Bought: A Bad Boy Romance Read online

  “Lara, you hate the man. Your father is lying in a hospital bed—”

  “I know. I KNOW!” I screamed, suddenly letting out all the anger that had been growing inside me. Not a small part of it was anger against myself, for allowing this to happen.

  After a long silence, during which I thought Callie had ended the call, she spoke again, softly, letting her voice carry her love for me as a friend.

  “Look, I know what it’s like. Did you hear those giggles? I was telling the girls about my new conquest. I’ve been seeing one of Theo’s friends. He’s a multimillionaire too. So don’t think I can’t possibly understand you. There’s something about them... these men... they can really turn you on, am I right? They’re charming and beautiful and they have travelled the world and they know how to treat people, including women. Especially women. Also, they are not wasting their lives. For good or bad, they are making a difference. But you don’t want this man. You want to destroy him. For what he’s done to your father. Remember?”

  “I do. I do remember. I just...” I stopped, not knowing what to say. I felt my face reddening, as if I was a little child who’d got caught in some mischief.

  “Lara, listen to me,” Callie said. “This is dangerous. You know what kind of man he is. Also, you’re lying to him, hiding who you are, because you’re out to harm him. You can’t let your guard down. Understood?”

  I did understand. Truly. But Theo’s eyes kept bouncing inside my head, hitting neuron after neuron, as if they were a terrible virus that was infecting my brain.

  I still felt the touch of his skin on mine, his hand hitting my buttocks, once and twice and then again, making my flesh tremble and spreading heat all over my body. I’d never been a submissive woman, but Theo was something else: he had awoken something inside me, something I’d never suspected was in there.

  “Listen,” Callie said. “Go out. Clear your mind. Date someone. Maurice. Why not him? He’s crazy for you.”

  “Maurice? Maurice is cute, but...” I searched for words. I didn’t know what was wrong with Maurice exactly. He was just not... hot? “He’s not... I don’t know. I guess I should give him a chance. But I just... I just don’t feel it, you know? He doesn’t move me.”

  “Oh, he can move you alright,” Callie said, giggling once more. “I can tell you that the man has got some good moves. I know from a friend.” More giggles.

  I had to laugh, despite all the situation. I could see how someone could feel attracted to Maurice. He was tall, handsome, muscular, and really likeable. He was just... not my type, for some reason.

  The fact was I liked bad boys. More specifically, I was fascinated with the idea of penetrating deep into the personality of an attractive jerk and discovering a heart of gold. It was a silly fantasy, something that only happens in movies, but I craved for it nonetheless. I wasn’t even trying to show Theo anything; I was trying to show myself that he was redeemable. Even if he was an utter asshole that had crossed paths with my family. But I had to grow up.

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to avoid any definite answer. I would force myself to consider the possibility. Sometimes it seemed that Callie knew me better than myself. She would push me to go out with her when I was depressed and just wanted to stay home, and we ended up having a wonderful night, with much more fun that I’d thought possible. Perhaps this would be something like that. Perhaps I’d go out with Maurice and end up entranced by him. “OK, I’ll call him. One of these days.”

  “Excellent!” Callie said. “That will help you clear your mind. A bit of shaking does wonders.”

  8. MARCUS

  “So how is he?”

  Marcus looked concerned, and with good reason. Dad was still in the hospital, and the possibility of a new heart attack was not very remote. Marcus had visited him, but dad was unconscious at the time, so he left after a couple of hours.

  I took a sip and looked at him through the steam of my latte. The coffee shop was small and our hands were almost touching over the tiny table.

  “Not exactly OK, but he’ll get better,” I said. “He is resting. The doctors say he must be kept under supervision for a while.”

  “And they will charge good money for that supervision,” Marcus replied with a smirk. “But what do we know? Whatever’s best for him.”

  It had been good to find Marcus here at the coffee shop. I had nobody to really talk about that, nobody who I knew would genuinely care for him. Callie was my friend, but she only knew my father casually, and the people at the company weren’t my friends.

  I took another sip and looked around. Marcus followed my gaze. When I looked at him again, he looked a bit startled. He moved his eyes back to the table, quickly, and said nothing. I was about to ask him what had just happened when my peripheral vision caught some movement to my far left. I looked again and saw a familiar figure waving slightly at me from another table. It was Sandor Vandell. He had left a dollar bill under the napkin container and was already leaving. The table was clean except for the bill and the napkins.

  I returned the greeting and quickly came back to Marcus. I knew I couldn’t tell him how I’d met Sandor. I trusted him, but not so much as to be sure that he wouldn’t tell my father about what I was doing. And I didn’t want dad to learn about it. It could kill him.

  The whole situation was awkward, though. How did Marcus know Sandor Vandell? I couldn’t ask, without revealing my game. He didn’t ask anything, and how did I know they knew each other anyway? Maybe he had followed my gaze because of some other thing. Maybe he was embarrassed by a completely unrelated circumstance. I’d never know.

  How quaint, I thought. Both sides of the hostile takeover at the same time and place, and me, in the middle...

  I waved away the subject. “Tell me about Monica,” I said. “How is she?”

