Empire of Hate (Empire #3) by Rina Kent

“My job doesn’t entail witnessing my boss receiving sexual favors.”

“Sexual favors? What the fuck is this, a detective show? It’s called a blowjob, and if I say your job requires that, then it does.”

“Are you trying to prove a point?” she asks, her face red, whether with anger or something else, I’m not sure. “If that’s the case, then I already know you get more pussy than Casanova during his prime and you love it. I get it, congratulations on the meaningless record. Now, can I please go home?”

“No.” I slowly push the one kneeling in front of me. “Both of you, out.”

“W-what?”

“Do you have hearing problems? I said get out.”

They pale, but not more than Nicole as they grab their flimsy bags, give her a dirty look, and saunter out of my flat, huffing and puffing as if they have breathing issues.

I stand and Nicole watches my every move, closely, without blinking.

“Are you going to sit or should I throw you out as well?”

She flops down on the chair, her gaze glued to the paper.

“Where’s my food?”

She fumbles in her bag and produces a container.

“Doesn’t look like Katerina’s.”

“The restaurant didn’t accept orders when I called so…I brought food from another place.”

“Always going against orders.”

“I couldn’t exactly force open the restaurant or make her fix you something. You know, with the thirty-minute time limit and interrupting my quiet night.”

I stare at her, but it’s not because of the attitude. I’m starting to think she’ll never lose that mouthy side, no matter how much I threaten to fire her. And for some reason, I don’t want the fire to disappear either.

The reason behind my pause is the way she’s speaking while reading from the document. Multitasking at its finest.

I slide across from her, abandon my glass of whiskey and open the container. Even I know drinking on an empty stomach is bad, and since food is the work of the devil, I wouldn’t have come near it with a ten-foot pole if it weren’t out of necessity.

I grab a fork and glare at the pasta as if it’s my next battle. There’s neither parmesan nor pesto, because for some phantom reason, Nicole knows I don’t like them.

Fact is, I don’t like all food, but those two were what made me vomit the first time.

Still can’t figure out how she knows about my preferences, but that doesn’t deny the sense of satisfaction that fills me at the fact. “Since when do you like quiet nights?”

She slowly lifts her head, appearing taken aback by the question. “I’ve always liked quiet nights.”

“Could’ve fooled me with all the parties you made sure to become the center of attention at.”

Her eyes glitter, turning a molten green, almost too bright to look at.

Too real.

Too…uncomfortable.

She’s every obscure emotion that religions ordered humans to stay away from.

She lowers her head, allowing a stray strand to play hide-and-seek with her face. “Back then, I was chasing an unreachable dream.”

“And now?”

She tucks the blasphemous piece of hair behind her ear and sighs. “Now, I’m just surviving, Daniel. I wouldn’t have worked for you and allowed you to treat me like the dirt beneath your expensive Prada shoes if that weren’t the case.”

Nicole is not the dirt beneath my shoes. She’s the rock in it. Always has been since the first time I saw her and thought she was a snobbish little princess.

She still is.

It doesn’t matter if she wears cheap clothes from a department store. Being a princess is an aura and she exudes it from a mile away.

“You mean to tell me you didn’t like the attention?” After enough procrastination to trick my stomach into accepting the devil’s fruit, I take the first bite of the pasta and pause.

Usually, I don’t.

Usually, I swallow my food without even chewing. It’s only a mundane thing I religiously do so I’ll survive. I’ve never taken pleasure in eating.

Not since I saw my father kissing that woman with food all around them; then a week later witnessed him fucking another woman, by inserting all sorts of vegetables and fruits inside her arse while he had his limp dick in her cunt.

Place of the traumatizing event—the table we ate at every day.

Time—when I was twelve.

I told Astrid I loved my mother’s scones and we often fought for them, but whenever I had a taste of those unfortunate things, I threw them back up when my friend wasn’t looking.

It’s a habit I had for seventeen years, so I became a professional at training my stomach on which times it’s allowed to be a freak and which times it has to act as if food is the creation of heaven.

The taste of this pasta, however, is…peculiar. Simple yet exquisite in its ordinary ingredients.

“I didn’t,” Nicole replies to my earlier question. “Attention exhausted me. I always had to look a certain way, speak a certain way.”

“Be a bitch in a certain way.”

“That, too.” She has the audacity to flip her hair and I’m tempted to pull her down by it. “Couldn’t let anyone beat me in anything.”

“Until you lost it all.” I take another forkful, pausing to savor the taste. “Hurts to fall from grace, doesn’t it?”