Chapter 1
My boss was mid-meltdown when I started texting my online boyfriend to complain about him.
"Does anyone here actually use their brain before they submit something? This proposal is a joke. Pull this kind of crap again next week and the whole team loses their bonus — and honestly? Start updating your résumés."
Adrian's eyes moved slowly around the table. People stopped breathing.
Mine dropped too. But only so I could see my phone better.
Both thumbs flying under the table, I pulled up Ash's chat and sent the photo from last night — my legs in black lace stockings. Two messages followed.
Ash. My psycho boss just lost it again in front of everyone. I'm literally shaking. I want to kill someone.
Adrian stopped talking.
He'd been mid-sentence, tearing into the planning director, who looked one comment away from a full breakdown. Then his personal phone lit up on the table. He glanced down.
And froze.
The tips of his ears went red. Not pink — red. He flipped the phone face down so fast he nearly sent it flying, then straightened up and kept talking like nothing happened.
Too late. I'd already seen the screen.
Black lace stockings. My exact words.
My brain just... stopped.
Wait. Ash — who texted me every single night, who sent pictures of his abs when I asked, who once typed please don't be mad at me over a two-minute late reply — is Adrian?
My boss?
The man who makes me want to quit on a weekly basis?
Looking back, it wasn't that surprising.
Six months earlier, Adrian Vale had blown in as our new CEO. He worked like sleep was for other people and expected everyone else to keep up.
Within a month, I was ugly-crying in a bathroom stall on a near-daily basis.
I needed somewhere to dump all of it, so I downloaded an anonymous voice-chat app. Figured a random stranger was better than screaming into a pillow.
Ash's profile had a photo of genuinely impressive abs and a bio that said: yes, they're really mine. I added him on impulse.
Every other guy on that app either asked for my photo immediately or opened with something disgusting. Ash didn't do either. He just listened — let me ramble and cry and go off about my nightmare boss for a solid thirty minutes without saying a word.
Then, low and unhurried: "Hey, baby. Don't cry over an asshole like that. He's not worth making yourself sick over."
That voice hit me low in the chest.
I was done for.
We started dating online not long after. Every night, after Adrian had spent the day making me feel like garbage, Ash was the first person I wanted to hear.
He went along with almost everything I asked. The distance of a screen made me brave — brave enough to ask him to call me master, to send photos that made my face burn. He always sounded flustered. He always said yes.
So that sweet, soft-spoken man on my phone was Adrian this whole time?
The same man who could look me dead in the eye and gut me in front of a whole room — then turn around and beg me not to be mad at him?
One man. Two completely different people.
Adrian, you sick bastard.
