Chapter Text
Three taps on his phone screen. That’s all it’s took for Roman Roy to make perhaps the most ridiculous fuck-up in his almost forty years on this planet. Too distracted as always to pay attention to the finer details of his phone screen.
Why had he put her name on the fucking text?
He could’ve put the Roy genes to good use and lied through his teeth if he had just left her name off the text. Could’ve said it was for Tabitha or any other woman on the planet other than Geraldine Kellman.
His father looked at him across the table as though he’d suddenly sprouted a second - maybe even a third - head on his shoulders. It’s a fight or flight response. Roman remembered reading about it once - an automatic response in the face of danger.
His lips moved and the words were out of his mouth before he even realised.
“Well you see, here’s the thing Dad - Gerri and I have been dating,” Roman announced, the words came out more confident than he thought they would. Perhaps all those years of being a cocky idiot were coming in clutch now.
“You’ve been WHAT ?” Logan asked, as though about to choke on his own venom, his eyes bulged in his head as he sat up on his seat. His rising blood pressure was evident by the scarlet hues on his cheeks.
Roman leaned back on his chair and folded his arms as if he’s eighteen again, sulking after getting caught drinking his way through Logan’s prized whisky collection. “For a few months now,” he added, knowing that technically they had been doing whatever it was they were doing for a few months now. If Gerri had taught him anything it was the power of arguing a technicality.
“Are you being serious? Son, you’re taking the piss, I know you are,” Logan insisted as he shook his head and smirked at Roman. Trust his son to pull his leg about something like this. Logan had never tried to understand him, but this read as just some twisted game - Roman trying to get a leg up over Gerri - figuratively, not literally.
But Roman simply shrugged his shoulders, his mind having gone back to the rush of adrenaline he experienced when he sent Gerri the first ‘item’. He had tapped his fingers impatiently against the phone until the little text that said ‘delivered’ changed to ‘read’. For five and a half minutes his heart had practically stopped until the little grey bubble floated up, the dots showing that Gerri was on the other line, until her message flashed on his screen.
So it works.
That’s all she had said but it was enough. Until she growled at him in the elevator the next morning about the risk of sending something like that to her phone. Gerri had warned him of the dangers - FOIs and data breaches - and how nothing that was written down was ever private for long.
He should have listened to her. If the last year had taught him anything, it was that Gerri Kellman was always right.
Logan was on his feet and at the door before Roman could stop him. He pulled the handle with enough force that Roman wondered for a second if it would fall off its hinges. “GERRI! WHERE ARE YOU GERRI?” Logan bellowed, his voice echoed down the hallway to where Gerri was standing in the conference room.
Gerri’s blood ran cold. What the fuck had Roman done now?
The walk down the hallway took both forever and no time at all. Gerri’s heels echoed into the room before she appeared at the door wearing what Roman knew was her poker face. She shuffled into the room like the goodie two-shoes student who had been summoned to the headmaster’s office. The gears turned in her head as she tried to assess the situation. Logan was pacing the floor with his phone in his hand, while his son was off at the other side near the door.
Something in Roman’s eyes told Gerri this was serious. She was getting dragged into the middle of something Roman had done. Could she really trust him to not drown her under whatever pile of shit he had landed himself in?
“Is it true? You’re dating my son?” Logan shouted across the room, unable to look her in the eye as his grip tightened around his phone.
Gerri’s breath got caught in her throat. She was going crazy - the heat stroke had finally gotten to her. There was no way that Logan Roy had just asked if she was dating his son.
Unless….
Roman looked at her with pleading eyes, the sort that set off something deep within her. The part of her that always wanted to be the one to reach out to him - to give him a safe harbour to rest his head. But her head always over-ruled her heart. It would always win in the end.
Something had happened to back Roman into a corner like a dog whimpering at its master for fear of getting a boot to the head.
“Yes, Logan, it’s true,” Gerri lied in a steady voice, suspecting the words would quickly come back to haunt her. Perhaps she could ask her daughters to put ‘killed by Roman Roy’s stupidity’ as the epitaph on her gravestone because Logan looked as though he was ready to slice her up and serve her like a headless swan. The centrepiece at his next gluttonous feast.
“So this is a serious thing then? Not just some office fling,” Logan questioned, eyes glared at the couple across from him, but he still couldn’t meet her eyes. Gerri takes one step forward as Roman shuffles back a little, the pair met each other half-way.
The fight or flight response kicked in once more.
“Deadly serious,” Gerri and Roman replied in unison before they stopped to glance at each other out of the corner of their eyes. The synchronicity of their movements threw Logan off for a moment and Gerri watched as he fidgeted with his cufflinks. It was one of Logan’s tells. A sign he didn’t feel in control.
“Both of you get out of my sight,” he barked, sending both Roman and Gerri making a quick exit out the door. Roman held the metal door open as he chanced one final glance back at Logan as Gerri power-walked back up the hallway.
“SIOBHAN!” Logan shouted down the hallway as Roman and Gerri returned to the conference room.
Shiv clocked the two of them coming back in. She couldn’t think of the last time she had seen Gerri look on edge. Roman was pouring himself a glass of water while Gerri crossed her arms and paced around in front of the tall windows, biting her lip as she glanced at the other Waystar employees still hanging around the room.
She turned on her heel as she headed down the hallway, finding her father in a worse state than the other pair. “What’s up?” Shiv asked, trying to get a read on the situation. “You find out what the fuck is happening with those two, Siobhan,” Logan ordered, looking as though he might just burst a blood vessel. “What do you mean?” Shiv questioned, not appreciating feeling out of the loop.
“Your brother and your godmother are apparently - and I quote - “dating ” and have been for some time now,” Logan revealed, his attempt at air-quotes almost sending Shiv overboard as her mind took a second or two longer to process his words.
Shiv snorted. Yeah, right. Gerri and Roman - as if anyone would believe that. The man-child who couldn’t get it up and the corporate lawyer with a stick up her ass. Waystar’s most-unlikely Romeo and Juliet.
And her father believed it? Men really were idiots.
“How did you find this out?” Shiv asked, still laughing to herself as she tried and failed at composing herself. Logan’s phone flew across the table, landing on the other end with a thud. Shiv turned away as she realised what was looking up at her from Logan’s phone screen.
Seeing one of her brother’s dick pics was not on her to-do list for today.
“Right, well, that says something,” Shiv choked as she pushed the phone back up the table towards her father. Alarm bells started to go off in the back of her mind - as if she could feel something shifting in the air.
Could Roman and Gerri be dating? The rational part of her brain was finally starting to kick in.
“Did anyone know about this?” Logan demanded, his patience already running thin as he pocketed his phone. “Roman has always had a thing about Gerri - but no one ever…” Shiv paused as it all came rushing back to her.
She had always thought that Gerri was just another one of Roman’s fixations. Someone he knew he could taunt and tease - a plaything with a wittier mind and quicker tongue than any of the women Roman Roy would normally follow around like a lost puppy. He always grew tired of them eventually. An impatient child looking for the latest shiny toy to own. It was one of the few similarities Roman shared with their father.
But if she thought about it - really thought about it - she could see it now. All those times she had just shrugged it off. Told herself she was reading into things that weren’t there. Shiv had put her feelings down to paranoia over the fact Gerri was clearly helping Roman professionally - but maybe that only had been a small part of it.
How many times had she caught Roman staring at Gerri when he thought no one was looking? Hiding a smirk behind his hand or looking at her as though they were the only two people in the room. More than once Shiv had felt as if she was intruding on something.
Seeing Roman and Gerri together was normal. No one ever batted an eyelid at them. They were practically attached at the hip at times. One always behind the other, standing in the other’s shadow, as though guarding their territory.
The late nights in the office. The dinners and martini catch-ups that were supposedly all about business. Shiv had even caught them coming out of the same hotel room back in Dundee.
And the nicknames.
G, Ger, Gerri-Berry, Ger-Bear.
G-Spot. That one should’ve set alarm bells ringing.
God. They had all been blind, hadn’t they? Blind to what was happening right under their noses.
“Fuck,” Shiv hissed, her head in her hands for a moment as she tried to process everything that had just happened in the last sixty seconds. Gerri and Roman. Somehow in this fucked up world it made sense. And they didn’t just make sense, they posed a threat.
A solution that could keep Waystar in Roy hands but with the credibility of someone like Gerri.
“You find a way to do something about this, Siobhan,” Logan instructed, yanking his blazer from the back of the chair before he disappeared out the door and down the hallway.
Shiv took a moment to get her thoughts together - or at least try to. The last of the other Waystar employees was stepping out into the hallway when she got to the door, catching Roman edging closer to Gerri as he crossed the room towards her with an anxious look on his face. “Gerri, can I just grab you for a minute?” she called, watching as her brother’s face dropped and Gerri waited a beat before nodding her head.
Gerri glanced at Roman as she headed out of the room, hands clutching the strap of her bag as though it was her emotional support crutch. Her hands tightened around the strap as if she was strangling Roman’s neck. She had a good mind to do just that when she got her hands on him.
