By a Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy

My mother was still in the office when I got back. She’d gathered the troops in her office. Linus, Irvin, and Shayla were joined by a handful of editors. There were cartons of Thai food and bottles of wine on every flat surface. People paced and slumped and threw out ideas while my mother twirled her reading glasses by the arm and shot them down one by one. Irvin was kicked back in a chair, his phone glued to his hand.

“Mom? A minute.” I hooked my thumb over my shoulder, not wanting to air our dirty Russo laundry in front of everyone else.

She picked up her tea and followed me into the hall.

“Come on, people, focus,” Linus said, clapping his hands as we stepped out. “We have seventy-two hours to come up with a plan, shoot it, and write the goddamn story.”

“Did you talk to Elena?” Mom asked.

I nodded. “We have bigger problems than an egotistical model.”

“What?”

“More like who. Elena has committed to do the Indulgence May cover.”

“That’s ridiculous. Their circulation is barely sixty percent of ours.”

“She’s being blackmailed into it.”

She closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “Paul.”

“It seems he’s blackmailing her with a sex tape.”

My mother’s eyes opened. “That’s rather low even for him.”

“It gets worse. He has the tape because he made it.”

“Made it as in…”

“He had a year-long affair with Elena, which happened to overlap both your marriage to him and my relationship with her.”

It had been my father’s shirt she’d been wearing when I showed up at her apartment two years ago.

My mother looked down at the teacup in her hand for a long beat, then hurled it against the wall. Conversation in the room cut off. It looked as if we Russos were starting to have trouble controlling our tempers.

“Is everyone okay?” Linus asked slowly, approaching with caution.

Mom gave him the circle the wagons smile. “Everything is fine. Just dropped my tea. It’s time for something harder anyway.”

“Mom.”

She held up an index finger, effectively shushing me. Russos didn’t discuss things. We certainly didn’t admit to being betrayed. And we definitely didn’t show weakness.

“Come inside, Dominic. We’ll figure out what direction we should go in.”

On a sigh, I followed her inside and pulled out my phone.

Me: It’s going to be a late night. I’m with my mother in an emergency strategy session over the May cover story.

Ally: Elena? I am officially staying up for an update. I’ll put your dinner in the fridge and take Brownie for his walk. Let me know if you need anything.

Maybe I should tell her. Secrets only seemed to fester.

I grabbed a carton of drunken noodles and settled in with the rest of the team.

An hour later, we were still nowhere near a solution.

Linus sat up from where he reclined on the couch. “I’ve got it! Why don’t we put Ally on the cover? It seems her star is rising,” he joked.

My mother relaxed with a laugh. “It was a striking photo,” she agreed.

“What photo?” I demanded.

“Christian James’s Instagram,” Linus said, fingers flying over his phone screen. “I can’t believe you didn’t see it yet.” He slid the phone to me.

I felt my heart clumsily miss a beat as a chill settled in my chest. “What is this?” I asked, glaring at the photo.

“You didn’t know about it?” my mother asked.

“I had no idea,” I said, feeling the knife twist in me. Betrayal was the theme of the day. How many times could a man have his legs swept out from under him before he didn’t get back up?

“I need to take care of something,” I said, abruptly rising.

“You look comfortable,” I said, my tone too bland for her to pick up on the anger I was choking on.

Ally looked up from her cocoon on my couch and grinned. “Your fault for having such comfy furniture,” she teased. “Want to bring your dinner in here and snuggle while you fill me in on all the gossip?”

This charade of affection turned my stomach.

I tossed my phone in her lap.

She picked it up, grinned. And that knife in my guts twisted again.

“Wow. I don’t look half bad.”

“Care to explain?” I asked, my tone was deceptively mild. I wanted her to lie to me so I could call her on it. Because there were only two reasons why she’d be in Christian James’s photo on a bed, in an unzipped dress staring at the camera as if it were a lover. As if it were me.

“Well, I can’t explain all of it yet,” she said. “Because it’s a surprise. But this is what I was telling you about Wednesday at lunch. Faith and I went to his studio for that shoot.”

“Are you fucking him or using me?” I asked, my throat raw.

Ally blinked, and I watched the color slowly drain from her face.

Good. I wanted her to hurt like I hurt.

She took a breath and let it out. “You’re stressed and exhausted. I’m going to give you one free pass. But, Dom, you don’t get to make accusations like that,” she said quietly.

“Oh, I don’t get to ask why you were in his bed, half-dressed? So which is it? Fucking him or fucking me over.”

She unwound herself from the blanket and came to her feet. “Nothing happened,” she said icily. “Where is this even coming from?”

“Insta-fucking-gram. That’s where. Seems you’re becoming quite popular.”

“There is nothing going on between me and Christian. We’re friends. He did me a favor, and I did one for him.”

“Was the favor posing half-naked on a bed or fucking him?”

Ally wasn’t the kind of girl to bitch-slap someone. And thanks to my red tunnel vision, I didn’t even see her fist fly until it connected with my face.

The new pain was a welcome relief from the wound inside me.

“How dare you,” she hissed.

I grabbed her wrist and hauled her against me.

Her breath caught as our bodies collided, and I hated myself for going stone fucking hard against her. My dick had zero self-respect. I wasn’t so sure about the rest of me.

“Why were you even alone with him in a room with a bed?” The idea of her and that charming, slimy son of a bitch on a bed together ripped me apart from the inside. Even if he was just taking pictures of her.

