Waking me up during the middle of the night is a dangerous proposition. So the moment my cell phone starts ringing like crazy, I know that whoever dared to call me has nothing but bad news to deliver

Still half-asleep, I listen as the night shift team leader, Anna, tells me I’m needed at Domina. And that it is an emergency. She tries to explain it to me, but her panicky ramblings only tell me one thing—I need to get to the Domina building.

Fast.

And that’s why, despite it being three in the morning, I’m sitting in the back of my Maybach—my driver with his foot heavy on the accelerator—as we make our way into Queens. Still bleary-eyed, I try to think of what could’ve happened that required the team leader to call me in the middle of the night.

A fire?

A comet heading toward our building?

Or did Austin hire a rogue team of Marines to storm my offices? Seriously, I won’t be that surprised if he went that far, to be honest. He knows I’m playing for keeps, and so is he.

“Thank you John,” I tell the driver as he stops right in front of Domina’s building, where both the offices and manufacturing floor are. Jumping out of the car, I step into the dead of the night and rush toward the building. Inside, I head straight toward the manufacturing floor, where a small army of women—my always capable night shift—is idly sitting on the workbenches chattering away.

“What the hell’s going on?” I ask, and they all look at me with an apologetic expression. The shift manager walks toward me and, sighing heavily, shakes her head.

“I tried to deal with it, but...we have a problem, Ms. Armstrong,” Anna tells me.

“I can see that. Why aren’t the girls at work? I know this work is exhausting but remember that there’ll be a nice bonus for everyone working on this project at the end of the month. I’ll take care of you, girls, as always.”

“We know that, ma’am.” She nods her head, and I can tell that she’s looking for the right words. Whatever’s happening must be serious. These girls have never given me trouble, and I’ve always made sure they were more than fairly compensated for their work.

So what’s happening here?

“Alright, out with it. I don’t care how bad it is,” I say. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

“Well, you see...our distributor was supposed to arrive at 9 pm with a shipment of the fabric we need,” Anna begins.

“Yes, and our just-in-time schedule has never failed us before. Did the distributor mess up?” I ask.

“Not exactly. There’s no issue with the distributor.” Anna runs her tongue over her parched lips, and I can see the gears inside her head turning as she musters enough to courage to finally tell me what’s what. “The problem is the supplier.”

My fingers twitch unconsciously as I ready myself to grab my cell phone and rip a new asshole into whatever bastard decided to mess with my distribution line when I’m trying to score the deal of my lifetime.

I’ll have someone’s head for this.

“Which one is it? Martin, right?”

“Yes, Mr. Oliver Martin,” she nods. “Initially we thought there must have been a delay, or some other thing. But then the hours kept passing, and we still hadn’t heard a thing, so I decided to give the supplier a call.”

“You did good Anna,” I praise her. I’ll have to pay attention to her—she showed initiative under pressure, and she’s already acting as team leader for the most demanding shift in the company. Might be she’ll reveal herself useful higher in the chain-of-command. “What did the guys at Martin & Co. tell you?”

“They told us they had run out of fabric,” she says finally.

“What?” I ask incredulous. “That doesn’t make any sense. They assured me they had enough to cover the whole—”

“Yes, but apparently someone placed a massive order with Martin. Whoever did it pretty much bought all the fabric they had on inventory.”

Austin.

“That fucking bastard,” I growl, stalking away to one of the corners of the floor. I fish my phone out of my purse and dial Austin’s number immediately. It just keeps on ringing endlessly before inevitably going into his voicemail.

And so I just try again.

And again.

When he finally picks up, his voice sounds mellow, as if I had woken him up. Good. If I can’t rest, neither does he.

“Already missing me Tess?” he asks.

“Not exactly, but I’d pay to have my hands around your neck right now,” I snarl.

“Kinky,” is all he says. “I like that.”

“Cut the bullshit Austin. I know it was you who bought the fabric from Martin & Co,” I declare.

“Yeah, they have some pretty good shit,” he admits. “I actually don’t have any use for it right now, which is a damn shame, but their stuff is so good I just had to buy all of it. What can I say? I’m a compulsive shopper.”

“Okay, you proved your point Austin,” I say, trying my best to stay cool. “Let’s do it this way—name your price and I’ll buy the fabric back from you.”

“The price? The fabric isn’t up for sale, Tess,” he says with a fake air of innocence. “That’d be a dishonest thing to do. I mean—buying all that fabric just so I could sell it at a higher price? That’s a predatory way of doing business, don’t you think? At Oakmont we pride ourselves in our ethics.”

“How much?” I growl. From the other side of the line comes his amused laugh.

“Alright, if you insist…” He pauses, as if he’s trying to do the calculations in his head. “Let’s say...five times the price Martin cut for you.”

“Five times?” I can’t believe my ears.

Christ, the bastard must’ve run the numbers. And he was right—I’m overexposed now, and he’s using that to screw up my operations. With the amount of money I spent tying up his supplier, I don’t have enough money on hand to cover such an outrageous price tag.

“This isn’t over,” I hiss through my gritted teeth. Before he has the chance to say anything, I hang up on him.