Insider (Exodus End #1)(128)
Author: Olivia Cunning

“You need to get some sleep. You look exhausted.”

She was exhausted. But she was too amped up to sleep. She had important business to attend to.

And she didn’t mind looking a bit wild and scary when she faced Susan.

An hour later, Toni dropped off her gear next to her desk before storming down the hall to Susan’s office. Toni had gone over everything she’d wanted to say to Susan a thousand times in her head, but she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to hold it together enough to express her words rationally. She didn’t even bother knocking, just flung the door open so hard it slammed into the wall.

In unison, Julian and Susan looked up from the tabloid paper spread across the desk.

“Toni!” Julian said. “What are you doing here?”

Every carefully chosen word flew straight out of Toni’s head. “You’re reading it with her?” she snarled, Julian’s betrayal slashing across her heart.

“Wow, Toni,” Susan said. “I never thought you’d actually have the balls to publish something like this. Bravo to you, kiddo!”

“You’re congratulating me for something you did?”

Susan scrunched her brows together. “Huh?”

Either Susan was innocent or she was a fantastic actress. Toni was counting on the actress thing.

“You stole my journal and used it to write this garbage! The band fired me because of what you did!” Toni splayed her hand in the center of the tabloid paper and clenched her fist, crumpling the pages into a messy ball.

“No idea what you’re talking about, but do you really think I’d still be editing other people’s crap at this shithole job if I’d sold this kind of gold to the tabloids?” Susan rolled her eyes. “You really are a naïve idiot.”

Toni narrowed her eyes. “Pack your shit and leave. You’re fired.”

Susan’s jaw dropped, but she quickly replaced her look of astonishment with a smirk. “You can’t fire me.”

“I just did. Get lost.”

Julian circled the desk and caught Toni by the arms. “I’ve never seen you like this,” he said, staring deeply into Toni’s eyes. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“I slept on the plane,” she said. For like twenty minutes. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let Susan talk down to me anymore. I don’t care if it was someone else who screwed me over.” Toni had been so sure it had been Susan, she was still halfway convinced she’d been the one. “I don’t want her here. She’s not even very good at her job.”

Susan huffed in disdain.

“She’s rude and unprofessional,” Toni said, looking Susan square in the eye while she said it. “Nichols Publishing doesn’t need an employee like her, so she’s fired.” She turned her face toward Julian and cocked her head at him. “Are you going to give me any more lip, Mr. Reynolds?”

Julian laughed and hugged her, of all things. “I like this new you, Miss Toni. I knew you had a sturdy backbone somewhere in that stacked little body of yours.”

“I’m not leaving,” Susan said. “You have no authority in this company.”

“My mother has been trying to make me a partner for years,” Toni said, and though she wasn’t necessarily ready to take that step, Susan had no way of knowing that. “Trust me, you’re fired.”

Toni slid out of Julian’s grasp and headed for the door. She needed to talk to her mother—the real boss of this establishment—as soon as possible.

“I didn’t take your journal,” Susan called after her.

“Fired. Do I need to spell it for you? It starts with an F and ends with a U,” Toni said as she stormed out of Susan’s office with Julian on her heels.

“Remind me to never get on your bad side,” Julian said.

“Susan’s been rude to me since day one.”

“Only because you never stood up for yourself.”

Toni scowled at him. “That’s no excuse to be an asshole.”

“Most assholes don’t need an excuse. So how are things going with your new boyfriend? I saw your story about him. Makes him sound like a whiner.”

“Not my story,” she reminded him.

“But he is your boyfriend?” Julian wiggled his eyebrows at her.

“Yes, I told you he was in response to those badgering texts you sent.”

Julian pouted. “You never did send me proof.”

“I’m not sending you a naked picture of my boyfriend, Julian!”

“Then I don’t believe you.” Such the little manipulator.

“Believe whatever you want. I’m lucky he didn’t dump me after what Susan did.”

“I’m still not clear what she did that has you so pissed off.”

“She stole my journal and published secrets I’d written in it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Though her certainty was diminishing by the second.

“How would she know to steal your journal? Or even how to get her hands on it?”

“How the hell should I know?” she screeched.

Julian leaned away from her, apparently deciding she was too scary to keep pestering.

She stopped at Julian’s desk, which was situated in front of her mother’s closed office door and waited for him to buzz her via his intercom.

“Your mother’s in a meeting downtown,” Julian said. “She won’t be back for at least an hour.”

She tossed her hands in the air. “Why didn’t you tell me that before I walked all the way down here?”

“Because I was starting to believe you two switched bodies or something. I’ve seen that fire in her hundreds of times, but I’ve never seen it in you before.”

“You should be glad you’ve never made me that angry.” Toni rubbed her forehead, fatigue setting in now that her so-called fire had burned itself to embers. “I guess I’ll work on the book until she gets back. Will you call me in my office when she returns?”

“Of course.”

Toni turned to head back toward her office, and Julian fell into step with her again. “So is their drummer, Steve Aimes, really gay? Because I would very much like you to introduce me to him.”

“Nope, he’s not,” Toni said. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the tabloids, Julian. Or anything you read in the tabloids.”