  “She’s doing well,” Marcus replied. “We’re thinking of moving to New York. If... this... thing happens. We’ve always wanted to live there. But the company... you know...”

  It was too sad to be talking about this. Of course, Marcus had always been loyal to my father, and it didn’t surprise me in the least to learn that he’d put aside one of his dreams to remain beside his old friend. People do that all the time for a regular job, after all. How many people stayed in one city just because they work there? In Marcus’ case, there was also a deep sense of loyalty, and decades of friendship. But if Everwood went under... well, he and Monica would be free. Free and jobless, most likely, if Lambert decided to just close everything and use the space for whatever he wanted.

  I grabbed his hand. It was pale, wrinkly, and covered in a fine white fluff. The traces of life, of having lived. “We’ll miss you so much,” I said, “but I’m sure you’ll have dad’s blessing. We can always visit you in the summer.”

  9. VANINA

  It was late in the afternoon and Theo had gone home already. My apartment in the King of Hearts was bathed in a faint blue light, combination of the daylight that still entered through the glass wall and the glow from the computer screen. Smooth jazz flew from the speakers affixed to the walls, surrounding me in a relaxing atmosphere. Otherwise, there was absolute silence. I was about to leave already, but the music was so nice that I had decided to keep working a bit more until the album finished.

  It was then, as the last notes lingered in the air and seemed to fall down to the floor in tiny vibrations, that I saw the woman leaning on the doorframe. She was looking at me intently, with an expression that might well be of disapproval. She had her arms crossed and her head was resting on the frame, her dark curls covering part of her face.

  One thing I noticed immediately: she was astoundingly beautiful, like a Hollywood actress. Her face was as delicate as silk, her lips full and red, and her eyes were black, big, and attentive. She was wearing a dark tight dress revealing a perfect figure, with tiny hips and small but firm breasts.

  “Hello,” I said when I overcame the surprise.

  I studied her as she approached my des
k erratically. Now that she was moving, I noticed that she was at least slightly drunk. Somehow this seemed to make her even more beautiful, like those models with a rebel attitude who pose for edgy fashion websites and pile up thousands upon thousands of followers in their Instagram feeds.

  “So,” she said, “you’re the new toy.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t be,” she said brusquely, leaning over the desk and staring at me intently. “You know very well what I’m talking about. And if not, you’ll realize it soon.”

  This. This is what Callie warned me about. If I looked past the immediate threat, I could see that this woman was hurt. It was clear that Theo had a gift for leaving people hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am,” she spit. “You get all his messages. Now tell me your name.”

  I realized that she was right. She was one of the women who left voice messages for Theo. Now that she mentioned it, I recognized her voice. Her name was Vanina, and if I remembered correctly, she didn’t have any particular matter to discuss with him; she just wanted him to return her calls, since at some point in the near past he’d just stopped seeing her or talking to her.

  “My name is Lara,” I said politely. “Now, do you have any message for Mr Lambert?”

  Vanina smacked the desk with such force that I feared she would break the glass. Then she swiped the surface and sent my pen flying against the wall.

  “Messages? There are no more messages!” she exclaimed. “You know what fucking useless those messages are. And if not, you’ll realize it when you are the one calling him every day.”

  I tried to look cool and distant, to keep control of the situation, but this woman was making me more than a bit uncomfortable. I felt that she was telling the truth...

  “I will ask you to keep calm or leave,” I said.

  Vanina gave me a scornful look. She straightened up, wobbling a bit in the process, and I could smell a faint trace of alcohol in the air.

  “I will leave,” she said with empty eyes. “But answer me this first: how many times did he fuck you?”

  I stood up. I could feel my face reddening in an instant.

  “You’re out of line. Please leave,” I said.

  “How many times?” Vanina asked again. She wasn’t even looking at me; her eyes were fixated at some indeterminate point in the wall behind me. There was a look of despair in them, something deep and cold that sent chills down my spine. “I think he will discard you after the fourth or fifth time. I made it to seven.”

  She looked at me again, her head moving erratically as she tried to focus. She got closer to me, until our faces were almost in contact, and the smell of liquor inundated my nose. Vanina gave me the saddest smile I had ever seen. “Seven times is good. Better than nothing I guess. Well, I must leave. Good bye and good luck.”

  When she finished saying this, her big eyes were already meandering around the room again. She reeled back, but right when I thought she was about to turn around and walk out the door, her hands closed around my throat.

  “You’re a pretty, pretty toy,” she said.

  I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make any sound. Vanina wasn’t putting much pressure on my throat; she was just encircling it, resting on it with her hands, as if she didn’t want to let me go. Her eyes were now shinier, betraying the tears that were starting to form.

  “How young are you?” she asked. Her hands let go of my neck and started running slowly down my chest. They stopped at the straps of my dress, closed around them, and started tugging. “HOW YOUNG?”

  “I... I’m thirty-two,” I said. My voice came out weak.

  “Oh my, you’re older than me.” She kept tugging at the straps, and I feared they would break.

  “Please. Please go.”

  Vanina ignored that. “Fifty-two cards in a deck... plus some wildcards,” she said. At first I didn’t realize what she meant. “Fifty-two floors in a building... and some extra ones. I bet you’re living in the Joker.”

