Her Ruthless Possessor

“You’re firing me?” Cera Winslow asked the older man on the other side of the metal desk. She was still scrambling to make sense of the words that had just come out of his mouth.

“Yeah, sorry about that, sweetie.”

But he didn’t look all that sorry to Cera. Thanks to a bad dye job combined with an even worse comb-over, Stan Messnick had seemed kind of shifty from the get go. But now he looked a lot shifty. His eyes refused to meet hers and skittered all over the place as he said, “Things are a little tight right now, so I, uh, gotta let you go.”

Bull hockey, Cera thought, turning her head to look out Stan’s rectangular office window to the bowling alley beyond. Every single lane was full of customers. Customers she would have been handing out shoes to all night. Except she’d just been fired.

Cera turned back to face him. Funny how things had supposedly gotten “a little tight” just one day after she turned him down.

Actually, “turned him down” was a nice way of putting it. The night before he’d offered to escort her to the bus stop. She’d told him that wasn’t necessary. Cera had been safely navigating the city on her own since arriving here five years ago to get her dual certification Masters Degree in General and Special Education at the University of West Miami. But Stan had insisted and she’d let him, only to have the boss who was nearly twice her age try to make a move on her.

He’d grabbed her, pawing at one of her breasts as he offered to give her a ride home in his car…if she gave him another kind of ride in the back seat.

Ewww. Just ewww! Of course she shoved him away. She’d even threatened to tell his wife if he ever tried to grope her again—

And Cera realized her mistake with an inner groan.

She’d threatened to tell his wife if he did it again. Which meant if she went now and told Mrs. Messnick what had happened, he’d likely say Cera was a bitter employee who was trying to get back at him for firing her. And his wife of twenty years would probably choose to believe that before admitting she’d married a huge scumbag.

As if reading her mind, Stan smirked as he slid a white envelope across the desk toward her. “A week of severance, sweetie. Try not to spend it all in one place.”

Cera didn’t bother to point out that two weeks severance was the norm. She didn’t want to give Stan the satisfaction. Instead, she snatched up the envelope and walked out of that slimeball’s bowling alley with her head held high.

But she barely made it to the bus stop two blocks down the road before emotion overtook her. It was late afternoon in Miami, a full six hours before she’d expected to get off work. And the sun seemed determined to beat her down with the last of its heat before setting.

The bus stop kiosk was crowded with her fellow part-timers, but most of them were returning home after their shifts. Not before they’d even had a chance to start.

Finding a place in the small crowd, Cera couldn’t help but think about just how bad a turn her life had taken. Sure, clerking at the bowling alley had been a crappy way to earn a crappy wage with an even crappier boss—one who had no problem micromanaging her every move from his perch on a stool behind the counter while doing absolutely nothing to help out. But it had been a job. One she desperately needed. Thanks to the emergency dental surgery her little sister, Dana, had to have during her winter break from school, Cera was already two months behind on rent. Plus, Dana would be coming home for the summer in early June. She’d have to arrange travel not only for her sister, but also for Maria Callas, her sister’s therapy dog…

How was she going to keep the both of them and a dog housed and fed without a job?

The thought of all the impending doom waiting for her and Dana now that she’d lost her meager living blurred her vision. She had to fight back tears as she waited for a bus to take her home.

What was she going to do?

Despite standing under a shaded kiosk full of people, Cera had never felt more alone in her entire life.

Miami. The Magic City. Gus watched the sun set over his adopted city from the top of his building. Like most of the residences Gus owned, this one came with a spectacular view. In this case, four amazing vistas, courtesy of the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up all four outer walls of the condo.

Most people would have gone straight for the windows overlooking the pretty strand of South Beach. But Gus preferred to drink his evening cup of decaf at the west-facing window. Looking past the inter-coastal waterway to the city of Miami proper. The city, not the beach, was where he and his brother would be breaking ground on the construction of their newest boutique hotel, The Sorley Miami. The first one of the Sorleys without a casino, since gambling wasn’t legal in Miami. And the first Sorley to be run completely by Gus, with Max merely serving as a consultant.

