by L.J. Shen
“And why me?”
“The fuck does it matter?”
“It does to me,” I bit out, a last ditch effort to walk away from this deal. “And also, because I’m a terrible PA. Terrible. I once sent the accountant I worked for to a meeting with another company’s file, and I nearly booked his wife a flight to Saint Petersburg, Russia instead of St. Petersburg, Florida. Thank the Lord for airport codes,” I muttered.
“You would have done her a huge favor. Florida is a fucking downer,” he quipped, adding, “And your stripper outfit may have made me feel a tad bit guilty.”
Liar, I thought bitterly. Yet, it was so fitting that he’d found me here. One eviction notice away from rock bottom. Offering me the one thing I couldn’t refuse. Dangling the health and security of me and my family in my face once again.
“I don’t want to work for you.” I sounded like a broken record.
“Lucky for me, you don’t have much choice. When reality makes the decision for you, it’s easier to accept your fate. Your tip”—he shoved one hand into his slacks’ pocket and took out a folded slip of paper—“was waiting for you. Next time you’re asked to do something, do it in a timely manner. Patience is not one of my virtues.”
“What is?” I deadpanned. Still eyeing him suspiciously, I plucked the paper from between his long fingers and took a peek, my pulse drumming wildly.
A check.
$10,000.
Sweet Jesus and his holy crew.
“Consider it a month’s signing advance.” He looked down at it, his brows furrowing as he examined it along with me. His shoulder brushed mine and a warm surge lapped across my chest. “Since we agreed on a hundred fifty K, the after-tax will be about right when you start working for me.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to anything,” I argued, but even I didn’t believe myself at this point.
I’d taken on so much debt and was living off one meal a day. Not a big one either. I was at war with myself, but deep down, I knew that the money was going to win this time around. It wasn’t about greed. It was about survival. I couldn’t afford my pride. And my pride, unlike the money, wouldn’t be able to feed me, to pay for Rosie’s medication, and to make sure our electricity was still on next month.
Vicious reached for my cheek and brushed a lock of hair from my eye, his body so close to mine I could feel his heat. It threw me back to the night we kissed all those years ago. I didn’t remember the moment fondly.
“Do you trust me with your life?” His voice was black velvet, caressing me in places he had no business reaching.
“No,” I answered truthfully, closing my eyes, wishing it was someone else who was making me feel what I was feeling.
Hot.
Wanting.
Wanted.
Anyone else but him.
“Do you trust me with mine?” he asked.
The man was smart. No, smart was putting it mildly. More like a genius. He was cunning and intelligent and always a step ahead of everyone else. He kept his ass covered. I knew that, even though we’d only lived close to each other during my senior year. In those months, I’d seen him walk out of so much trouble. From hacking into teachers’ laptops and downloading exams, selling them to desperate students for a ludicrous price, to burning up a restaurant at the Todos Santos marina.
But we weren’t kids anymore. We were grown-ups, and the consequences were heavier.
I nodded yes.
“Show up at work tomorrow at eight thirty a.m. sharp, Help. It’s the address I gave you at that bar. And don’t make me regret my generosity.”
I felt a breeze moving across me when he turned the corner and left the hallway, silent as a ghost. I heard the door to my building slamming shut downstairs, and that’s when I opened my eyes.
It was a good thing I remembered the address he’d scribbled for my so-called “tip” by heart. I’d somehow inked it into memory, just like everything else about him. My default mechanism with Vicious was to collect everything about him.
And now, apparently, I had a new job working beside him.
I unlocked the door and found Rosie asleep. I was relieved her meds had allowed her to sleep through the commotion we’d caused in the hallway. That was the moment I decided this was the right choice to make.
This was just another stolen-textbook moment.
I had to bow down in submission, take this Big Bad Wolf’s heat, and then walk out of the situation with what I needed. But this time, I was going to be the one to leave on my own terms, not his.
That was my promise to myself.
I hoped to God I could keep it.
“I’LL FUCKING RUIN HER.” I rolled a pen between my fingers—Help’s pen—the one I’d snagged from her at McCoy’s.
She hadn’t noticed the pen was missing—she was too flustered to realize what was happening—and that was exactly how I liked her. The pen was chewed on at the top, and it was so fucking typical of Emilia. She used to leave chewed pencils on her desk every single day in calculus class.
I may have picked them up.
I may have saved them.
They may still be in a drawer somewhere in my old room.
