FGI 2: The Elven Crown
Автор
F. R. Black
Прочтений
2,2M
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33
Chapter 1
Red
The elevator dings like it's congratulating me — $50 million closed as effortlessly as ordering my usual oat milk latte.
No one other than me could pull off this deal, especially when the company that hired me wouldn’t even reveal their name. All I could find was the acronym FGI and despite my rigorous Googling, I could not find any more information. Either way, Wall Street’s boys’ club can kiss my Versace-clad ass.
My matching cream-and-gold mini-skirt suit hugs my hips as I strut through the hallway towards my front door. Power radiates from me in waves, not just because I’m brilliant and beautiful with a Bloomberg Terminal, but because I know it.
I’m double-fisting my Chanel purse in one hand and a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon, vintage, in the other. If you're going to celebrate shattering another glass ceiling, do it in couture with champagne that costs more than most people’s monthly rent.
I pause at my front door and smooth a flyaway strand of my signature red hair, vibrant, silky. It makes sense where the nickname “Red” came from. It’s become my calling card in a way, plus Crystal MacLeoir was too long to whisper with envy in the boardroom.
My key clicks in the lock. I push the door open with the confidence of a woman who already knows her man will be waiting, shirtless and beaming, ready to toast her genius.
Except…
Silence.
Odd.
My boyfriend Tanner’s bougie diffuser puffs away in the corner making the apartment smell like eucalyptus and sandalwood. But no Tanner in sight. No “Hey babe, you’re home!” No sound of his acoustic guitar or the kettle boiling for one of his herbal teas. Just... nothing.
I step inside, my heels echoing on the hardwood.
“Tanner?” I call.
No answer.
Weird.
“Tanner?” I call again, stepping further inside.
I flick on the lights.
The full expanse of my penthouse blazes to life. Every inch of it is a gleaming testament to my success. Floor-to-ceiling windows flood the space with the lavender hues of twilight. The river glistens below, slicing through the city like a vein of silver.
Just as I walk into the living room, I spot it.
A heel. Not mine. Definitely not mine. I’d never wear clear plastic unless I was cosplaying as a stripper for Halloween.
The evidence unfurls like a crime scene in a bad soap opera.
A purse near the hallway bench. A bra on the arm of my Eames lounge chair. Cheap black lace underwear, clearance bin at Forever 21 energy.
The Dom bottle in my hand grows warmer. I grip it tighter, not for comfort, for control. Or the illusion of it.
The trail leads to the bedroom.
I stop just outside the door.
Then I hear it.
A moan. A woman’s gasp of pleasure.
Tanner’s voice, low, familiar, edged with something I haven’t heard in months. The kind of sound that used to be mine.
I raise my chin, take a breath, and with the wrath of a betrayed goddess, I fling the door open.
The door slams against the wall with a crack that echoes through the room like a gunshot.
Tanner yelps and dives for the sheets, all limbs and panic, like the coward he is.
“Oh don’t bother,” I say, voice like ice. “I’ve already seen it. It’s nothing to write home about.”
He scrambles, dragging the covers up over his chest like that’ll shield him from the nuclear-grade disgust radiating off of me. His face is flushed, hair messy, mouth working to form some bullshit excuse.
I lift a brow. “Pathetic.”
Then I see her.
The woman in my bed. The woman tangled in my three-thousand-thread-count sheets.
Tiffany.
My best friend?
No, worse. My sister in everything but blood. The woman who knew every heartbreak I’d endured, every secret I’d ever whispered after one too many martinis. The only person I ever trusted with the unfiltered, no-makeup, sweatpants-and-ugly-crying version of me.
She’s staring at me, wide-eyed, clutching the sheets to her chest like the devil just walked in. Maybe she did.
“Tiff,” I say, softly. Too softly.
The name tastes like acid on my tongue. Tanner opens his mouth.
“Crystal, babe, let me explain…”
“Shut up,” I snap, my voice suddenly sharp enough to draw blood. He closes his mouth, stunned.
My heart? It’s broken, but no one here gets to see that.
I turn to Tiffany, who is now scrambling out of the bed like she can slither her way out of this.
“I know to expect little of men,” I say, each word clipped and clean. “They’re weak. Predictable. Boring, even in their betrayals.”
Then my gaze hardens. “But you, Tiffany? You should have known better.”
