I toss my phone onto the couch and it bounces off the cushions and onto a piece of hardwood flooring not covered by the rug. I didn’t throw it particularly hard, but when it makes contact, there’s a crack that makes my heart sink even farther down past my toes.

“Shit.” I run my hands through my hair and leap toward it. It’s way too late. I kneel at the edge of the area rug in my living room and pick it up. The glass screen is shattered. My knees in the carpet, the cracks in the screen spider-webbing out from near the corner—kneeling in Dominic’s apartment, sheer joy on his face, my career like a broken phone—pushes me over the edge from a bizarre panicked calm to a sobbing mess.

The first heaving cry takes me by surprise, but not the rest of them. My heart is shattered, too, and the ache in my chest is so strong. Am I having a heart attack?

No. This is a bad breakup.

It’s the worst kind of breakup, because we were working in secrecy and now I can’t tell anyone about it. I can’t even tell Margo, because I never told Margo I was sleeping with the billionaire who owns the company which I’m working undercover at in the first place.

I laugh bitterly through a sob. How would I even explain that to another person? He’s my boss, but that’s not the real problem, because he’s not really my boss—

The howl that rises in my chest is so dramatic, so over the top, that I stifle it with both hands as another arc of pain singes from my ribs to my toes.

Then I stand up, leaving the broken phone on the carpet.

I take a deep breath.

The first ten deep breaths fail to have any effect whatsoever, but I keep at it, doggedly, determinedly, for twenty minutes before I can stop sobbing.

Get a hold of yourself, Vivienne.

I say it over and over in my mind, and finally am reduced to saying it out loud until I’ve swallowed enough sobs that they’re held at bay in my chest, a heavy point below my sternum, and not pouring out of my mouth.

Okay.

Okay.

One more breath, and I take a seat on the couch and run through what I know. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, and it hasn’t seemed to help, but maybe the millionth time is the charm.

Dominic knows more than he’s letting on.

He knows—now, thanks to me—that I have some kind of second job apart from Wilder Enterprises.

Dominic is done with me.

The tears threaten to come again—another failed exercise. No matter what I do, I can’t think of a way through this, or out of it, without coming clean to Dominic.

And I can’t come clean to him about what my job is without blowing the cover on the whole investigation. Even if I thought I could trust him with the information, if word ever got out that I compromised myself to someone who’s directly involved like he is, I’d never work undercover again. My career would effectively be over.

But he knows something is up, and that’s the ballgame. A man like Dominic isn’t going to stay around to be played. I’m sure other women in his life have done the same thing.

Which is probably why there haven’t been many other women, from what I understand, because weighed against what’s really important…

This is pointless, and I get up from the couch again, frustrated at my own inability to get out of this spiral of thought.

I pick up the phone from the floor. The screen might be cracked, but it still works, in its way. The first person I dial is Milton Jeffries, clearing my throat as the call connects.

“Do you have an update?”

“I broke my phone. Can you have someone from the department courier a new one over?”

Milton sighs. “That’s all?”

“I’m on the verge of a break, Milton. Give me a little more time.”

“Sending someone now.”

At least he doesn’t feel like chatting. My voice hitched on the word break, and if we go on much longer, I’ll be forced to say some phrase like Wilder Enterprises and that would make me look like such a strong and capable employee if I broke down crying on the phone to my boss.

No.

I lift my chin, sitting down in front of the computer again, opening the screen.

Where was I?

My throat aches with the effort of holding all of this in, but the fact of the matter—the fact of the matter, I say to myself in my harshest internal tone—is that I want my career to be incredible, and I don’t need to be with Dominic Wilder to do it. In fact, it would be best for both of us if I was without him.

This scene didn’t play out how I wanted, but in a way, it’s for the best. His attention can be where it needs to be, and my attention can be focused on tracking down the person who’s trying to undermine him.

“I wish him the best. I really do,” I say out loud in my empty apartment, like I’m trying to convince Margo that this isn’t a big deal after all.

It takes forty-five minutes, during which time the courier arrives with a new phone and takes away the shattered one, for me to figure out what the emails are trying to tell me, what the emails have been hiding all along.

I stare down at the notepad where I’ve been scribbling details.

There’s nowhere else to go from here.

But I’m going to bide my time. Making an unscheduled visit to Wilder Enterprises right now might upset the balance of everything.

And I don’t want to run into Dominic.

I pick up the new phone, slip it into my purse, and then get my real phone from the bedroom.

Margo answers on the first ring.

“You’d better be calling to invite me to dinner, Miss Missing-In-Action.”

“I know.” At least the sincerity in my voice, the sadness, is real. “I am. I’m starving and I want to see my best friend.”

“Woah,” she laughs. “Don’t get too emotional, amiga. We’ve only been apart for a couple of weeks.”

“It’s too long,” I cry, and Margo laughs harder.

“Sushi?”

“Perfect.”

“Meet me outside your building in half an hour.”

I hang up, strip off my clothes, and throw myself into the shower.

All the water in the world can’t rinse away this piercing heartbreak, but it’s all I’ve got…for now.