Also, the city was where she lived. In Little Havana, a good ten miles away from this luxury apartment building. So when it came to sunsets, Gus preferred to gaze out the bank of windows facing the city. Facing her.

And now as the sun faded the city below to black and neon, he thought of her as he sometimes did. Okay, as he often did. Wondered how her shift was going. If she’d had any more problems with her boss.

Hank was supposed to be handling that situation tonight. Less than twenty-four hours after the man he’d hired on Gus’s behalf to discreetly follow her and make sure she got home safely from work every night had called in the incident.

Gus had been so enraged after Hank gave him the report, he’d found himself in his car, driving toward the guy’s place in Coral Gables. Ready to pull the asshole out of his house and beat the shit out of him in front of his wife and neighbors for daring to lay his hands on her.

But no…that would have been crazy. Almost as crazy as his ongoing obsession with her. And besides, beating the assbag up would’ve been too quick. In the end, Gus sent Hank, because he’d known he wouldn’t be able to control himself where that bastard was concerned. Whereas Hank would know exactly how to make sure the guy regretted his actions.

Which was why he valued Hank above any other person currently in his employ. Gus thought his older brother, Max, had been crazy when he’d given him Hank as a belated present for his thirty-first birthday. Gus hadn’t necessarily felt he needed a personal assistant outside the office. Especially one who’d trained at the Cordon Bleu after a stint in the Special Forces. It had felt like overkill to say the least. But…

“You’re a billionaire now,” Max had told his little brother. “Act like it.”

Gus hated to say it but Max had been right. And by the time his thirty-second birthday rolled around, Gus was more than happy to buy out Hank’s contract for another year.

The ex-Marine/assistant-of-all-trades had proven more than useful. Especially when it came to anything that involved keeping tabs on her. No questions asked.

As if on cue, the phone inside the breast pocket of Gus’s linen suit vibrated.

He pulled it out and asked, “How did the meeting go?”

“It didn’t exactly,” Hank’s gruff voice answered. “Got him here now, but he’s saying he already made sure the incident wouldn’t repeat itself. Thought you’d want to know before I continued with our little…discussion.”

The asshole had fired her, Gus translated. “When?”

“Earlier tonight. Bastard only gave her seven days, before he canceled the project.”

Gus shook his head. Seven days severance. And she hadn’t been working that job long enough to collect any real unemployment. Plus, she was already a few months behind on rent. Which meant she’d be completely broke.

Desperate…vulnerable.

As if reading his mind, Hank asked, “Ready to implement Plan C like we kind of talked about?”

Yes, Plan C. Maybe she’d be desperate enough to be open to the plan he’d been tossing around in his head.

Tossing around. Yeah, right. A stab of self-disgust punched him right in the gut. Like he’d only been casually thinking about Plan C. Hank was being tactful. They hadn’t just “kind of” talked about Plan C. Gus had already put everything in place in anticipation of this very opportunity presenting itself, including gaining access to her meager bank account.

Her situation had been growing increasingly desperate for a while now. And thanks to her recent job loss, she was completely vulnerable. He wanted to help her. Felt compelled to not only do that, but also keep her safe.

A gentleman would have figured out a way to do both without taking advantage of her.

But as it turned out, despite all his top-tier schooling and his recent billion-dollar makeover, he was still no gentleman. Not even remotely.

The fact is he wanted her. Still.

Just the same as he had when he’d been little more than a street rat. And even though those humble beginnings were now covered in a fine polish of money, cars, and Prada suits.

He wanted her badly. Too badly. He hadn’t been with or even thought about another woman in over three months. Not since seeing her for the first time in fifteen years back in December. He’d been driving down the street in his porsche when he saw her getting off a bus at a stop just a few blocks from his new building. She was with a girl who carried a curly brown dog. He'd later find out the girl was her younger half-sister, but at the time, he suspected she was her daughter.

Suspected and hadn’t given two fucks. Wanting her in Miami, just as fiercely as he’d wanted her in New Orleans, even if she was a mother now. He’d parked his car in the nearest empty space—a yellow zone. Then he’d followed after her, not caring whether it got towed or not.

