“After hearing a couple having sex in a bathroom stall?” I laughed bitterly. “Fat chance, Chase.”

“Mad.” He bracketed my face, pressing his temple to mine.

I shook my head, trying to escape his touch. “Whatever. You got your way. Wasn’t it your bottom line today? Getting your way?” I sounded bitter and not myself.

“Mad.”

“What?” I snapped.

“Don’t worry. Whatever’s gonna happen, we’re going to deal with it together.”

My knees high-fived each other the entire way to my office. I tried to give myself an internal pep talk. Tell myself Chase was right. There was no reason to believe people knew what we’d been doing or that it had been me in the stall.

I returned to gather and dump all the food containers in the kitchenette. There a note was waiting on the fridge, typed out in a Word document so no one could recognize the handwriting:

Riddle me this: She is cute, small, and a little MAD,

but her milkshake still brings all the boys to the yard.

More specifically, I just caught her with her pants down, having sex with Black & Co.’s big boss.

The one who wears BLACK and normally dates the likes of Kate Moss.

With this kind of lip service, no wonder she just got a promotion.

So much for being Martyr Maddie, full of goodwill and devotion.

I ripped the note from the fridge and threw it into the trash can. Storming to my station, I glanced behind my shoulder. Nina was busy filing her nails, humming an Ariana Grande tune with a smile on her face. She caught me glaring at her, picked up a pint of milkshake on her desk, and took a noisy slurp.

Her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. Aha. It didn’t take a private investigator to see this as an admission of guilt. I was so embarrassed I’d gotten caught I wanted to cry. I fished my phone out.

Maddie: We’re busted.

Chase: How do you know?

Maddie: There was a note on the fridge.

Chase: Shit. Do you know who caught us?

Us. He’d said us. That made me hopeful he saw this as a mutual problem.

Maddie: Nina Na, I think. Of course it would be my archnemesis.

Chase: Her name is Nina Na and you taunted ME for having a made-up sounding name?

Maddie: She’s quarter-Korean, I think. Focus, Black.

Chase: I’ll deal with it.

Maddie: That sounds cryptic and super shady. What are you going to do?

Chase: Leave it to me. I’ll see you tonight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHASE

Overall, if I had to rate yesterday, I’d give it a will-not-visit-again, I-want-my-money-back zero-star review.

Other than me not dying in a freak subway accident, everything had gone south. Mad and I got caught boning on her floor restroom (my fault), Katie nagged me about asking Mad if it was okay if she went out with Ethan (this man was hell bent on screwing his way into my close circle, or so it seemed), and—the cherry on the shit cake—Dad gathered Julian, our CFO (Gavin), and me and announced he was going to work remotely from home from next week forward. What he really meant was he couldn’t even stand on both legs anymore. He still hadn’t shared his medical situation with the board, and I guessed I did see Julian’s point at this stage, but I would rather die than side with the asshole.

Dad had lost twenty-three pounds in less than two months and was looking a lot like death. Keeping the illness to himself was straight-up dumb at this point. And still, I couldn’t exactly judge him. There was something embarrassing—almost humiliating—about dying. And he was a powerful man.

Julian had been the first to react to Dad’s news. He’d hugged him, said he understood, and asked if retirement was in the cards for him. This time, Dad hadn’t seemed so against it. He’d told us he’d invite us over to discuss it further.

Julian was working hard behind the scenes, spreading rumors about my performance as COO, planning to stage a vote of no confidence once I inherited the role. There was also that stupid Ethan-Madison-Chase triangle he was still banging on about, but since that could be easily evaporated—Katie was seconds from dating Ethan, and Mad and I were actually together-together—I concentrated on working my ass off and staying in my own lane. I knew I was going to deal with Julian eventually, but I hoped to drag it out until after Dad had passed away so he wouldn’t be there to see it when I finally tore Julian limb from limb and threw whatever was left of him to the corporate streets, to start from the bottom at some bullshit company because no one in the city would work with him.

I got it. I did. Julian had been blindsided by my existence. Katie and I were a pleasant surprise to Lori and Ronan Black, who didn’t think they were able to conceive. Let me amend—I was a miracle. Katie, a pleasant surprise. My mother had suffered from polycystic ovary syndrome, and the doctors said her chances of falling pregnant were pretty much nonexistent. Julian had spent a good chunk of his childhood believing he was the sole heir to the Black empire. My oopsie appearance when he was ten hadn’t meant much to him at the time, but as he’d grown older, he’d begun to resent me more and more when he’d realized the fortune-and-power pie would need to be shared.

And he definitely did not appreciate the fact I’d proved to be better than him in every single thing we both touched.

After a disastrous day at work, I’d driven Dad back home and sat by his side, but he’d been barely conscious.

By the time I’d left my parents’ house, I’d been too exhausted to go to Mad and extinguish the getting-caught fire we were currently burning in. I’d gone back to my apartment, gotten hammered, left half-apologetic messages to a thoroughly freaked-out Madison, and passed out.

This morning, I was hoping to sort out some of the clusterfuck also known as my life. I sent Madison flowers to her office. The big-ass, expensive kind. Flowers that didn’t say thank you for the casual lay but made no room for doubt I was serious. That way, that Nina chick and Mad’s other colleagues would at least know she wasn’t the flavor of the week.

Throwing money at the Madison problem was the first and last good thing about my morning. As soon as I got into the office, I realized something was amiss. And when I said amiss, I meant my brousin’s sanity.

He was standing in the middle of the office, arms spread, in a crumpled suit with a coffee stain the size of Minnesota, giving frantic directions to every secretary and assistant in sight. People around him looked ashen, scared, downright devastated. A few secretaries and interns cried. What had he done to make everyone’s panties twist? Other than the obvious sin of living and breathing.