  I gasped. I couldn’t help it. So this was the game? Did Theo have one or two apartments where he placed his occasional conquests (his toys, as Vanina called them) just to have them close? If so, where was the other, and who was living in there?

  Vanina smiled again, as sadly as before. She let go of me and looked down. Her dark curly hair hid her face from me. I heard a really, really faint sobbing.

  “I...” she started. Her words were barely audible. “I... I love that man.”

  “I know.”

  I reached at her face, in an attempt to draw her hair aside, but she pushed my arm away with a violent blow of her hand. When she looked at me, there were tears in her eyes, but also a fierceness that brought back the fear.

  “Don’t go I know on me,” she hissed. “You’re just a toy, too. And you’ll be crying in no time.”

  I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. That I was there to get my revenge. That I despised Theo Lambert as much as I liked him. I wanted to assure her that Theo Lambert would be punished for the way he treated everyone, including women like us. But I couldn’t find the words, and when I did, she was already gone.

  Five minutes later I made a startling discovery. I had straight dark brown hair; hers was curly and deep black in color. Otherwise, she looked almost exactly like me.

  10. THE PINK SAND

  I had a weird dream that night. Of course, Theo was in it. How could he not?

  He was sitting on a chair in the middle of some kind of desert, and there was a long line of girls waiting for him to test them somehow. They were all dressed provocatively, with short skirts and ample cleavages. I was waiting in line as well, but my clothes were more conservative, appropriate for a reputable workplace. As the line advanced, I could hear the sound of soft slaps of hand on flesh, sometimes a moan or whimper, and then it was the next girl’s turn. The rejected women walked away looking down, in defeat. None of them was accepted for whatever was he needed a girl for. As I got closer and closer to him, I got more and more nervous, and started to sweat. I could see how Theo lifted up the girls’ skirts and slapped them in the ass, making their buttocks tremble.

  When my turn came at last, he looked at me intently, in a way that he hadn’t looked at the other girls. He felt me up under my long skirt, and then, without saying a single word, he stood up and put his other hand on my breast. I sighed as I started trembling. I couldn’t control it. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of his touch irradiate all over my body.

  Then came the slap.

  Surprised, I opened my eyes, and watched him in disbelief as he reeled back and sat down on his chair again. My left buttock was aching and burning. I had been rejected too. As I walked away, I could feel hot tears pooling in my eyes. A slight breeze made the sand rise from the desert ground. It was pinkish instead of yellow or white, a very fine pinkish sand that felt like very tiny needles colliding with my legs. When I looked back, I could barely make out Theo’s chair and the long line of girls was a blurry trace.

  Looking forward again, I spied some of the previous rejections half sunken in the sand. They all were trying to walk but their feet, and then legs, were getting more and more stuck in the pinkish matter, until they ended up stopping completely. After a good while, I walked beside Vanina. She was interred up to her shoulders, and had an expression of despair. She opened her mouth and spoke to me soundlessly. I wasn’t able to read her lips.

  At that point, I woke up.

  I went to work with a feeling of dread that I couldn’t shake off.

  11. A RELUCTANT GOLFER

  The traces of that unsettling feeling still lingered on me the next morning. But when I looked out the window, I found that it was a truly cheerful day, which made it easier to push the dread to the back of my mind. When I got on the street, I was feeling good already. I arrived at Theo’s office and started working on his appointments.

  It would be a nice day for him, and thus, relaxe
d for me: he’d have a couple of meetings at noon and he would play golf in the afternoon. That would leave me some time to sniff into what I found more interesting. Maybe have a little chat with Vandell about acquisitions... Sandor was much older than me, but that didn’t mean he was indifferent towards me. I had noticed the way he checked me out when Theo introduced us. This was something that could make it easier for him to open up.

  Theo arrived pretty early, as usual. He seemed pretty content, and didn’t make any quips about my clothing or general appearance. He stood beside me instead of rushing into his own office, and looked me in the eye as he asked me about his appointments for the day.

  “Well, you have only two meetings” I said. “You punish Frank Mill at eleven and Randy Forth comes at twelve thirty. Then you play golf with the sharks.”

  “... oh. Do I really have to play golf?” he asked, pouting his lips.

  That surprised me. I’d figured that he liked to play golf. I’d seen it as an occasion when all the machos from the shark world (millionaires and billionaires like him, who made their living buying and selling other people’s companies, with little regard for what they meant for them) gathered together to brag and share the stories of their conquests, both in terms of businesses and women. Hell, they even called themselves “sharks”, underlining the aggressive, alpha male, winner-takes-all philosophy they lived by. But Theo didn’t want to be there. Go figure.

  “I... I guess you don’t have to go,” I answered. I could think of other ways to keep him entertained, but I had made a point of not thinking about that. “I will make up some excuse.”

  He raised a hand, thoughtful.

  “No, no. I will go. It’s something you have to do once in a while.” He sighed and made a beeline to his office. But he stopped at the door and turned around to face me. “Will you come with me?”

  “I... uh... no, thank you,” I said, giving him the fakest smile. “I’ll stay here and take care of your matters for tomorrow.”