He ended up trailing behind them during their entire day at the beach. Watching them read books in the sun, and enjoy a homemade picnic of sandwiches. Wishing he could be with her, while carefully keeping himself hidden from her sight.

When they got up to leave, he’d even gone so far as to call in Hank. Proving his worth to Gus in an instant, with his total lack of questions asked, Hank tracked them all the way back to the one-bedroom unit with heavily barred windows she called home. And two days later, he handed Gus a file that filled in the fifteen-year gap of what had happened to her since he saw her last, better than she probably would have been able to tell him herself.

That is, if she’d been willing to so much as look at him after what he did fifteen years ago.

And just like that, the obsession he’d thought he’d tamed with time and his “I’m rich, Bitch!” makeover came roaring back. Like a cock tease that only wanted him to think it was done messing with him for good. It was way worse and even stronger than before.

But now, a mere three months after finding her again, living miraculously less than ten miles away, his obsession reached a fever pitch. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Couldn’t stop thinking about her…and fantasizing. A couple of days ago, it had gotten so bad he’d had to go into one of the construction trailer bathrooms at the site and whack-off to thoughts of her. Just to get through the goddamn day!

He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. How much longer he could go without her.

But Plan C…it was unconscionable.

“Sir?” Hank said on the other end of the line. “What do you want me to do?”

Gus scrubbed a hand over his face. Willing himself to do the right thing.

Only to hear himself say, “Yeah, make contact with her landlady. And place the envelope.”

Dios, he was a bastard.

“No! No! No!” Cera broke off her stream of denials with a frustrated curse. Okay, the only thing worse than spending the whole day looking for “Help Wanted” signs in Little Havana shop windows? Spending the whole day looking for and not finding a job, only to come home to an eviction notice.

But that was exactly what she’d found on the door of her little lime green apartment. And more “Nos” poured from her mouth as she read over the notice, informing her she had three days to pay her back rent in full or get out.

This could not be happening. This could not be happening.

She only had $113 in her bank account. And good luck finding another place in a halfway decent neighborhood that would be willing to let her move in without a significant down payment. Besides that, she hated the thought of moving out of the unit without paying her widowed landlady, Ms. Knarik, what she still owed her.

However, Ms. Knarik had apparently decided to give up on ever getting the money she was owed from the grad student she’d taken a chance on two years ago, despite her shitty credit situation. Boatloads of guilt crashed down on Cera as she grabbed the mail out of the box beside the door.

With a whole lot of trepidation, she tried her key in the lock…and to her relief, it still worked.

But for how long? She really, really, really needed a job, she thought as she plopped down on the couch with the stack of mail. That, and a roof over her head. But now thanks to her lack of one, it looked like she was going to lose the other.

“Cera, pick up the phone! It’s me, Dana! Pick up the phone!!!”

Her sister’s hyper twelve-year-old voice broke through Cera’s desperate thoughts of future homelessness. Dana was seventeen now and didn’t sound quite so aggressively excited these days. But she’d recorded the ringtone before Dana left for Rise Academy, a boarding school for high-functioning autistic kids, where she’d learned, among many other things, how to modulate her tone for everyday conversation.

The only reason Cera pressed accept on the call was because she needed one good thing at the end of this horrible day. And her sister was the only good thing she had left.

“Hey, honey! How’s it going?”

“It’s going great, honey,” her sister answered calmly on the other side of the phone in careful, reflective tones. Then she asked, “How are you?”

To other people, her sister’s way of talking probably sounded a little wooden and a lot rehearsed. But Cera still remembered the child who couldn’t make any friends because she’d get so hyper-focused on a topic—like the answer to “how’s it going?”—that she’d go on and on for several minutes about minute details that no one but her cared about or even noticed.

So what sounded rehearsed to others, sounded like years of socialization work paying off to Cera. And she thanked God every day for the strides her sister had made at Rise. Even if she did miss Dana terribly, now that she lived over two-thousand miles away in Montana.

