Little Miss Revenge

The shrill ringing of her phone dragged Ciara out of sleep like a bucket of ice water to the face.

“What the hell?” She squinted at the unfamiliar ceiling above her. Cream colored. Expensive looking. Definitely not her apartment.

Where was she?

Her head pounded like someone was using it as a drum. She fumbled for her phone on the nightstand, nearly knocking over what looked like a very expensive lamp in the process.

“Hello?” Her voice came out rough, scratchy.

“CIARA! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”

She jerked the phone away from her ear. Great. Her supervisor. And she sounded ready to commit murder.

“I’m… uh…” Ciara looked around the room again. Massive bed. Floor to ceiling windows. Was that a mini bar in the corner? “I think I’m in a hotel? Why? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on? WHAT’S GOING ON?” The woman’s voice went up three octaves. “Check the corporate news! Right now!”

Something cold slithered down Ciara’s spine. Her fingers suddenly felt clumsy as she pulled the phone away from her ear and opened her browser.

The headlines hit her like a truck.

“Oh my God.” The words barely made it past her lips. “Oh my God, what the…”

“Exactly! What were you thinking, Ciara? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I don’t… this doesn’t make any sense…” Ciara’s heart was doing somersaults in her chest. This had to be a nightmare. Any second now, she’d wake up for real.

“Well, it better start making sense real quick! The entire office is talking about you! I’m the only one who bothered to call and warn you! You just nuked your own career, congratulations!”

Each word was a slap. Ciara stared at the screen, at her own face on increasingly horrifying positions. Her name dragged through the mud across every corporate gossip site.

“I swear, I don’t remember any of this…” Her voice cracked.

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it, Ciara. You need to fix this. I don’t know how, but you better figure it out fast.” The supervisor’s tone shifted from anger to something almost pitiful before the line went dead.

Ciara stared at her phone screen, at the hundreds of notifications flooding in. Missed calls. Text messages. Emails. Every single one probably asking the same thing.

What the hell were you thinking?

Her fingers moved on autopilot, scrolling through article after article. The comments section was even worse.

“Knew she didn’t deserve that promotion.”

“Artemis Prescott can do so much better than this cheap opportunist.”

“She’s not even that pretty. Must have been REALLY good at her job. wink wink”

Each word was a punch to the gut. Her face had been photoshopped onto the most degrading memes. Someone had already created a fake social media account in her name with the bio “Will work for VP position. Very flexible. DMs open.”

This couldn’t be real. This had to be some kind of nightmare.

Each swipe brought fresh horror. Her face. Her body. A man. Not just any man, her boss, the president of Prescott Luxe, Artemis Prescott himself. In positions that made her stomach turn.

But here was the kicker, she’d never even been alone with him. Not once. She’d barely spoken to the man beyond polite hellos in the hallway.

Yesterday she’d gotten promoted. The biggest win of her entire career. And now? Now she was viral for all the wrong reasons.

Wait.

Ciara’s head snapped up, finally taking in her surroundings. The frames on the walls. That weird modern art piece. The color of the bedspread.

Her blood went cold.

This was the room. The exact same room from those photos.

“No, no, no, no…”

Movement beside her made her freeze mid-panic.

She turned her head in slow motion, praying she was wrong, praying it was just pillows or…

A man.

There was a whole entire man in the bed next to her.

His eyes opened at the exact same moment hers landed on him.

Ciara screamed.

The man screamed.

They both scrambled away from each other like the mattress had caught fire.

“What the hell?” The man shot upright, eyes wild.

Ciara’s scream died in her throat as her brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing.

Oh God.

Artemis Prescott. CEO of Prescott Luxe. Her boss’s boss’s boss. 

In the flesh. In her bed. Or his bed? Whose bed was this?

The same man from the photos. The photos that were currently destroying her life across the internet.

“What the hell is happening right now?” Artemis demanded after going through the news and messages on his own too.

Ciara’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “I don’t know! I just woke up and you were here and I don’t understand anything!”

He scoffed. Actually scoffed at her. “Right. So I’m supposed to believe you just magically appeared in my hotel room?”

“Your hotel room? Mr. Prescott, what are you accusing me of exactly?”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what you did.”

Oh, he did not just go there.

“Excuse me?” Ciara felt heat rising up her neck. “What I did? Are you seriously suggesting that I what, drugged you and dragged you here?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a woman tried something like that.”