“Do you realize how ridiculous this is? I wasn’t alone with him. And if you weren’t so busy trying to hang me for imagined crimes, you’d notice that was the same set for the video shoot the online content team set up last week. I was on set.”

She was trying to tug her arm out of my grip, but her free hand was curled into my shirt, holding me against her. I felt a trickle of blood at the corner of my mouth, and my tongue darted out to taste it. Ally’s eyes followed the movement. Her lower lip trembled, and I wanted to sink my teeth into it. I wanted to kiss her until she hurt the way I hurt.

Forget my parents—we were the fucked-up ones using a fight as foreplay.

I let her go and took a deliberate step away.

“Do you honestly believe I would cheat on you? That you mean so little to me that I’d be willing to throw it all away?” she asked.

Thinking wasn’t really happening for me right now. I was too busy feeling a thousand different knife edges of emotions. But did I really believe Ally would have let someone else touch her when we were so… connected?

“No,” I rasped. Her shoulders relaxed for a moment. “But it certainly raised your profile.” I spat out the accusation, astounded that once again, I’d fallen for it. Only this time, it hurt. It really fucking hurt.

“My profile? Have you lost your mind? I don’t have a profile! I’m Dominic Russo’s girlfriend, and I wore a nice dress in front of a couple of cameras once.”

“You’ll have plenty of opportunities now, thanks to this little pseudo-celebrity stunt.”

“I hope you were nicer to your model ex about her chosen profession,” Ally shot back.

“Don’t ever mention her to me again,” I snapped. She’d pushed exactly the right button to remind me of what I’d wanted to forget.

I felt sick and empty and like it wasn’t worth the effort to stand anymore. I leaned back against the wall and slid down it.

I stared at the ceiling, picturing the room above us. My bed. Our bed.

It’s where we started. Where we were at our best. The center of our fucking relationship. But that didn’t prepare me for this. I was shaking. Physically shaking.

“Dom?” Her voice was more gentle than I deserved, and she was kneeling in front of me. She should have been kicking me, throwing things, not looking me in the eye.

“He fucked her. While I was dating her.”

“Who?”

“My father,” I spat out. “We were never serious. Elena and me. She was using me for the attention. She’d tip off paparazzi when we were out. I found out, and when I went to confront her, she answered the door in another man’s shirt. He was still there, and I didn’t care enough to find out who.”

“It was your dad?” Ally asked slowly.

“He always loved to take things from me. Always a competition.”

She laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Your father is a sick bastard.”

“You don’t know the half. He made a tape. A sex tape. That’s why she backed out of the issue. He threatened to release it. Her reputation would have taken a hit.” Meanwhile his legend would only grow. The sixty-eight-year-old man fucking models forty years his junior.

“She told you?” Ally asked.

I nodded. “I went to see her. I was pissed. I thought she was doing it for attention. And she told me. Then she begged me to help her. Asked me to take her out, be seen with her so people would be talking about us instead of her. She thought no one would believe there was a sex tape if I was willing to be with her again.”

She wanted to use me again. That’s what they all wanted. And no matter how much I gave, it was never enough.

“I don’t know who I’m more mad at right now. You, your father, or Elena. And believe me, that’s saying something,” Ally said.

“I guess I have a type,” I said bitterly.

She pinned me with her gaze, daring me to say the words that were setting my tongue on fire.

“Users,” I said.

The hand on my shoulder fisted and then released me entirely. “Uh-huh. So you accuse me of cheating on you, and when that doesn’t stick, you go right on down the list to I’m a user? Guess what? You win. I’m more pissed at you.”

“It’s not really your fault,” I assured her. She hadn’t forced me to give her anything. She’d just made it easy, fun even.

“Dominic, I’m giving you a chance to shut the hell up. I know you’re hurt. I know you’re reeling. But I don’t know if I can forgive you for what you’ve already said.”

I didn’t need forgiveness. I didn’t want it. I was the one who’d been wronged.

“Is that what you were doing? All those gifts were tests to see if I’d accept them?” she asked.

“You took them. You don’t even put up a fight over staying here anymore. You’ve stayed here every night for weeks.”

“Because you asked me to!”

“Or is it because it works better for you? You get a nice warm place to stay that doesn’t require you to get up at the ass-crack of dawn for a commute. Is that why you were finally willing to introduce me to your father? Were you hoping I’d walk in there and magnanimously decide to pay off his debt?” The words were spilling from my mouth like I had no fucking control. I used to have control. Before her.

She sank back as if I’d actually struck her.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” I murmured to myself.

“Yeah. No argument there,” Ally said. Her teeth were chattering, and she was hugging herself. “You can’t take these things back, you know.”

“The gifts are yours to keep.”

“No, you ass. What you’re saying. You can’t take any of this back. You can’t erase any of this. You’re accusing me of using you. You don’t get to have a bad day and try to hurt me because of it. That’s not what a relationship is. I don’t deserve this.”

I was starting to waver. Starting to doubt my righteous anger. That only made me recommit myself to it. I’d been blinded by sex. It was just sex. Maybe we’d been using each other. Me for her body and her for everything else I could offer her.

What kind of a fucked-up foundation was that?

We were doomed from the beginning.

“You should go,” I told her. “You can get your things tomorrow after I leave for work.”