BECKHAM

“Here you go.” Odessa places a white plastic sack on my desk Monday morning.

Examining the kit, I read the fine print on the back as she stands before me, fidgeting.

“If you go online, you can pay a fee and upgrade to a rush order,” she says. “Just a quick swab of both your mouths, mail it off, pay the fee, and you should have your answer in less than two weeks.”

“Thank you.” I put the box back in the sack and slip my hands in my pockets, eyes dragging the length of her and catching a small twitch in her fingers. “What’s all this?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re shaking.” I hope to God she’s not being all jittery because we fucked last night and she decided all of a sudden to develop fucking feelings for me.

“I ran into Annelise last night,” she says. “For the third time in three weeks.”

My brows furrow. The name isn’t ringing a bell. “Annelise?”

“Yes.” She puts force into the word, as if that would help me to remember. “Annelise. Your Annelise.”

I chuckle. “I don’t have an Annelise.”

Odessa glances to the left, scratching the corner of her mouth. “She sure knows you. She knows where you work. Where you live. She knew my name two weeks ago. Said you’d told her about me.”

My brows rise. “I haven’t told anyone about you.”

Besides Xavier, but I’m not telling her that. She’ll think I like her or some shit.

I sink down in my chair, resting my chin in my hand. The lack of sleep lately hasn’t done much for my short-term memory. I mentioned Odessa to Xavier a couple weeks ago, but he doesn’t know any Annelieses that I’m aware of. Pretty sure the girl he went home with that night was named Hayley or Heather or Harper.

“She came in here my first day, brought you lunch but you’d left,” she says.

“She came in here?” I lean forward.

“Okay, now you’re freaking me out.” Odessa slumps into a guest chair. “She came in here looking for you. And then I bumped into her the next week when I went out to get coffee. She cried when I told her she needed to get over you.”

“Whoa, whoa.” I lift my hand. “I have no clue who you’re fucking talking about. Some woman walked in here, bringing me lunch, and then you talked to her about me and she cried?”

This is some Eva-level shit.

“Yeah,” she says, eyes wide. “And I ran into her last night, at the pharmacy. She saw me buying the kit.”

My hands rake the sides of my head, nails digging into my scalp.

“What does she look like?” I ask, my heart thundering as my suspicion grows.

Odessa winces, glancing up at the ceiling. “She’s pretty. Short blonde hair. Platinum. Big blue eyes. Lots of makeup. Well-dressed. The second time I saw her, she was wearing this diamond lotus pendant on her collar.”

“Mother fucker.”

“What?” Odessa’s hand flies to her chest. “Who is she, Beck?”

“Her name isn’t Annelise.” My teeth grind, and I swallow the ball in my throat. “It’s Sophie Glass, my ex-fiancé.”

“This woman is obsessed with you.” Her hands tremble in her lap. “She called you a monster. Followed me around the pharmacy. I thought maybe she was some one-night stand who took things too far. You’d mentioned you’d had stalkers before.”

“Yeah.” I huff.

“She said she knew the baby wasn’t yours.”

My lips rub together, and I grab the stress ball next to my monitor, clenching it in my fist until it’s reduced to nothing. A minute later, I stand.

“Where are you going?” She grips the arms of her chair, pushing herself up.

I don’t answer. Anger fills my head, preventing me from speaking even if I wanted to. It’s one thing to follow me around. It’s another thing to stalk my female employees.

But it’s something else altogether for Sophie to bring my fucking daughter into this.

* * *

“You have a lot of goddamn nerve.”

Sophie stands outside her apartment, which happens to be the penthouse suite of her father’s Lotus Hotel in the Meatpacking District.

“Beckham.” Her finger trails along her collarbone as she paints a slow smile on her red lips. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I push past her, slamming the door. Seething. My neck clenches and my body’s on fire. My blood hasn’t boiled this hot since the night I walked in on Sophie with that washed up actor.

“It’s good to see you again.” She saunters to her mini bar, pulling out a crystal tumbler and a bottle of Scotch. “May I offer you a drink? You look like you could use one. Then again, I always enjoyed seeing you all worked up. Mm. Such a turn on.”

I throttle my breathing. I need to think clearly because the message I have for her today needs to be crystal fucking clear.

Sophie Glass was the first woman who ever broke my heart, at least by standard definition. I hate that she wears that title. It should’ve gone to someone more worthy. Someone with actual blood in her veins and not money, vodka, and self-serving intentions.

“Baby’s cute,” she says, handing me a drink. I don’t accept it. She shrugs and puts it aside. “No need to be rude, Beckham.”

She sashays to her sofa, slinking down and picking up a martini glass from the coaster. It’s a little early for a drink but Sophie Glass has never paid attention to things that matter like time and responsibilities and self-discipline.

