Beating Ruby Read Online Free Page A

our faucet.
    “Joy?”
    She disentangled herself from Vince with a squeak of delight. “What?”
    “You still don’t want to try those free cleaning hours?”
    “The ones from Maid-shit-whatever?”
    “Yeah. Maid Magic.”
    “I dunno, I don’t like the idea of someone coming into my place when I’m not home,” she said, her nose wrinkling in disapproval.
    I left the kitchen and padded across our living room to the long black sideboard on which Joy and I had made a habit of throwing anything that came either from our handbags or the mailbox. I went through the pile of receipts, ads, and unopened mail sitting on it. Indeed, between my cell phone bill and a flyer advertising a Hello Kitty–themed after party at some bar, I found a coupon book for free housecleaning hours we had received a few days ago.
    “Are you sure you’re not interested? I mean, we got”—I counted the coupons—“ten of these. And their letter says we won a free trial for the VIP service with laundry, ironing, and antibacterial cleaning included.”
    “But I don’t want these weirdoes snooping around my house. It looks like some kind of scam. I didn’t even register for any contest,” Joy groaned.
    Vince nodded absently while massaging her shoulders.
    “Maybe you don’t remember,” I countered. “Or maybe it’s one of these websites where you click ‘Yes’ to read an article on the hairiest baby in the world, and they tell you that you just entered to win a golf cart.”
    She sat up. “I want a golf cart. I don’t want a cleaning lady.”
    I gazed at the coupons longingly, remembering how immaculate our apartment had been the morning after March had broken into it. He had cleaned our entire place while I slept off a migraine—admittedly sparked by his repeated threats to torture me until I gave him the Ghost Cullinan—nothing huge, just the biggest natural diamond in the world, stolen a decade ago . . . by my late mother. For some tentacular criminal organization, a bunch of malevolent assholes who called themselves “the Board.” Because she had never been a French diplomat, but rather some sort of glamorous international spy and superthief.
    Hey, I warned you that my life was weird.
    Anyway, there was something to be said about the way the man had turned his cleaning disorder into a gift for housekeeping, and he had branded me irremediably; I would start cleaning my apartment. Soon. Not today, but real soon.
    Behind me, Joy had resumed making out with Vince on the couch, and she struggled to speak in between noisy, slurpy kisses. “I vote no . . . to Maid Magic!”
    “We’ll see about that. I need to get ready,” I said, heading toward the bathroom. Sweet Jesus, I prayed these two had rinsed the tub well. Wouldn’t hurt to rinse it again.

    There were two undeniable perks to leaving for work at the crack of dawn: I was on a first-name basis with EM Tech’s morning security team, and once in a while, I actually caught glimpses of Hadrian fricking Ellingham, super billionaire, legendary stick-in-the-mud, and CEO of EM Group, our parent company. He and his brother, Maximilian, had inherited an industrial empire, of which EM Tech constituted a small but nonetheless highly profitable part.
    EMT ∈ EMG. You get the idea—pretty logical.
    I had in fact gotten so used to those brief encounters that when I reached Greenwich Street that morning and saw what I now recognized as his limo driving past me, I barely spared it a glance. I buried my hands in my jeans pockets and looked down at the mice on my ballet flats, imagining them gossiping about Ellingham’s love life.
    I didn’t realize something was off until I was standing twenty yards or so from the entrance. In the brownish windows of EMT’s building—an architectural faux pas warranting its nickname as “the Kit Kat”—bright red and blue lights were reflected. Police car lights. My walk slowed down. Whatever was going on had to be pretty serious, as no less