The sheer audacity. Ciara’s hands balled into fists. “How dare you? What possible reason would I have to do any of this?”

Artemis took a step closer, his face hard. “Please. Women like you would do anything for money. Or attention. Or to trap me into some kind of responsibility.”

“Women like me?” Ciara’s voice could have frozen hell. “I have dignity, Mr. Prescott. Unlike some people, apparently.”

“Don’t give me that innocent act. I know your type. You’d sell your own grandmother to climb the corporate ladder.”

“Oh, that’s rich.” Ciara let out a bitter laugh. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re the one at fault here? That maybe YOU drugged ME and took advantage while I was unconscious?”

That actually made him pause. For half a second, doubt flickered across his face.

“That’s ridiculous. I would never…”

“Funny how quick you are to defend yourself but won’t give me the same benefit of the doubt.” Ciara crossed her arms. “Newsflash, Mr. Prescott, I have just as much right to defend myself as you do. And unlike you, I actually have nothing to gain from this disaster.”

Artemis studied her, suspicion still written all over his face. “So you’re claiming you had nothing to do with this?”

“Why would I sabotage my own career? I literally got promoted yesterday! THE biggest promotion of my life! Why would I risk everything for this?”

He frowned. She could practically see the gears turning in his head.

“People do crazy things.”

“Oh please! Use your brain for two seconds! Would it make any sense for me to do this AFTER getting promoted? If I was some evil mastermind, wouldn’t I have done it before?”

The tension in his shoulders eased slightly. “Okay. Maybe you have a point. This whole situation is pretty insane.”

“You think?”

Artemis pulled out his phone and started dialing. Ciara heard him barking orders about taking down articles, hiring PR teams, threatening lawsuits.

Meanwhile, her own mind was spinning in circles. What happened last night? She remembered celebrating with her best friend, Chloe. Drinks. Laughter. And then… nothing. Just a black hole where her memories should be.

She grabbed her phone and pulled up her contacts. Her fingers shook as she dialed.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Voicemail.

She tried again. And again.

Neither her boyfriend Ethan nor Chloe were picking up.

“Come on, pick up,” she muttered, resisting the urge to throw her phone at the wall.

Why weren’t they answering? They should be calling HER. Especially after seeing the news. That’s what friends and boyfriends did, right?

Screw this.

Ciara grabbed her things and headed for the door.

“Hey, wait…” Artemis called after her, but she was already gone.

The hotel lobby blurred past as she rushed outside and flagged down a cab.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

She gave him Marcus’s address. Her boyfriend. Her safe place. He would help her figure this out. He always helped her figure things out.

The drive felt like it took forever and no time at all. When they pulled up outside his apartment building, Ciara’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely count out money for the fare.

The door was unlocked.

That was the first weird thing.

Marcus never left his door unlocked. He was paranoid about it. Checked it three times before going to bed.

Ciara pushed it open slowly.

The second weird thing: clothes everywhere. A trail of them leading from the living room to the bedroom. A woman’s jacket. A man’s shirt. Heels that definitely weren’t hers.

Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears.

No. Please no. Not today. Not on top of everything else.

Her legs felt like jello as she walked toward the bedroom door. She could hear voices. Low. Intimate.

“I’m so glad we finally got rid of that b*tch.” The voice was cold, satisfied. “Now the promotion is mine. She made everything so hard, always being perfect, always getting noticed. Like she’s the only one who deserves good things.”

Ciara’s world tilted.

That voice. She knew that voice.

Chloe. Her best friend.

Ciara’s hand shook as she pulled out her phone.

Think. She needed to think. Even though her heart was breaking into a million pieces, even though she wanted to burst through that door and scream until her throat was raw, she needed to be smart.

Evidence.

Her finger found the voice recording app. She pressed record and held the phone up to the crack in the door.

“Honestly, the whole thing was almost too easy,” Chloe was saying. Ciara could practically hear the smirk in her voice. “A few drinks with a little extra something, a conveniently booked hotel room, some staged photos. Boom. Career destroyed.”

“You’re brilliant, babe.” That was Ethan. Her Ethan. Except he wasn’t hers at all, was he?

“I know.” Chloe giggled. Actually giggled. “And the best part? She’ll never suspect it was us. She trusts me way too much.”

“She always was too naive,”