“I’m good,” she answered lightly, glad Dana, who’d been trained by experts to read other people’s body language, couldn’t see her wince as she told the boldfaced lie.

“Okay…is that enough small talk? Can I tell you my good news now?”

“Yes, honey, please tell me,” Cera answered with a laugh. She could hear the excitement in Dana’s voice and could picture her little sister sitting on her bed, petting Maria Callas, her therapy dog. “I could really used some good news.”

“I got into the New Mexico Opera program!!!”

And just like that, the black cloud returned to overtake the temporary ray of sunshine.

The New Mexico Opera Program was a new summer camp for teenagers on the autism spectrum. A credit to its founder, some Russian billionaire who’d taken a sudden interest in Rise Academy a few years back, it provided summer training to promising musicians, crew, and singers like Dana. However, as generous as the program was, all the training and rehearsal space at the New Mexico Opera meant it still cost a crap ton of money.

Which was why Cera did not consider this “good news” no matter how excited her sister was.

After acceptance, the program participants were on the line for room, board, supplies, and airfare to get them from Montana, where Rise was located, to the camp in Santa Fe. Which might not be so bad for the other students at Dana’s boarding school, many of whom came from wealthy families. But unfortunately for Dana, one of her parents was dead, and the other was either dead or still a slave to the addiction that had driven her to “sell” Dana to her older half-sister for a one-time fee.

The only real family Dana had in this world was Cera. Her jobless big sister who would be homeless in three days.

“That’s great,” Cera said, her voice weak with forced enthusiasm. “Can you tell me about the program again? I just want to make sure I have the details straight.”

Also, she needed time to come up with a good argument against it that wouldn’t a) trigger a meltdown and/or b) let her sister know how close she was to complete and utter destitution.

But as Dana rattled off a list of all the specialized master classes the program would be providing with renowned opera singers, Cera couldn’t think of a single legitimate reason against Dana’s participation. It sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.

One she unfortunately would still have to say no to. Cera’s heart sank like a stone in her chest.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she said, cutting her sister off. “Someone’s at the door. I’ve got to go.”

“But I haven’t told you where to send the check. Or about the opera we’ll be performing at the end of the program. Or about the special one we’ll be rehearsing in our workshop. It was written by two Rise students whose parents met because of them, they actually got married so Kenji and Sparkle could finish writing it together—”

“Can you email me the rest?”

“I guess, but—”

“I really have to go, honey. Sorry!”

Cera hung up before her sister could ask any more questions.

Yep, that was the way to teach your autistic sister good interpersonal skills. Cut her off, then hang up on her.

Cera sighed out loud. Well, now that she was good and depressed, she might as well go through her mail. She picked up the pile of envelopes on her lap.

Bill…bill…postcard reminding her she was now two years overdue for a dental check-up…bill…plain white envelope with no return address—wait, what?

Cera frowned at the letter. Her name was written across the front in strong, black handwriting. Maybe it was a personal letter from Ms. Knarik explaining how pissed of she was about the late rent.

Cringing, Cera opened it…only to nearly fall off the couch when she saw what was inside.

An unsigned cashier check for $15,000. Made out to her.

“What the…” she said out loud and her eyes immediately darted to the Memo line. Searching for some clue about why anyone would send her a check for this much money. Enough to pay her back rent. Enough to make sure she could do without a job until she graduated from her program in May, and hopefully started a new teaching job at Lighthouse, the private school for kids with autism where she’d done her student teacher hours. It would also be enough to pay for her sister to go to the New Mexico Opera program.

But the only thing on the Memo line was the word, “June” and the current year typed out beside it.

What did it mean? Was this a repayment of some kind? But then why would the issuer have written the current year in the Memo line? Or signed the check?

No, it seemed like—scratch that. It felt like this was some kind of payment for something. Something that hadn’t happened. Yet. Something she’d be expected to do, if she cashed it.

Cera dropped the check.

I can’t, she thought to herself as she watched it flutter to the ground. No, she definitely couldn’t…

Could she?