Maddie’s heart began to hammer. She wished she could say anything else but what she was about to utter.
“The list.” Maddie exhaled. She could name them in her sleep as she was so hyperaware of them whenever they were in her orbit. “Jonathan Polden and David Pettigrew.” Two of Elena’s two most talented fashion photographers. Both men had won international awards. “Stanley Links.” One of her well-regarded, successful newspaper managers. She swallowed at the next name. “Frank Harkness.” Elena’s business mentor, who sat on the board. They often travelled together. His picture was on her desk, for God’s sake.
She took in the paling face opposite her and balled her fingers into tight fists. There was no easy way to say this final name. “And…Richard Barclay.”
The strangled cry at the mention of Elena’s husband made Maddie feel like the shittiest creature on earth. That feeling lasted all of two seconds.
“How dare you!” Elena looked ready to slap Maddie. “Is this some sort of a sick joke?”
“Elena?” Maddie gaped at her.
“Get out!”
“I’m only being honest,” she said, her tone beseeching. “When he drinks too much, when we have to drop something off at your place or at events, sometimes he tries to pin an assistant against the nearest wall and get his hands inside our…”
“Disgusting lies!” The shout was so loud, the glass walls seemed to shudder. And Elena had never, in Maddie’s entire existence working for her, raised her voice like this. Not once.
Felicity threw herself through the door from the outer room, her eyes blown wide, heaving breaths puffing out her cheeks.
Maddie didn’t blame her. An earth-shattering cataclysm had to be afoot. Maddie shrank even farther against her chair.
“Elena?” Felicity’s gaze darted back to Maddie with an accusing stare. “Everything okay in here?”
Maddie looked down at her hands. They were shaking. This wasn’t how she’d expected today to go. At worst, she thought she might be confessing an inappropriate and hopeless crush. She’d figured she could brush off the humiliation, deal with a few gloating or pitying looks, and get back to work. But this… Hell. What had she done?
Elena was ashen, as she pinned her attention on her chief of staff. “Felicity, to your knowledge, has my husband ever touched you or any assistant inappropriately?”
Felicity’s face lost all colour, and she shot Maddie a glower that said shit, seriously?
Maddie sighed. Felicity had the worst poker face, but her loyalty to Elena was complete. She had a terrible feeling about where this was going.
“Well?” The rage was coming off Elena in waves. Clearly, someone—or many someones—was about two seconds away from being fired, and by now everyone on the floor knew it.
“No, Elena, your husband has always been a perfect gentleman to everyone.” Felicity did not meet Maddie’s gaze. A small flush spidered its way up her neck.
It was a lie so blatant that at any other time Maddie would have laughed. Instead, her stomach dropped into her shoes.
Elena turned back to Maddie, rage etching her features. Her shaking voice was just above a whisper when she spoke: “You’re fired. Pack your things. Get out of my sight.”
“What? I’m fired?” Outrage flooded her. “So that brutal truth you claim to love? I get it now.”
Instead of answering, Elena swivelled her chair to face the window, showing her back to Maddie.
Maddie squared her shoulders. “I see. Well, you’re a fraud. I can’t believe I thought you were…” She swallowed down the rest of the sentence.
“Oh, don’t stop there,” a low, harsh voice whispered from behind the chair. “No need to censor on my account.”
“Someone worth admiring.” Maddie couldn’t stop the hint of sadness tinging her anger, as she ground the words out. “Someone worth…” She didn’t say wanting. “You don’t want the truth and never did. You just like to win. Or was it that you just wanted me to lose?”
“Felicity,” Elena said, her voice a murmur. “Remove my former personal assistant from my office. Make the necessary arrangements with HR for a new one. We’re done.”
Those trademark words, normally delivered so casually, were vicious and cutting. The impact slammed into Maddie with the force of a pair of bullets.
Maddie turned to see Felicity’s incredulous face. The chief of staff tilted her head pointedly to the door. Maddie left Elena’s office, shutting the glass door behind her. Her last sight of the formidable media mogul, the woman who made her traitorous heart clench, was the back of her austere, black executive chair.
“Are you insane?” Felicity hissed the moment they were out of Elena’s earshot. “What on earth possessed you to tell her that? Why would you do that to her? What were you thinking!”
“She demanded I tell her the truth, and I thought she meant it,” Maddie snapped. She sat at her desk and systematically went through her drawers, wrenching them open, pulling out her possessions. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Elena doesn’t want the truth.” Felicity looked at her as if she were a dense child. “She just thinks she does. So we all give her an edited version. What you did today was beyond stupid. How could you not know that?”
“And what you did today was lower than low. How could you lie like that?”
“Unlike you, I have a survival instinct,” Felicity said. “Unlike you, I want to have a job at the end of the day.”
“At what price?” Maddie tossed her contact book into her bag. “Did this job take your morals in exchange for being in the inner circle of the almighty Elena Bartell?”
“Don’t you get all high and mighty on me! You didn’t even know who Elena was a year ago. It’s only since you’ve worked for her that you realise how brilliant she is. How remarkable. And how famous.”
“Don’t dodge the question.” Maddie stopped packing to study her colleague in dismay. A colleague she’d been starting to think of as a friend. “How do you feel getting me fired by lying about her skeezy, handsy asshole of a husband? And don’t think I didn’t recognise your handwriting in the comments on the list. You know firsthand what he’s like.”
“You got yourself fired, thank you very much,” Felicity said, not bothering to deny her charge.
Maddie saw the shadow of uncertainty in her eyes. “I hope that’s a comfort when the next assistant complains about how she had to escape Gropey Richard.”
“Please,” Felicity said with an indignant sniff, “stop guilting me with those big, sad eyes and grow up. It’s a scary world out there. We’re all just trying to keep our head above water. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t have done what I did just now.”
“Then I pity you.”
