The CEO's Fake Girlfriend

Today is the day I make the devil get stuck with me.

God, I hate him.

I hate his perfectly pressed suits. I hate how he walks like he owns every molecule of air in this building. I hate his cold stares that make grown executives stammer like kindergarteners.

He’s a monster, pure and simple.

If I had three wishes, I'd wish for financial security, better dancing skills for Maya, and... well, I’d spare him the third one. I might’ve wished his dick shrank and made every woman on Earth repulsive to him, but he’s not even the womanizing type.

He's too busy being a heartless machine to chase skirts—or too busy dealing with the fallout from his ex and the tanking stock prices she caused.

For two weeks, I’d been trapped in this damn cafeteria, swallowing every curse word that clawed at my throat whenever his face showed up on the company monitors, while serving soup with the same hands that… No. Don’t think about that night.

The health inspection team had arrived twenty minutes ago, already poking around the kitchen with their collective frowns of disapproval.

They were here because of countless anonymous emails detailing expired products and fake meat the cafeteria had been using.

Who had spammed their inbox until they had no choice but to show up?

I hid my smirk behind my hairnet.

My eyes scanned the room for the next pieces of my puzzle. There, sitting with his usual crowd of ass-kissers, was Greg, the executive with harassment as a hobby.

His today's victim sat awkwardly beside his chair as he ate, her expression a mixture of discomfort and forced politeness.

The third piece walked up to my station — the man whose face didn’t match his work ID. Reporter Blake. He adjusted his glasses and flashed me a friendly, nosy smile as he held out his lunch tray.

“Soup, please.”

"Sure, Blake," I smiled back, spooning the liquid into his bowl.

Now where was my final piece?

He never came to the cafeteria — too good for peasant food, I guessed — but today he had no choice. The CEO had to make an appearance.

Other than my obsessive stalking sessions online, I had only seen him once when he was leaving HQ, all red and angry, and his car had zoomed off before I could even get close to him.

The cafeteria door swung open and my heart hammered. The air changed and conversations hushed, because there he was, striding in like he was entering a battlefield.

Lucien Hayes in the flesh, all six-foot-three of him filling the room. His eyes swept the cafeteria as employees rose on their feet and bowed their heads in greeting. I didn’t bow my head.

His unreadable gaze met mine for barely a second, but it was enough to make my skin prickle.

The monster behind the night that ruined my life and the debt that owned me.

“Get it together, Camila.”

I had never seen