Her name doesn’t even feel real anymore. It belongs to someone I used to love before she stabbed me in the back with a stiletto.
“You bitch.”
She winces like I slapped her. She deserves worse. She doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t even cry. Just grabs her dress off the floor, half-tripping as she runs out of the room like the shame-filled little cockroach she is.
I stare at the door she just vanished through.
Then I let myself breathe.
Not cry. Not yet. But I feel the pressure building behind my eyes, the crack in my mask forming like a fault line before an earthquake.
Tanner? Still here. Still naked. Still delusional enough to think he has something to say. Tanner stumbles toward me, dragging the sheet with him like some sad little Roman emperor.
“Crystal—Red—please,” he stammers, “I messed up. I know I did. But you’re everything to me, you have to believe that. It didn’t mean anything… she didn’t mean anything…”
I hold up a hand.
“Tanner.” My voice is calm. Chilling. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
He freezes.
I cross the room and yank open the closet door.
For a moment, the air inside shimmers, golden, flickering, not quite real. Like a glitch in the universe. It almost looks like… like a butterfly.
I blink. It’s gone.
Whatever. I grab the duffel and start packing his things.
I yank out a duffel bag, the one he never used because he never went anywhere. No business trips because he never had a real job. Just endless hours editing videos in my living room about pre-workout powder and ‘hustle culture.’
“You have been mooching off me long enough,” I say, shoving whatever clothes of his I can find into the bag. “I fed you. Dressed you. Paid for your TikTok ring lights and your protein subscriptions. And this,” I say, grabbing his tailored Armani suit from the garment rack, “this, you ungrateful parasite, was a gift from me. For looking presentable the one time I tried to make you look like you belonged next to me.”
He flinches.
I zip the bag, swing it at him, and he stumbles catching it, sheet slipping just enough for me to roll my eyes. Still unimpressive.
“Go back to being an ‘aspirational fitness influencer,’” I sneer. “Or whatever the hell you’re calling your unemployment now. Go live your mediocre life, Tanner. Somewhere else.”
He tries again. “Crystal, please, don’t do this…”
But I already have. I march past him, wrench open the front door, and shove him outside.
“Wait… my… my shoes…”
Before he can get another word out, I slam the door in his stunned, half-naked face. The sound is deeply satisfying. Like a champagne cork. My own little bit of justice.
Then there’s just silence and me by myself, yet again. Seems like this is always how I end up.
I lean back against the door, breathing heavily.
Then it hits.
The pressure. The heartbreak. The betrayal.
My knees give out, and I crumple to the marble floor like a broken statue. For a moment, I let it happen. The tears I swore wouldn’t come, flood down my cheeks, hot and humiliating.
Everyone I love leaves me.
My parents, I never got to meet them. They wanted nothing to do with me. My grandmother, the only one who cared, buried before I turned eighteen. Every man since has seen me as a trophy or a ticket. And Tiffany knew all of that. She knew and she still…
I stay on the floor longer than I want to admit, knees pulled to my chest, head in my hands. The Dom bottle sits abandoned beside me, a dumb, expensive witness to my humiliation.
The apartment is silent, but outside my front door there is a soft rustling, a whisper of paper against wood.
I lift my head just as a card slides under the door.
The envelope is made of heavy cardstock and reeks of elegance. My name is written on the front in looping golden calligraphy.
I hesitate before picking it up and slipping the letter out.
Miss MacLeoir,
Your presence is requested this evening at Valhalla. One drink. One opportunity. One choice.
— FGI
My brow furrows.
FGI? The company I just closed that insane deal for?
I flip the card over. It shimmers faintly in the light, almost in a holographic way.
How did they do that?
I snort. Clearly, maybe I took one too many consolatory gulps from the Dom.
Still… Valhalla is my favorite bar. And if distraction is what I need, this is the universe practically gift-wrapping it.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and resolve to move on. Tonight, as quickly as possible. Giving into emotions is for the weak.
I stand.
I’m too powerful. Too legendary to cry over a man whose biggest ambition was landing a discount code for creatine.
I head to the mirror. Fix my lipstick. Toss my hair like I’m in a fragrance ad.
It’s time for a drink. Or maybe five.
A little reminder to the world that Red MacLeoir is still that bitch.
