Valenci: Never Lose Me

Chapter Seventeen

Rohm

Half an hour after walking inside the office as if he owns it, Valenci leaves again. He doesn't talk to me, but I can feel his burning gaze on me as he walks past the open office space where the secretaries are seated.

Ever since he walked through that door, a sense of panic and rage has had me in its tight hold maybe I am overreacting, and him being here has nothing to do with me, but somehow, I doubt that.

There is no overreaction to Valenci Vasilyev. Ever since he stepped back into my life, he has injected himself into every aspect of it.

Why would he stop with my job when he already made it damn clear that he would preferably have me sitting around in his condo waiting for him to come home to me?

Like, we're back in the fucking 16th century.

"Hello, Earth to Rome, are you there?"

"Huh?" Harper, the receptionist, looks at me expectantly.

"Sorry, did you say something?"

"What's wrong with you today you seem off."

"Nothing, just a headache."

"Uh huh, I said he's kind of hot, don't you think?"

"Girl, who?" I fake ignorance when I know exactly who she's talking about. I saw the way she ogled Valenci earlier.

And I felt that irritating pain of jealousy surging through my body when she did.

"Him, of course." She tilts her head slightly in the direction of the elevators. I look up and catch the last glimpse of Valenci before the elevator doors closed behind him.

"Oh, I didn't look."

"Yeah, you must be sick or something." She rolled her eyes and turned back to her computer, leaving me to continue to rack my brain as to what Valenci possibly wanted with my boss.

5:36 PM

By the time I end my workday an hour early, courtesy to Mr. Harris for giving me any work, let alone talk or even look at me. I really have a headache.

He's been ignoring me so hard the whole day that I expected him to fire me by the end of the day maybe that's what Valenci told him this morning.

I wouldn't put it past him to do something like that, but when I leave, Mr. Harris gives me a small and wry smile.

"See you tomorrow, Rome."

Valenci's Condo

How was your day at work, my love?" Valenci sits at the kitchen counter, a glass of dark liquor in front of him, asking his question as if it's the most normal thing to do.

Which would be if he wasn't him and I wasn't me.

"Fine." I hiss out the word even sharper than I intended, still too riled up from my thoughts, I start walking past him.

I am not in the mood for a conversation with him.

"I hate that word."

"You wanna know what the fuck I hate?" I stop and turn toward him, ready to unleash the whole of my damned frustrations on him.

"You - you squeezing yourself into my life and usurping every damn aspect of it, can't you even let me have one thing? Just one damn thing to myself?"

"That doesn't sound like everything's fine, baby."

Goddamn, this man.

"No, it's not fine. It wasn't fine since the moment you came to see my boss."

"That's what got you so riled up." Amusement swings in his tone.

"Duh, numb nuts, what did you want from him?"

"I didn't want anything from him. It was the other way around." That doesn't make any sense.

"What? Why would he want to see you?"

"You could have started this conversation with exactly that question, love."

"Well, I'm asking you now." Valenci takes a deep breath and drags his hand across his face the slightly amused look on his face vanishes and is replaced by a shadow of concern.

You should probably sit down." Whatever it is that he's going to tell me now, I know I won't like it. I cross my arms in front of my chest and shake my head.

"Whatever it is, just tell me." my life is already the biggest mess that it could ever be. There's hardly anything that he could tell me now that would shock me.

He turns back to the papers on the kitchen counter, looking at them for a moment before turning back to me.

"Did you know your mother up a trust fund for you?" I stare and blink at him for a second, that's certainly nothing like what I expected him to tell me.

"My mama has what? No, she never said anything about that. Wait, how the fuck do you know?"

"That's why that fuck ass boss of yours called me into his office today." Nothing he says makes any sense to me.

"Why would he tell you that?"

"Because there's a clause, the money would only be released when you are married to your husband." A Strangled laugh escapes my throat, of course it does.

That sounds just like something my mom would have done. That's probably why she never mentioned it to me.

Why even bother to tell me this if all the money goes to the Man, she would have married me too.

"Oh." I feel like I've been punched in the gut.

"Well, I guess now your family owns every last bit of mine that I ever had. I-." Tears of frustration and humiliation burn my eyes, and I turn around to leave the kitchen.

I don't want to bask in my misery with Valenci seeing it, but I have already taken one step away from him when he grabs my wrist, and I turn my back to him.

Valenci raises his brows and slightly shakes his head."In case you have yet to notice, I got a few bucks on my own. I don't need your money."

"Well, shit, it ain't mine either."

"It is as soon as we have it transferred to the account I had set up for you. You wanna work and not live off my money, Fine, but don't expect me to take your money." I open my mouth, but not a single sound emerges.

"What you do with it is entirely up to you: leave it, spend it, invest it, or even go back to school." The fact that he would collect the trust and leave it entirely to me doesn't make sense.

At least not to me.

"Why would you do this?"

"Because no matter how much you wanna argue against it, it's yours this trust was set up by your mother for you-."

"If she set it up for me, the money would have gone to me, not my husband. My mom didn't do this for me. She never did-." The words die in my throat, choked by a sob. I hardly manage to withhold.

"She never did shit for me... unless you count controlling every aspect of my life as something she would do for me rather than for herself, so please stop pretending that the bitch cared for me."

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Roro baby, calm down😭 it's not Val's fault.

How y'all doing??