Page 26 of Dirty Boss

But the rejection stung—even though it was familiar.

A little over a year ago, I’d been rejected by the man I loved. Rejected by my family. Hell, I’d even been rejected by Cole, even though I was the one who broke it off in the end. From the moment we’d started planning the wedding, a part of me knew he didn’t want to marry me.

The only reason I’d wanted to see it through was because I thought we understood each other. I thought he was incapable of love, and I was willing to set my selfish desires aside to marry him.

But he wasn’t incapable of love. I watched him fall—and fall hard—right before my very eyes.

How could Inotbreak off our engagement?

It was still a rejection, even if I was the one to end it. He’d wanted her more than he’d wanted me. When I’d finally told him I hadn’t wanted to marry him, he’d lookedrelieved.

Ouch.

Now, something as mundane as a semi-regular customer skipping a few lunches at my workplace hurt. I needed a thicker skin. It annoyed me that I cared.

Elena noticed, and she warned me to fix my attitude. Then I messed up an order or two, and she pinched her lips. And on Friday, I sniped at a rude customer when she was within earshot, and I found myself dragged into the back office at the end of my shift.

“We have a culture of respect here,” she lectured, and I knew what was coming. “I like you, Alba,” she said, her eyes resigned, “but I have to put the work first. I’m taking you off the schedule.”

My nod was a quick dip of my chin. “You’re firing me.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m sorry, Alba.”

I said nothing, afraid she’d hear the devastation in my voice. My movements were mechanical as I packed my things, changed into my cleaner’s uniform, and left the restaurant for the final time.

Ten firings in a little over a year. I was terrible at everything I tried. I walked into the cold January wind and let the chill seep down my bare neck and into my chest.

I was almost out of options. Terrified, broke, broken.

Maybe that’s why, when I started my shift at the office and found that one of the conference rooms was full of old, half-eaten takeout containers, rage detonated in my gut.

I was already on the precipice. I was tender and sensitive, with my emotions on a hair trigger. No one wanted me or cared about me. And the messy conference room? It simply proved that no one even considered that I existed at all. Their mess would magically get cleaned up, the way my messes had before.

Did these people notthink? Did they not even consider that they might gather their trash into a pile, at least? Or that they could throw it away themselves?

Of course not. How many times had I left my bedroom littered with clothing on the rug, the bed linens thrown any which way, and come back to a pristine room? How many times had I dropped dishes into a sink and walked away without giving them another thought, without thinking of the hands that would be washing them?

Lo mein noodles littered one of the place settings, and whoever had sat there had rolled over a few of them. Old, sauce-encrusted noodles were now caked into the chair’s casters and into the damn carpet.

I couldn’t do this. Staring at the mess, I reached my limit. I’d been berated, harassed, fired, and ignored. I’d fought and fought to keep going, to prove to myself that I was more than my parents’ money.

But what if I wasn’t? What if all I was good for was a marriage to a man I didn’t love in the name of family status?

Maybe it was time I accepted it. I couldn’t hack it in the real world. I wasn’t smart enough, or driven enough, or determined enough. That’s why I’d been rejected so many times, by so many people. They could see how little I was worth—wasn’t it time I admitted it to myself too?

My fingertips tingled as I pulled open the conference room door to walk out into the hallway. Unsteady breaths sawed in and out of my lungs, and I turned for the supply closet. I’d drop this annoying backpack vacuum, call the elevator, and leave. I’d tell my manager that I quit over text. I didn’t owe them anything else.

This year had been a gauntlet. I’d learned that I was wholly unprepared for real life. I had no idea how to take care of myself. Without the insulation of my parents’ money, I was looked downon, sneered at, and derided. I’d been rejected by jobs, by my peers, by every single person that I came across, and I wasdone. I wouldn’t get on my hands and knees and scrub their carpets too.

But I would get on my hands and knees and beg my family to take me back.

My eyes stung with unshed tears. I had no choice. I had to go back to my family. I had to crawl back to them and debase myself to be welcomed back into the fold.

They’d said horrible things to me. They’d shown me that their love was conditional on my good behavior. They’d tugged on the leash and reminded me that I would never escape it, and now I knew for sure that they were right.

It made me feel dirty and small and ashamed to think of making that call, of begging my father to open his wallet and his home again.

But wasn’t it better thanthis? I’d lasted fourteen months out in the cold on my own; that was something, wasn’t it?