Page 83 of Duplicity

CHAPTER 40

Brendan

There’s nothing like your shiniest, most expensive new trophy, the trophy you boasted about to all your mates, letting you down in front of every last one of them. The way Marlowe reacted in my office yesterday was the humiliation equivalent of my catamaran sinking like a stone during its own launch party, and it was a massive fucking middle finger to everything we’d signed off on in our introductory questionnaires.

I may have been tipsy, and I may have blindsided her, but that’s the nature of the job, I’m afraid, love. It’s not like anyone is being exploited here. I pay her north of a hundred grand amonthto do whatever the fuck I want, and I damn well expect her to put out when the situation demands it.

I’m still seething at the way she looked at me in front of all my business associates, like I was some scumbag hell-bent on assaulting her and not the man bankrolling her lifestyle.

The problem is that when a woman is as beautiful and talented and unique as Marlowe, there’s always the risk that she’ll get under your skin. That you’ll blur the lines and bend your own rules and forget that she is, at the end of the day, a whore.

I’m paying her for sex.

It’s as simple as that.

I’ll admit that we’ve both bent the rules in recent weeks, but that weird little midday slumber party I let us indulge in last week was a much-needed red flag. When you veer off course, in business as in relationships, you course-correct. You redraw the lines.

Yesterday was an attempt to do not only that but to scratch that familiar itch of mine. The itch that yearns to show everyone how well I’ve done. How far I’ve come. How fucking big I’ve made it. Most of those dickheads yesterday are highly successful men. Not as successful as me, mind you, but they’ve done alright for themselves.

We all enjoy the same trappings, just as we judge each other on them. Strippers. Lambos. Yachts. Strippersonyachts. Snorting coke off strippers on yachts. Spraying four-figure bottles of champagne over topless women at Nikki Beach in St Tropez.

It gets tired pretty quickly. The toys lose their shine. So when you have the best toy of all, you want to wheel it out, take it for a ride in front of all your friends until they’re half sick with jealousy.

But what you don’t want is your toy safe-ing out after you’ve promised the bros a show and then suggesting you blow your own friend.

Not cool, Marlowe. Not cool at all.

I was half minded to call up that Camille woman and complain, to just pull Marlowe’s contract and find me another seraph to replace her. After all, they’re all interchangeable, aren’t they? But something stopped me, and I’m choosing to believe that it wasn’t the thought of replacing Marlowe. I was just sober enough to know that Camille wouldn’t take kindly to a drunken rant, and plenty sober enough to remember Athena’sthreat to skin my balls with a rusty butter knife—or was it castration she threatened?

Either way, I don’t want to poke the bear, and her silence over the past twenty-four hours suggests Marlowe hasn’t gone crying to her. Not yet, anyway.

So I’ll sit tight. I’ll bide my time, and I’ll give Marlowe the chance to return in two weeks with her tail between her legs. Meanwhile, I’ll employ some old tricks to ensure that I don’t spend the next fortnight moping around like Mark does when I’ve taken away his favourite bone.

Fernanda Luz da Costa is, objectively speaking, as big a trophy as they come. And, unlike certain other people, she doesn’t mind me showing her off. She’s a Brazilian supermodel working and living in London and, critically for my internal trophy value calculator, she was on the cover of British Vogue last month.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Marls.

Full disclosure: we’ve hooked up before, and, even if she’s physically flawless, she was one of the least interesting fucks I’ve ever had. Lay on her back like a limp fish. Nobody else needs to know that, though. I shoot her a text and she agrees, with indecent haste, to be my escort to a lavish fundraiser for Great Ormond Street Hospital, of which Sullivan Construction is a patron.

Thank fuck there are people in the world who actually devote their time to caring for sick kids. I may not be one of them, but I’m always happy to open my chequebook for a good cause, and I’m equally happy to show up when the paps are out.

Fernanda’s conversational skills may not be a huge selling point (just like her libido), but as far as arm candy goes, she’s top-notch. And I have to admit, we look fucking hot together on the wide, pink-lit steps of the Natural History Museum, me in my Zegna tuxedo and her in a barely-there sequinned number that shows off her miles of satiny limbs. The paps eat us up, and it’s a few minutes before we’re moved on to allow the next celebrities to take our places.

‘Your arms are so big,’ Fernanda purrs in her sexy accent, her slim fingers tucked into the crook of my arm as we make our way across the iconic space to the bar. ‘So hot.’

‘You know it, baby.’ I shoot her a smile—she’s so tall I barely need to dip my head—and, all at once, a memory hits me in a flash.

Marlowe, cradled in my arms on my bed.

Gazing up at me with those huge brown eyes.

No other guy has ever made me come before. You’re the only one.

The shyness in her voice.

The intimacy of that moment.

Fuuuuuuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

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