“I still have our engagement announcement,” she muses. “Framed too. Daddy never did get over losing the son he always wanted. God forbid he leaves his empire in my hands someday.”

Losing Howard Glass as a future father-in-law was quite the blow, but I’ll be damned if I tell her that.

“I always wondered what our baby would’ve looked like.” Her manicured nail traces the outline of a sequin-striped pillow better suited for the bedroom of a thirteen year old girl. “I feel like it would’ve been a boy. Mother’s intuition I guess.”

“Don’t fucking go there, Sophie.” My shoulders pull tight, fists flexing and clenching.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t picture you as a family man,” she laughs. “Now would that be kismet? Or karma?”

I’d never hit a woman, but it doesn’t stop me from conjuring up an image in my head of my fingers wrapped around Sophie’s porcelain throat, smashing her up against the wall.

“You fucking bitch.”

“I hold you responsible.” She points at me, her smile swapping out for a glare. “You should know that.”

“Still delusional after all these years.”

Her lips twist back into a smirk. “Not delusional. We just remember things differently.”

“No, Sophie. You remember things the way you want to. That way you don’t have to take responsibility for the horrendous choices you made.”

“When you tell your fiancé you think you might be pregnant, and he freaks out and goes on a rampage about how he never wanted children and how he’s not capable of being a father, what’s a girl to do?” Her eyes glass but it’s only temporary. “I didn’t want to lose you, Beckham. I did what I had to do.”

“You don’t go out and get a fucking abortion, Sophie.” The throbbing in my head is only outdone by the painful tensing of my jaw.

She uncrosses her legs, drawing them up on the sofa and reaching for her martini glass.

“You stormed out that night. I didn’t hear from you for a week. I had to fix the problem.” Her words are lined in defense, but her argument is thin. “You came back to me after that, did you not?”

“Like a fucking moron, yes.” My voice is a low growl. “Don’t think a day goes by when I don’t regret it.”

She rolls her eyes. “Men act like they have it so hard. You think it was easy for me to walk into a clinic, a scarf wrapped around my face, and lie on a table and get our baby sucked out of me?”

My stomach balls. “I never asked you to get an abortion, Sophie.”

“You didn’t have to. You made it clear you didn’t want to be a father. I granted your little wish because I fucking loved you. How many women would do that for you, Beckham?”

The searing pain in my chest intensifies when I think of never knowing my innocent child.

“I was scared, Sophie. I needed space. I needed to process everything.”

“You were weak,” she spits her words. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted you. You were weak and I could break you over and over. Mold you into whatever I needed. You were lost when I found you. A tragically handsome, broken soul. Couldn’t let that go to waste. I showed you what it felt like to be desired, and I made you into everything you ever wanted to be.”

It’s true. She showed me desire like I’d never felt before. All along it was desire, not love. It was hard to tell the difference when I’d never felt anything that’d rendered me so powerless.

Sophie knew how to bring me to my knees, offering me the world on a silver platter. She held my heart in her teeth for years, breaking me time and again until I finally snapped.

“I didn’t come here to rehash the past with you.” My arms cross. “Came to tell you to stay the fuck away from me, my family, and Odessa.”

She cocks her head, resting it on her hand and sinking back into her overstuffed sofa. “That’s cute. You’re all protective. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Tell me, Beckham. I get why you’re protective of the baby, but why the girl?” She takes a swill of her drink. “You afraid I’ll tell her the truth about you? About your past and that sick-as-fuck cult you were raised in and how you were used in those rituals where the church elders would fuck you in the ass?”

Her head tosses back. She’s pure fucking evil in a pale pink twin set.

My face pinches, my chest heaving. I charge at her and see a hint of terror in her blue eyes for the first time.

“You stay away from me and my family. You don’t speak of us. You don’t follow us. You don’t so much as fucking think of us. We don’t exist to you. You’re dead to us.” My face is inches from hers. It’s all I can do not to strangle the psychotic bitch. “If I hear you’re bothering Odessa, if I see you anywhere, I swear to God, Sophie, I’ll go straight to your father and tell him the real reason we ended it.”

Her face pales. She’s frozen.

“You and I both know the substance abuse clause your father put in your trust is ironclad. He’ll disown you and disinherit you if he knows you so much as tried a single fucking illegal drug.” I don’t need to remind her. She’s well aware.

She swallows, and I storm out before I do anything stupid. Sophie fucking Glass is not worth it. My priorities have shifted. My concerns lie elsewhere. I don’t want to fight dirty, but when it comes to protecting the only thing that matters to me, I’ll do what I have to and not think twice.