Empire High Elite

by Ivy Smoak

  Anderson. I didn’t know any of the staff’s last names besides Miller. I wondered who was going to take the blame for Isabella’s cruel prank. I bit down on the inside of my cheek. I didn’t want to start World War 3.

  “Very well,” Mr. Pruitt said. “I’ll take care of Anderson. As for this…” he shook his head. “Will you be a dear and let Brooklyn borrow one of your dresses for homecoming? I’m sure the two of you can find something that fits her.”

  “But, Daddy…”

  “No buts. Your dog did this. So you will share with your sister.” He turned to me, his expression void of the anger that had been there moments before. “Brooklyn,” he said and cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure if you had hired someone to help get you ready, so I arranged for Justin to assist you. He’ll be here shortly. And I’ll have him order another of everything that was ruined.” He sighed like Isabella was as exhausting to him as she was to me. “Your friend can stay, of course. It’s the least I can do after this disaster.” He stepped forward and put out his hand. “I’m Richard Pruitt. You must be Kennedy Alcaraz. I’ll add you to Brooklyn’s list of approved visitors.”

  For a second Kennedy just stared at his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she finally said and shook it. I swore she curtseyed, and the corners of Mr. Pruitt’s mouth ticked up ever so slightly.

  “The pleasure is all mine. You two have fun getting ready. And if there is anything you need, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll be in my study.” He turned back around. “Apologize before you leave, princess,” he said as he walked past Isabella and out the door.

  It looked like Isabella was going to explode.

  The three of us just stood there awkwardly for a moment as Mr. Pruitt’s shoes echoed in the hallway.

  “If you think I’m loaning you one of my dresses, you’re out of your damned mind,” Isabella said. “And I can’t wait to cash in on that favor you owe me.”

  “What favor? Your dad came up here anyway. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “Yeah, but I told him I made a mistake. That everything was fine. That’s what you asked me to do. And I did.”

  What the hell was wrong with her? “You were supposed to do that before he came up here. I don’t owe you a thing.”

  She shrugged. “Too bad. We had a verbal agreement, Sissy. Now you owe me whatever I want. I believe your exact words were…anything.”

  “You should be thanking me,” I said. “I went along with your Sir Wilfred lie.”

  She kissed the side of her dog’s head and put him down on the ground. “Which was your choice. I can’t help it if you’re a little slow. Make, Sir Wilfred.”

  I was about to ask her what she was talking about when Sir Wilfred pranced over and proceeded to pee all over the pile of ruined clothes.

  “What is wrong with you?” Kennedy said and held her nose closed.

  “Me?” asked Isabella. “Absolutely nothing. I’m perfect if you haven’t noticed. Come, Sir Wilfred. I need to get ready for the dance.”

  The fluffy dog lowered his leg and ran after his evil master.

  “Stupid dog,” Kennedy said when Isabella left.

  “Stupid Isabella.”

  “Why’d you go along with her?” Kennedy asked. “The clothes clearly weren’t destroyed by that dog.”

  I didn’t want to admit that I was scared of Isabella. That I was worried she’d actually kill me. I was pretty sure it was all in my head. And I needed to learn how to stand up to her if I was going to live here. “I’ve learned to pick my battles with her.”

  Kennedy flopped down on my bed. “What do you think she’s going to do when she realizes your homecoming dress is in Miller’s room?”

  I had completely forgotten. I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God. I couldn’t care less about homecoming. But I would have cried if something had happened to my mom’s dress. “She’s going to lose her mind. Well, she’d lose it if she hadn’t already.”

  We both looked at each other and laughed.

  “This is actually great,” Kennedy said. “We got Isabella’s shot at sabotage out of the way early. Now we can just relax and have fun.”

  That was a good point. “Unless she’s planning more.” I sat down next to Kennedy on the bed.

  “Why would she? She thought her first trick would prevent you from going at all.”

  I nodded. “You’re right,” I said with a smile. But I was thinking about Anderson. And if there was a way to make sure whoever she was didn’t get fired for something she absolutely didn’t do.

