After My Fiancé Humiliated Me, I Ruined Him novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Workroom

"I know," I said.

"You looked me in the face and you promised."

"I have forty-one minutes of him offering to rob your sister."

That stopped him for a moment.

"I don't care what you have. He grabbed you. I saw it through the window."

"He let go."

"Because people were watching!" He pushed off the car. "You don't know what he is when he's cornered, Diana. Neither do I."

"Play it," he said.

We sat in the back of the car and I played him the part about the shares.

He listened with his eyes closed.

When Ashton said, "Girls like that always land somewhere soft," Julien's hand closed into a fist on his knee.

"Again," he said.

I played it again.

"Next time you tell me first."

"Next time I'll tell you first."

The next night I walked into the workroom at Maison Valery with my laptop and a box of the shop's accounts.

For three weeks it went on.

The lab was under the roof.

A long oak bench.

Brass scales.

Nine hundred little brown bottles on curved shelves around the perfumer's chair, like an organ in a church, each label in his grandmother's handwriting.

Julien sat at the organ and built his perfume.

I sat at the far end of the bench and built a spreadsheet.

He was working from the third blotter. The one that had made my eyes sting.

"It's not finished," he kept saying. "My grandmother started it in 1989 and never found its heart."

At two in the morning he'd hold out a blotter without looking up.

"Tell me."

I'd sniff.

"Wood."

"What kind of wood?"

"Brown."

He'd close his eyes in pain.

"Mysore sandalwood. It costs more per kilo than your car."

"I don't have a car. I have drivers."

← Chapter 9 · All chapters · Chapter 11 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend