The Man I Used to Forget Love CHAPTER 5

But then there was the time that Derrick had ripped some poor soul apart in a particularly vicious boardroom meeting with Rica’s help, and he had come home gruff and taciturn. He was in their study in their penthouse flat with a glass of whisky that he had forgotten about, and the city lights reflecting in his eyes like coins.

“Derrick, you don’t have to prove yourself to me,” she said from where she stood in the door frame.

“Do you think I’m proving myself?” he asked without looking at her.

And she walked toward him. He set down his glass with care. And when she touched him, he roughly pulled her into his lap. It was too blunt for all of their polished touches before the world. He nuzzled her neck. The chair creaked. She could feel his mouth moving over her pulse. They never even made it to the bed. And then later, with her head on his chest, he spoke.

“My father trusted the wrong people. And that’s how he lost everything the company, the house, the reputation that took him thirty years to build. I was sixteen then. I learned the lesson too young that love is a danger. That the moment you let someone get close enough to matter, you give them the knife.”

Rica raised her head. In the dim light, he appeared younger, the usual restraint gone for an expression that could be one of memories. “Still, you chose me.”

“You chose leverage.” His hand rested on her back. “Anything else is… unexpected.”

She could have insisted. She could have asked for explanations, for more answers, the soft words of those who still believed in forever. Instead she pressed her cheek against his heart and let the silence speak for truths neither of them was willing to say. His arms closed around her in an embrace that spoke of sacrifices made that could not be repeated.

The first real surprise came three weeks after.

She had been going over some acquisition paperwork in the penthouse study when her phone buzzed in a call from an unknown number. Outside the window, the city sparkled with ambition and light. She nearly did not answer the call. Then she noticed who was calling once she picked it up.

"Jessica?"

The usually calm and confident voice of her secretary shook with fear. "Please do not hang up, I have to tell you something about Liam. About his next move."

Rica's hand tightened around the phone. "Speak."

"He is not only after the Chen deal. There was a sharp inhalation of breath on the other end. He has been collaborating with someone from within Whitestone. Someone close to Derrick. He even has the old files on Derrick's family.Things about the year his father lost everything. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know how deep it went. But he’s using me to get messages out. And Rica…” Her voice dropped, almost a whisper. “He still talks about you. Like you’re the one thing he refuses to lose completely. Like the wedding photos were a personal insult he can’t forgive.”

The line went dead.

Rica stood frozen in the study, the phone still pressed to her ear, while the city continued its indifferent glitter beyond the glass. The documents on the desk blurred. For a moment she was back in the doorway of the Upper West Side apartment, watching Liam’s hands in another woman’s hair, feeling the quiet collapse of five years. Then the present reasserted itself Derrick’s penthouse, Derrick’s ring on her finger, the contract that had never accounted for the possibility that she might begin to care whether he walked out of this war intact.

When Derrick walked in twenty minutes later she was still standing there. He took one look at her face and the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

“What happened?”

She told him everything. The words came out steady, clinical, the way she had learned to brief him on market movements and hostile bids. His expression never changed, but something lethal moved behind his eyes something that made the winter-water calm look like the surface of a frozen lake over deep, dangerous water.

“Who inside Whitestone?”

“She didn’t say. Only that it’s someone close.”

Derrick’s hand found hers, gripping once, hard enough that she felt the press of bone. “Then we accelerate. The next public event is the Chen gala in ten days. Hartley will be there. So will every board member who matters. We make the cut so clean he never sees the blade until it’s already in.”

Rica nodded. The plan was solid. The leverage was obvious. Yet in the privacy of the great marble bathroom where she stood surrounded by the spray from the shower, with the steam swirling about and fogging the mirror, Rica looked at herself and felt the first genuine fissure in the wall of defenses that she had erected since walking out of Liam’s apartment.

Somewhere amidst the practiced smile and genuine warmth, in the quiet confessions in the study and the warmth of Derrick’s touch as he placed his hand on her waist, she started caring if Derrick White walked away from this fight whole.

That was one thing that hadn’t been included in the contract.

The water stopped running. The steam dissipated. She saw herself in the now clear mirror no longer as the girl who had counted coins and held out for forever but as someone else: tougher, more ruthless, and a whole lot more dangerous. As someone who knew the deadliest weapons were those you learned how to wield without blinking an eye.

When she rejoined Derrick in the bedroom, he was already waiting, perched at the end of the bed, the glow from the city lights casting a silvery sheen over his shoulders. He looked up as she came into the room, and for a second there was nothing but silence between the two of them. Then he held out his hand.

"Come here." 

She went to him. He pulled her down beside him, his arm going around her with all the conviction of ownership. His lips brushed against her forehead.

"Whatever's coming," he said softly, "we stand up against it together. That is not something that is written in the contract. That is something I choose."

Rica closed her eyes. The same old mantra would never rise and fall within her like a tide turning at last. She did not respond with words. She merely tilted her head into the crook of his neck and let the silence speak what neither of them could yet put into words.

Outside the city kept turning. Within the penthouse, the rules were now different. The knife was in motion already. For the first time since she had put her name next to his, Rica Bloom wasn't sure whether she or he was the weapon and the other one the prey.