  “Your dad actually seems kinda nice.”

  “Mr. Pruitt is not my dad.”

  “Technically…”

  “I never saw the results of the tests,” I said with a laugh.

  “Fair enough. But he took your side over Isabella’s. No one ever takes anyone’s side over Isabella’s. Maybe he’s not so bad. He’s letting me visit now. And he’s going to replace all the clothes. He’s at least trying. He seems kinda nice.”

  Nice? He’d immediately blamed her for destroying my clothes. But I bit my tongue. Mr. Pruitt was trying. I knew that. And yet…I was still uncertain about him. But maybe if I could convince him not to fire Anderson. If he took my side on that, then maybe I could finally let my walls down. Because he was trying. He did care. He was acting like the father I never had. And I was pretty sure that was a good thing. Maybe I’d just been fighting it off because Uncle Jim had felt like a father to me too. And as soon as I’d let him in, I’d lost him.

  Tiffany, the timid server, rushed into the room carrying some black trash bags. “Mr. Pruitt said I needed to clean up…” her voice trailed off as she looked at the mess. “Oh my. I’ll get right to it.” She hurried over.

  “I can help,” I said and started putting clothes in the plastic bags before Tiffany could stop me.

  “This was probably cute,” Kennedy said as she started helping us too. She was holding a pink dress that would have looked amazing on her. I made a mental note that when Justin replaced it, I’d give it to her.

  “It smells so gross.” I shoved another jacket into the trash.

  Tiffany laughed.

  “What the hell happened in here?” Miller said. My mother’s dress was clutched in his hands.

  “Isabella,” I said as I grabbed a pair of pants by the leg where there was no pee.

  He shook his head as he stared at the now stinky ruined clothes. He looked beyond pissed.

  “Oh, you’re so lucky that you had a dress at the dry cleaners,” Tiffany said.

  I guess she didn’t realize that the dry cleaner’s bag was years old and not from New York. Which was good. Because there was no other excuse for Miller to have my dress.

  “Let me grab that so I can steam it for you,” she said and pulled it out of Miller’s tight grip. “You’re wrinkling it.” She laughed.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  I stood up as I put one of the torn pairs of leggings in the trash bag. “Who’s Anderson?” I asked.

  Tiffany pulled my dress out of the dry-cleaning bag and turned around. “That’s me.”

  What? My face fell. She was so sweet. And polite. But up here she’d laughed at our jokes. She didn’t complain about the dog pee. She was wonderful.

  “Why?” she asked.

  I swallowed hard. Why did Mr. Pruitt send her up here to help with this mess if he was just going to fire her? “No reason,” I said. “I actually need to run to the bathroom real quick. I’ll be right back.” Mr. Pruitt wasn’t a nice man. He was a monster just like his legitimate daughter. And I was going to give him a piece of my mind.

  I practically ran into Justin as I beelined for the door.

  “Careful, darling,” he said as he adjusted two large plastic containers in his dainty arms.

  “Sorry, I need to…”

  “What in tarnation happened here?” Justin asked. “All my clothes! And is that urine I smell?”

  “Miller will fill you in,” I said. “I’ll be
right back.”

  “Well I certainly have no problem with Miller filling me wherever he pleases,” Justin said and handed off the plastic containers to him. He winked at Miller. “But we don’t have much time to get ready for the dance. And it’s my understanding that I need to give two makeovers in the time I’d allotted for one.” He looked over at Kennedy.

  “Great,” I said. “You can get started on Kennedy and I’ll be right back. It’s a bathroom emergency.” It seemed like no one had any intention of letting me get away. But adding that it was an emergency silenced the room. Awesome.

  Yes, it was nice that Mr. Pruitt had asked Justin to help Kennedy get ready too. But that didn’t take away the fact that he sent Tiffany up to clean up a mess she hadn’t made. Right before he was going to fire her for that very same mess. He had some explaining to do. I hurried out the door before anyone else could stop me.

  Chapter 25

  Saturday

  Miller caught my wrist right after I made it into the hallway. “There’s a bathroom attached to your room, Brooklyn.”

  God. Stupid rich people with fancy bathrooms in their bedrooms. I’ll never get used to this stuff. “Oh. Right. Well, I’ll just use the downstairs one now since I’m already on my way.” I actually didn’t even know where the downstairs bathroom was. But there were probably several. I’d eventually find one.

  He looked down the hall to see if the coast was clear and then pulled me to his chest. “You can tell me the truth. You know that.”

  I breathed in his familiar scent. “Isabella said it was Tiffany’s fault for not watching Sir Wilfred better. Mr. Pruitt is going to fire her.”

  “Who is Sir Wilfred?”

  “Isabella’s stupid new dog. But that’s not even the point. Isabella did it. The clothes weren’t ripped by a dog. They were cut with scissors.”

  Miller shook his head.

  “But I’m going to go fix it. I’m going to go talk to Mr. Pruitt now.”

  Miller tilted his head down to mine. “You’re amazing, you know.” It looked like he wanted to kiss me.

  I smiled up at him. “I’m not amazing. But I am going to try to save her job.” I looked down the hall to see if anyone was looking, but Miller grabbed my jaw and kissed me. Every now and then when I’d climb in his bed and talk his ear off, he’d kiss me. Maybe to make me stop talking so he could sleep. Maybe because sometimes he just wanted to be closer to me. I didn’t know why sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. Maybe it depended on what I was talking about. But this kiss didn’t feel sleepy. Or convenient. It felt a lot more real than all the others. He pulled away far too soon.

  “I want to make sure you know how I feel,” he said. “I’m not a grand gestures kind of guy. But I’m here for you. I know you’re confused right now. But I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  He smiled. “Not even a little.”

  “You’re going to get yourself fired,” I said with a laugh.

  “Maybe so. But I don’t care as long as you come with me wherever I go afterwards.” He pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  “I thought you didn’t want me to run away from here anymore?”

  “The unselfish part of me. But the selfish part? I want to get you as far away from these people as possible.”

  Something about the way he said it made me remember what Mr. Pruitt had said. “Do you watch me 24/7?”

  His eyebrows pulled together. “What?”

  “Mr. Pruitt said that it was your job to watch me 24/7.”

  “Yeah, technically that is my job.”

  I stared up at him. “What does that mean? Like…are you…are there…” I looked up at the ceiling. “Are there cameras somewhere?”

  “There are cameras everywhere, Brooklyn. Their locations were listed in detail in the contract you signed. Remember?”

  “Oh. Right. Yeah.” I definitely didn’t remember. Since I hadn’t actually read the contract. “Wait. So you watch me when I…change?”

  He shifted away from me. “It’s not like that. I’m not staring at the screens nonstop. I don’t watch you undress. I’m not a creep.”

  It felt a little creepy to me. Suddenly the feeling of being watched made so much more sense. “Who else is watching me?”

  “Each of the security detail is assigned one person.”

  “Then don’t they see me coming downstairs to you at night?” My heart was racing. And I wasn’t sure if it was because I was mad that he was watching me. Or I was worried that someone else was.

  “There aren’t any cameras around the staff floor. Or anywhere near the door to our floor for that matter. There’s no reason for them.”

  I nodded, not feeling all that convinced. “Is someone watching us right now?”

  “You’re the only one living in this wing.” He pulled out his phone and brought up a screen filled with different shots and angles of the apartment. “So I’m the only one that needs access to the cameras in this wing.” He showed an image of us on his screen. I could also see a few angles of my bedroom. Kennedy and Tiffany were laughing about something and Justin’s hands were on his hips. At least there wasn’t a shot of my bathroom.

  But still. It all felt wrong. Why hadn’t Miller told me he was watching me? “I…I should really go talk to Mr. Pruitt.”

  “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  I looked up at him as he shoved the phone back in his pocket. I wasn’t mad. I knew he was doing his job. And if I’d read that stupid contract, I would have known about the cameras. It was weird, though. I’d had no idea he was watching me. “You swear you don’t watch me change?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I swear.”