Something had happened - she just didn’t know what . They hadn’t had a chance to discuss anything yet. There was no privacy here, especially not with Shiv and the other employees hanging around.
The Roman of six months ago would’ve done this as a prank to Logan - but Roman now ? He wouldn’t risk her neck, let alone his own, unless there was a reason for it. Why would he have told his father that they were dating? What possible reason could he have had for doing that? Unless Logan had asked him if they were - but she had always been careful when he was around. She made sure to push Roman forward just enough without giving Logan any reason to be suspicious about her actions.
“You have reported your relationship to HR, haven’t you?” Shiv asked, almost giving Gerri whiplash as they reach a quiet corner of the open-planned office. Gerri’s hand tightened around the strap of her bag - oh, if only it was Roman’s neck between her fingers and not the saffiano leather.
“I mean it would just be seen as a bit of an issue if the Interim CEO is in a relationship with the COO. You know ‘ conflict of interest’ and all that,” Shiv added, straightening her back as she tried to gauge the other woman’s reaction. The first thing she had to do was figure out how long this had been going on for - and then she had to figure out what it meant for the rest of them.
Gerri was expendable. Roman wasn’t polished enough. Roman and Gerri together, though? That was a threat. Roman had the right name. Gerri had the right nature for the top job. What was it she had heard Roman call them once?
Rockstar and the Molewoman.
Gerri raised an eyebrow. ‘ Conflict of interest’ could hardly apply in a company where having the surname ‘ Roy’ qualified you for any C-suite position you took a fancy to.
“Naturally, but we just want to keep things private for a while, you know how it is when people are all up in your personal life,” Gerri assured her, already growing suspicious about Shiv’s actions. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. Shiv was her father’s sniffer dog. She always had been, ever since she was a little girl who used to eavesdrop on guests at dinner parties and report the gossip back to Logan.
She caught sight of Roman heading into the elevator with two of the other employees at the end of the hallway.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a call to make,” Gerri lied, side-stepping around her goddaughter as her Ferragamo heels clicked down the hallway. She managed to get herself into the elevator and press the button for the doors to close before the redhead could follow her inside.
Roman Roy was going to be the death of her - or she was going to be the death of him.
The humidity hit her as she stepped out of the office building, catching sight of the line of blacked-out Mercedes A-Class saloons lined up against the pavement. The rest of their group was huddled in a circle, seemingly waiting on her and Shiv to come down.
“Ger, you get in with me,” Roman called, taking wide strides towards her until his hand was locked around her arm. He pulled her in the direction of the car waiting at the front of the queue, hoping it could double as a getaway car. Gerri glared at him as he opened the door for her before he walked around to the other side.
“What the fuck did you say to him?” Gerri snapped as Roman’s door clicked shut and she turned to look at him. “It just came out,” Roman protested, reaching through to take one of the chilled waters from the central compartment before their driver pulled away. Thankfully it was a hired chauffeur who seemed more interested in listening to the radio than eavesdropping on them.
“And why did it come out? What did you do?” Gerri interrogated, dropping her bag down to the floor as she waited impatiently for Roman to explain himself. He looked out the window for a minute, contemplating whether he’d have enough time to draw up his will before Gerri would kill him.
“I might have been sending you one of those ‘items’ that you told me to stop sending after you texted me at the end of the meeting,” Roman confessed, turning back to Gerri in time to see the realisation set in. “Oh, Roman,” she sighed, her head falling into her hands, her immaculate french twist starting to come undone. “And I might have sent it to dad by mistake,” he added, practically seeing the steam starting to come out of Gerri’s ears.
“So you decided to just play it off by saying we’re dating,” Gerri huffed, leaning into her seat, feeling her back sink into the leather behind her as her shoulders tensed. “Well, it seemed like the best option going at the time,” Roman stood firm, though a part of him wondered if it had only made the whole thing worse.
He had thought that telling Logan they were a couple would give them some cover. His dad would make some joke about his dick finally working and – well, he hadn’t thought beyond that.
Gerri tilted her head down as she looked at Roman over the rim of her glasses. “Stop looking at me with those eyes,” Roman whined, knowing it was the last thing he needed at that moment. “What eyes?” Gerri asked, already at her wits’ end with him and aching for a martini to soften the blow that had been the last fifteen minutes of her life. “You do that thing with your eyes when you’re pissed at me,” he explained, wagging his finger in her face as he spoke, before he looked away, “It’s hot and I can’t concentrate when you do it.”
