seattle about seven months ago, and had used up all my savings for housing and to survive. I needed this job. Desperately.

I picked the files up docilely and walked out of the man’s office. I stared at the clock, willing time to run so I could go get lunch—code for calling my best friend and telling her all the amazing things Dimitri Rustanov was doing in my life.

I heard the intercom beep. This time he was civilized. I went to his office immediately after. One of his rules was not to wait for him to say anything after the intercom beeped. I was supposed to go to his royal ass-ness right away. And be quick about it.

“Call Natalia and tell her our date tonight is cancelled. Send her…” he paused, probably thinking, “A Cartier bracelet. She was nice.”

How I wished one of my exes just woke and sent me a Cartier bracelet simply because I was “nice”. Was this how all rich people did things?

“And call the photographer and tell him not to worry about tonight.”

“Would that be all, sir?” I asked.

He looked at me strangely for one second. Then he sniffed the air. I frowned. Was this man okay? 

“You changed your scent,” Dimitri said cryptically.

“My scent?” What the hell was this man on now? Mushrooms?

“Your fragrance… perfume or whatever you call it,” he elaborated, waving his hand.

I lowered my eyes unconsciously, feeling the heat spread on my face. “I… yes I did, sir.”

“Change it back. This one is too light. You can leave now.”

I was shocked speechless. The audacity of this man. I was sure I looked like a frog, gaping at him. Cause what the fuck was this even? I swallowed my words and walked out, fuming. Who the hell did he even think he was? He was rude, arrogant and conceited, and now he added condescending to the list by telling me to change my scent? And what the hell did he mean by my scent was too light? Was he trying to imply that I smelled bad?

Well that was his goddamn business. Color me red and call me a rebel because the last thing I was ever going to do was change the scent. If it irritated him, he was going to have to bear with it just like I had been beating him for the past months.

The rest of the day went by slowly. I had decided to use my lunch break to work on the files Dimitri had given me. And honestly, I had done a piss poor job. By the time the day was over, I went to his office and dropped the files. 

I looked up a little too soon and saw him staring at me with some expression of longing on his face. I widened my eyes. The expression changed swiftly to the usual, bored and arrogant.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

The switch up was so sudden that I was sure I had imagined whatever had gone on. I shook my head at him, then said, “Nothing sir. Just came by to drop these and let you know I was leaving.”

“Did you call Natalia?”

My lips twitched at the mention of that particular call but I didn’t dare smile, or laugh. I didn’t love my job but I loved the benefits that came along. And the last thing I wanted to do was lose them.

“Yes I did, sir. She said never to call her again unless you wanted to put a ring on her finger.”

That, honestly, was the most ludicrous thing I had ever heard. Giving someone an alternative like that was bound to make them run even further from you, did Natalia know that?

“Well I won’t ever be calling her again, then. You can leave now, Willow,” the man said with a twist of his lips. Who knew the devil had a sense of humor?

“Good bye sir,” I said softly, then walked out.

It was six pm and there was almost no one else in the office. I walked down quickly and headed to the metro just as quickly. It was soon going to be dark and the last thing I wanted to be was in a deserted office after dark, all alone. My boss was probably going to hear my screams of agony and laugh. 

The first things I did when I got home were take off my bra and my shoes, then call Kendra, my best friend. I didn’t know if I would be sane without her. Talking with her about my boss had cleared that killing urge I had with him sometimes. And today was no different.

“He actually told you that you smell bad?”

Kendra was a genuinely nice person, and she thought everyone else in the world was just like her. According to her, Dimitri Rustanov was just a troubled man and if I showed him enough kindness, he was going to change.

It was a funny thought. The man was probably more evil than the devil, and it wasn’t my kindness that was going to make a difference. He could rot for all I cared, but the last thing I was ever going to do was be kind of a man who clearly despised me and thought of me as a joke.

“He didn’t say I smelled bad. He implied it,” I said, walking to the kitchen and taking a bag of chips out of the cabinet. I was so tired the last thing on my mind was cooking. So the next best thing were snacks.

“What did he say?” Kendra asked suspiciously. I knew she thought I was just exaggerating like I tended to do sometimes.

“He told me to change my scent because it was too light. Imagine. You can’t even twist this, Kendra. This man doesn’t like me and to add to that, he thinks I smell gross.”

“But…”

“Why the hell else would he ask me to change my scent to something heavier?” Kendra was not going to succeed in rationalizing this one. The man despised me for I don’t know what reason.

“What if this scent irritated his senses or something?”

I laughed. Kendra was something else.

“We both know that could never be the case, babe. If my scent actually did irritate him, why would he prefer the heavy scent over the light one? Make it make sense.”

“Some people are just built differently,” Kendra said stubbornly. I rolled my eyes.

“Oh my goodness, Kendra, this man is the devil incarnate. He hates me. Stop trying to see the good in everyone. Some people are just inherently evil. He’s just one of those people,” I said, exasperated. Sometimes, it was so annoying that she thought like this.

She was an extra optimist that much was sure. I wasn’t surprised, but there were just some things we had to be real about. Dimitri Rustanov did not like me. And I didn’t like him either so consider us even. Full stop.

“I still maintain he likes you, and that he’s attracted to you,” the girl said mulishly.

I sighed. It was a waste arguing with her. Once she had her mind set on something, nothing you said or did was going to get the idea out of her head. I didn’t care. So long as she didn’t maintain the ludicrous idea that my boss was attracted to me.

But the thought lingered in my mind for a while after we ended the call. It was weird… what if the man was actually attracted to me? And being evil was his own warped way of showing it?

I shook my head. It would do me no good to entertain those kind of thoughts. Because they were so far fetched it was laughable. I was sure if someone told him what I had been thinking, Dimitri was going to laugh and probably even fire me for thinking someone like him could be attracted to me.

I couldn’t deny the fact that he was attractive as hell. The first thing I noticed about his was general appeal. He was tall, he could wear a suit, he was articulate and his facial features were almost perfect. I wondered how the hell I was ever going to work if I spent all my time drooling over him.

I was quickly desensitized to his looks, when I started working and he started treating me like shit. Actually, the first few days had not been total shit. But in the second week, it seemed like he had some kind of personal problem with me. I couldn’t do anything right. He always had something to say about the work I had done, even if I felt I had done it successfully.

Of course, I wasn’t trying to imply that I was the perfect employee. This was my second official job, and I was still learning. I tried my best not to make any stupid mistakes. But it was getting harder and harder not to crack under this man who seemed to enjoy reminding me of all my mistakes.

It didn’t help that I had moved to a completely different city, and I was still trying to adjust to everything. I didn’t expect my boss to baby me. I would feel insulted if he did. But I was asking for respect. The least he could do was give me that at least. It wasn’t much I was asking for, was it?

I didn’t know why Kendra was so bent on defending him. She usually cut down everyone she thought was being horrible to me, especially when it was a man. So justifying this man’s behavior? Especially with a line as stupid as “he likes you that’s why he’s bullying you?” Yeah there was something up for sure.

But I didn’t want to look into it too much. I sighed and walked to my bed, but as soon as I was about to get into it, my phone rang. I looked at the contact name and saw of course that it was my boss. I thought of ignoring it but I remembered that it was due to the job that I could pay my bills and I picked the call. I fought the urge to sigh as soon as it connected.

“Hel—”

“Be at the office by 6 am tomorrow,” he said interrupting me, then he hung up.

I stared at the phone for a few seconds, in disbelief. I couldn’t wait to leave this fucking job.