  “Well, that’s good.” I laughed awkwardly.

  “I wouldn’t look at all if it wasn’t necessary. But I have to make sure you’re safe.”

  Safe from what? And that was the whole problem. It was another thing I wanted to talk to Mr. Pruitt about. Why was any of this necessary? He said if I signed his contract he could fill me in on what he did for a living. “I’ll be back up in a minute, okay?”

  He smiled, even though he still looked tense.

  “I’m not mad. I promise.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

  ***

  I knocked on the big wooden door of Mr. Pruitt’s study.

  “Come in,” said a muffled voice from the other side.

  The door was heavy and it slammed closed with a loud thud behind me. I’d never seen Mr. Pruitt with glasses on before. It made him look even more sophisticated.

  “How can I help you?” he asked as he pulled his glasses off.

  Reading glasses. That was even more peculiar. Wouldn’t he need them when he read the morning paper? Did Mrs. Pruitt even know he needed glasses? Did anyone?

  He set his glasses down, shaking me out of my thoughts. “You can’t fire Tiffany,” I said. “It wasn’t her fault. Isabella…”

  “I know,” he said. “Isabella and her friends cut up all your clothes after you left for the homecoming game.”

  “How…how do you know that?” Miller had just told me that only he had access to the cameras in my room.

  Mr. Pruitt closed the lid of his laptop. “I have my ways.”

  A chill ran down my spine. He had pretty much just admitted that he was watching me too. Who the hell else was watching me? First it seemed like Mrs. Pruitt was. Then Miller. Now Mr. Pruitt too? Was my bedroom on full display for everyone?

  Mr. Pruitt stood up from his chair and walked around his desk. “I’m not a fool, Brooklyn.” He leaned against the side of his desk. It was the most casual I’d ever seen him. “Isabella seemed to be in a rather great mood this afternoon, even for homecoming. She and her friends giggled during the whole car ride to the game. And the scissors from my desk were missing. She didn’t even bother to cover her tracks. She’s testing me.”

  “Testing you?”

  “To make sure I love her more, I assume.” He sighed. “But you
’re as much of me as she is. More maybe. Because you haven’t been hardened by my wife. I see so much of me in you from when I was your age. And so much of your mother.”

  I felt a lump forming in my throat. Maybe his heart was hardened by his wife. Maybe he was kind to my mother. Maybe he wasn’t always like this. I’d seen glimpses of his kind heart. He was nice to me too.

  “My wife will never approve of you.” He tilted his head to the side as if he was inspecting me. “But I do. I don’t want you to change. I want you to come to me when you think something is unjust. I want you to tell me if I’m doing something wrong. And I don’t want you to be scared of standing up for what you believe in, even if it goes against Isabella or my wife.”

  “Is that why you liked my mom? Because she told you when things were unjust?”

  “I loved your mom because she was everything I could never have. She didn’t care what people thought of her. She was beautiful inside and out. She was honest. She was…happy.”

  She was beautiful. And always honest. But I held on to his last description the most. Because knowing that my mom was always happy was what I needed to fall asleep at night. The memory that even in her last days, I was the reason she smiled. “She was happy.” Even during the hard times. She had always been quick to make me laugh. I wiped beneath my eyes, trying to hide my tears. She never spoke about Mr. Pruitt. But she also never dated anyone. I was pretty sure he had broken her heart. And that she’d always loved him.

  He nodded. “She wouldn’t have been happy with me. It was good that she left.” He cleared his throat and stood up straight. “You have my word, Anderson’s job is secure.”

  “Good.”

  He walked back around his desk, seemingly dismissing me. But I had one more thing to discuss.

  “I signed the papers,” I said. “So you can tell me what you do now.”

  He smiled. “I’m a businessman.”

  “Right.” I’d gathered that much. “But what kind of business?”

  “You can think of me as a CEO of sorts. Of a lot of different businesses.” He opened up his laptop again.