She narrowed her eyes once more before pushing her glasses back up her nose.
“We need Karolina,” Gerri decided. She knew if there is anyone they needed on their side it’s the PR executive. “Do you trust her?” Roman asked, having realised that it was time to learn his lesson and accept Gerri’s judgement as being the right one.
“Well, I don’t know who else we can trust given that you’ve just told your father we’re in a relationship,” she reminded him, still trying to process the situation they had somehow found themselves in. All because Roman had to send her yet another photo of his dick. As if she didn’t already have a hidden folder of them stashed away on her phone. It was always going to be something stupid like this that would catch them out. An unfortunate mishap that could have been easily avoided if Roman had just listened to her.
Gerri knew Logan would be waiting to catch them out. His reaction in the meeting room had told her more than enough. Her and Roman being in a relationship - even the idea of them being together - was a bolt from the blue that could threaten to unravel his plans. An interim CEO and COO who could pose a challenge to him. Not that Roman was considering the optics when he lied to his father.
“Look, we just keep up the pretence for a few weeks until the dust settles and I’ll have some kind of a fuck up that gives you an excuse to break up with me,” Roman shrugged, having already decided that he would find a way out of this scenario that made him look like the bad guy. “Everyone will be all like “poor Gerri, Roman’s a bastard,” and that’ll be that,” he added, taking a swig of his water.
Gerri sighed as she felt a tension headache starting to form, her fingertips pressing against her skin as she tried to keep the pain at bay. “It’s not that simple, Roman. You’ve pissed Shiv off with this charade already, she was asking me if we put in the paperwork with HR,” she divulged, the memory of Shiv’s judgmental face setting her teeth on edge.
“Can you back-date the paperwork with HR?” Roman asked, once again cursing himself for being the sort of man who let his dick do the thinking. But perhaps this wouldn’t be all bad. There had to be an upside to the situation. Though pretending to be dating Gerri Kellman would probably be as much torture as it would be pleasurable.
“I’ll see if I can get Karolina to help, Lucy in HR owes her a favour,” Gerri suggested, already typing an SOS text message to the PR executive, telling her to call her ASAP. Her tone told Roman there was more to Karolina’s relationship with Lucy from HR than being mere office acquaintances. He’d file that away for later.
“But this charade can’t go on for long, Roman, just enough time to get us out of this god forsaken mess that you’ve dropped us in,” she insisted, knowing the reality of it all hadn’t fully set in yet. Half the executive floor would know before they’d get back to the villa. Shiv would see to that.
“You want to put - what - a fucking expiry date on this?” Roman asked, turning away from her as he shuffled against the black leather of the Mercedes’ seats. Gerri already had her Google calendar open, as though trying to decide how to schedule a fake breakup between her acquisition meetings and manicure appointments. Roman watched as she kept scrolling, feeling as though he was getting a peek into her private life. He quickly noticed that the purple tab was for ‘personal’ things - dinner with her daughter, a friend’s birthday party, and an appointment with her stockbroker.
“The RECNY ball?” she suggested, turning her phone to Roman, her finger pointing at the date six weeks from then. “Right after that, we break up,” she decided, knowing Logan would insist on them both being there either way and the six week window would give them time to navigate the situation and find a golden parachute or two. It would give them plenty of options to play for the evitable break-up. There was always melodrama at the RECNY ball.
“Are you going to send me a calendar invite to the break up?” Roman teased, smirking to himself as he caught the smile that Gerri was trying to fight against. Her life was organised chaos with colour coded Google calendars and a travel bag that was always packed and ready to go. His life was just chaos, but it always felt a little calmer when Gerri was around.
“We’ll figure out the best way for us to break up. Might have Karolina find me feeling up some blonde half your age in a club or something, I don’t know - anything that makes me look like the bad guy. You can take your pick, G,” Roman offered, he was the one who had gotten them into this mess after all.
Gerri didn’t look that convinced.
“It’s for six weeks, Gerri, how bad can it be?” he asked as the chauffeur-driven car left the city behind and headed in the direction of the Tuscan villa. “You get to live out your fantasy of being with a rich toyboy and I get to pretend to be the hot MILF’s boyfriend, sounds like a win-win to me,” Roman mused with a smirk as he decided there might be a silver lining to this after all.
Gerri groaned as she took off her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her headache was quickly entering migraine territory.
Maybe Roman was right. It was only six weeks. That’s all she had to do. Just get through the next six weeks without killing the man who was meant to be her boyfriend.
Gerri made a mental note to make sure there was enough in her current account for bail money - just in case.