Chapter 208: She Will Pay

David’s POV

I looked at her as if she’d taken a dump from her mouth. Me? On my knees? To hire her? Hahaha…what a joke.

“Listen, Holly…” I began, but she cut me off with a raised hand like I was a misbehaving schoolboy. Her phone rang…she answered it mid-sentence and left me hanging.

The audacity of this little girl…to saunter back into my life and turn everything upside down like she owned the place.

Don’t get me started. I’d done my own little behind-the-scenes digging while she was out of the company. Ava hadn’t even known Holly was here. According to my source, once the holidays were over Ava would come and pick her up like a misplaced handbag.

When pressure landed on my neck to get her back into the company…or risk losing the biggest investor we’d ever managed to bag…I swallowed my pride. Fine. Let her play. At least she’d leave when school began. Hopefully.

The moment I saw her earlier, a bile rose in my throat.

She looked like she’d been on holiday…relaxed, smiling, not a worry shadowing her face for someone who just lost her job. Me…the man who’d fired her…I’d been living in hell. Absolute hell.

And then there was Candy, who’d vanished like smoke. Poof…gone. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent fuck in this town? I tried the usual replacements, but none of them scratched the itch. None of them were wild and crazy like Candy.

I watched Holly laugh with whoever was on the phone, waiting as if I were her assistant. A lot of people would crawl on glass for a job. Beg me for one. And here I was, practically begging this brat to come back.

Norman insisted I handle it myself…since I was the one who’d fired her. That smug bastard.

To anyone else it probably looked simple. To me, it felt impossible. I looked like a mess. Felt a mess. That’s why I’d had HR send me Holly’s address, so I can close this chapter for good.

I followed her all the way from her house to Tyler’s shiny new workshop, watched them through the window as they played at decorators, and bile rose in my throat.

Fucking Tyler.

The spoiled heir. Golden-spoon prince of Italy. Old money…the kind of family I’d bumped into on one of my desperate networking trips. The first time I met him at a gala night, I hated him on sight. Him running away from his father’s influence to “find himself” didn’t impress me. Give him three months before he crawls back to daddy.

How the hell was Holly mixed up with him anyway? Friends? Lovers? Did she even know who he was?

Not that I cared. I didn’t like Holly. I despised her. Ava’s sickly little sister…the whole package. Once I realized there was no hidden agenda, no revenge mission…just Holly being Holly…I relaxed. Fine. She could stay. Until her little adventure is over.

“How hard can that be?” I muttered to myself.

Her voice cut across me.

“So, Mr. Hunt,” she said formally, tucking her phone away and sliding into the chair opposite. Sugar-coated mockery dripped from every syllable. “Are you going to beg, or what?”

“You do know I want to employ you, right? And you want me to beg?” I asked tight as a wire.

She laughed. “You fired me unfairly, Mr. Hunt. Now you want me back. Is a girl asking too much if she wants you to get on your knees and beg?”

My fist twitched on the table, but I didn’t slam it. God knows I wanted to.

A notification pinged. Norman. ’We’re about to lose the contract if Holly doesn’t assure Griffin she’s back with us.’

Perfect. Just perfect.

I clenched my hands under the table while she toyed with a strand of hair, enjoying it like a cat with cornered prey.

“Well, Mr. Hunt,” she said, standing as if she’d only arrived for lunch, “I’d rather you not waste my time. As you can see, I came here to eat with my friend.”

“Hey…hey, Holly.” I forced the words out, shoving my pride down my throat. The Griffin contract was oxygen for the company…for Norman, for me. Losing it wasn’t an option.

“You want me to kneel? Here? Holly, are you really going to be this difficult?”

“I’m not the one being difficult, David,” she said, folding her arms. “You are. If you want me back, beg for it.”

I ran a hand through my disheveled hair in frustration. My teeth bit into the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. Beg? Me?

I swallowed hard. “Please, Holly. Come back to work. I messed up. I fired you unjustly and I’m sorry.”

She scoffed. “Not enough, Mr. Hunt. You have to go on your knees.”

Another message from Norman flashed. My temples throbbed.

“I’m still waiting,” she sang, tapping her foot as if I were keeping her from getting a manicure.

Before my ego could scream louder than my reason, before I could talk myself out of it, I closed my eyes, pushed back from the chair, and dropped to one knee. In public.

Humiliation seared through me like acid.

I’ll fucking make her pay for this humiliation. One way or another.

She laughed. Not a polite chuckle but a delighted one that drew every eye in the diner to our booth. It hit me where pride sat…my face burned hot enough to melt the ketchup bottle beside us.

Holly leaned forward, casual menace personified, and lowered herself so our eyes met. Up close she smelled like lavender and trouble…the world narrowed to the white of her teeth and the blue of her eyes. The corner of her mouth tipped up.

“That’s exactly what you should have done in the first place,” she said, soft and smug, handing me a lesson wrapped in silk. “Since you begged… I’ll resume work. Tell Mr. Griffin I’m back.”

She straightened, gave a tiny, mock wave…the kind you use to swat a fly…and turned away as if the matter were closed. Bright smiles, stuttered goodbyes, and she slipped back to Tyler like she hadn’t just been the cause of my slow mental disintegration.

The world kept moving. The waitress refilled coffee. Tyler leaned towards her to say something and she laughed. A kid at the next table dropped his fork.

Inside me, anger and shame coiled together, tight as a steel spring.

I stayed on one knee a beat longer than necessary, tasting humiliation and something darker…an ugly, hot promise like molten iron in my chest.

She’d come back. Fine. Let her cross that threshold again. Let her sit at a desk she didn’t earn. Let her walk past me every morning with that smile that short-circuited my brain.

I’d make her regret this day. Not with shouting or drama…those are for novels, not for smart men…but with a slow, clinical dismantling.

I’d bury her in impossible deadlines, hand her projects that bled into weekends, turn her inbox into a minefield of approvals and audits. I’d show the board how unreliable she was by setting traps she wouldn’t see until they snapped shut. I’d let her climb only to pull the ladder away when she reached for applause.

When she finally realized she wasn’t the one holding the strings…she’d know whose fault it was. She’d know who engineered the fall.

I rose like a man waking from a dream he’d rather forget. My legs were weak, but my jaw was hard. People would laugh about the scene later…texts, TikToks, the usual…but I had other plans. Professional, careful, inevitable.

Holly had flirted with my ruin and won the skirmish. She hadn’t won the war.

I walked out of the diner, palms so tight my skin hurt around my nails, and I started to write the list.