Casanova

Prologue

ELLIOT

I stare at the numbers above the door as they go down with each floor I drop; my phone vibrates in my pocket, I take it out, it’s from Christopher.

Warning!

Witch is looking for you.

Fuck.

I stuff my phone back in my pocket and exhale heavily, not in the mood for her shit today. The elevator doors open and I stride out, glance up, and catch her in my peripheral vision. I pretend not to see her and turn toward Courtney, my PA.

“Mr. Miles,” I hear her call from behind.

I keep walking.

“Ahem.” She clears her throat. “Mr. Miles. Don’t ignore me.”

I feel my temperature rise.

My nostrils flare and I turn toward the voice, and there she stands. The most infuriating staff member to have ever walked the earth.

Intelligent, bossy, arrogant, and fucking annoying.

Kathryn Landon, my arch nemesis.

The official wicked witch of the west.

A title well deserved.

I fake a smile. “Good morning, Kathryn.”

“A word?”

“It’s nine a.m. on a Monday morning,” I snap. “Now is not the time for”—I put up my fingers to do fake quotation marks—“a word.”

I swear she spends all weekend brainstorming ways to fuck up my Mondays.

“Make time,” she barks.

I run my tongue over my teeth: this bitch has me over a barrel and she knows it. A complete computer geek, she designed our new software. She knows she’s indispensable and holy fuck, does she ride my ass.

She marches to her office and opens the door in a rush. “I’ll be quick.”

“Of course you will.” I fake a smile, imagine myself slamming her head in the door as I walk through it.

She sits down behind her desk. “Please, take a seat.”

“No, I’m fine standing. You’re being quick, remember?” She raises her eyebrow and I glare right back at her. “What is it?”

“It has been brought to my attention that I won’t be getting my four new interns this year. Why not?”

“Don’t play games, Kathryn, you obviously already know the answer to that question.”

“Why would you give those traineeships to offshore employees?”

“Because it’s my company.”

“That isn’t a good enough answer.”

I begin to hear my heartbeat in my ears as I tilt my chin to the sky; nobody riles me up like this woman. “Miss Landon, I don’t have to justify any decisions on the running of Miles Media to you. I report to the board, and the board only. Although, I do have to wonder about your intentions.”

She narrows her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Well, if you are so unhappy here, why do you stay?”

“What?”

“There are a million other companies that you could go and work for and yet you insist on staying here and complaining about every little thing. I’m not going to lie, it’s getting very old.”

“How dare you!”

“I think you should remember that nobody is indispensable. I’m more than happy to