Shit happens when you’re a horny teenage boy.
I rolled my executive chair back, pushing from my desk and swiveling toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan.
People said New York made them feel small.
But I thought New York made me feel pretty fucking big.
From my point of view, I sat on the twenty-third floor of a skyscraper, and I motherfucking owned the whole floor. Thirty-two people worked here, soon to be thirty-three when Miss LeBlanc joined us, and they all answered to me. Depended on me. Smiled at me in the hallway, even though I was an ill-mannered bastard. I mean, how could New York make me feel small when I grabbed it by the balls and made a last-minute reservation at Fourteen Madison Park for tonight?
Some folks were owned by New York, and some folks owned it. I was among the latter. And I didn’t even live in the fucking city usually.
“You will not ruin your stepmom,” Dean dismissed with a laugh. I was still facing the Manhattan view. He was on speaker. “You’ve been watching too much Pinky and The Brain. Only you don’t want to take over the world, you just want to shit on people’s lives.”
“She texted me last night that she’s landing in New York this afternoon and expects me to clear my schedule for her,” I fumed. “Who does she think she is?”
“Your stepmother?” Dean’s voice was light and amused.
It was four fifteen a.m. on the West Coast, the ass-crack between night and morning. Not that I gave a fuck. He wasn’t used to the time difference yet. Lived in New York for the last ten years of his life. And he was chill by nature, the little fuckwit.
“And to be fair, you were supposed to be back in California by now. What’s taking you so long?” he asked. “When the fuck are we switching back?”
I heard the woman who was in bed with him—in my Los Angeles bed, fucking gross—moaning in protest at his loud voice. I licked my lips and twisted Help’s pen in my hand. I still needed to tell him that I’d hired her, but decided to wait till next week. He had no idea she was living in New York all these years, and I wanted to keep it that way.
One disaster at a time. I had my stepmom to deal with today.
“Not anytime soon. Your staff’s been slacking off. I’m picking up the work you’ve left here.”
“Vicious,” he grated out through what sounded like clenched teeth.
Our six-year-old enterprise, Fiscal Heights Holdings, was so successful, we had four branches: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London. Normally, Dean was in New York and I was in Los Angeles. Sergio and his stupid lawsuit had brought me here. I was the one who used my mouth for more than sweet-talking and licking ass. If we needed someone to soften a client, we sent Trent. But if shit got nasty and the situation called for intimidation or legal ruthlessness, I was the one on call.
>
Meanwhile, Dean was taking the opportunity to check on our Los Angeles branch. We did it from time to time, all four of us. Switched scenery, shook things up. As a token of our friendship, we stayed at each other’s places. The four of us co-owned all of our residences. We were a family, and in the upper class, nothing said family like mingled estates and funds.
Normally, I didn’t mind, even though I knew Trent and Dean would dip their sausages in every single honeypot within a twenty-mile radius of my condo. Those fuckers had probably bedded half of Los Angeles in my crib, but that’s what I had a maid for.
And a PA who made sure the sheets they used were thrown out—or better yet, burned—before we switched back.
This time, I especially didn’t mind Dean staying at my condo. I wasn’t prepared to drag my ass out of his apartment either.
Our New York branch was a mess, and I did need a personal assistant to sort it out. Sadly for Help, she was going to get dumped right after I was done with her. I couldn’t let her work for Dean.
Not that he would even want to see her fucking face ever again.
She was dead to him. From his point of view, deservingly so. Anyway, that was her problem, not mine.
“Wrap it up, Vic.” He called me by my nickname. Calling me Vicious in public had become professionally inconvenient in recent years, so now everyone just assumed Vic was short for Victor. “I want my apartment back. I want my office back. I want my fucking life back.”
“And I want to live in a place where you don’t have to give the taxi driver the exact fucking route like you work for them and not vice versa. Don’t worry, I won’t outstay my welcome.”
“Newsflash, douchebag.” He laughed again. “You already have.”
I could hear the woman beside him yawn loudly. “Hey, babe, can we go to sleep?”
“Can you sit on my face while we do?” Dean answered.
I rolled my eyes. “Have a nice day, shit-face.”
“Yeah, go eat a rotten ass. But not on my bed,” he said, then the line went dead.
Just in time, as I had a visitor.
“Good morning, Mr. Spencer! I brought you your coffee and breakfast. A three egg-white omelet on a slice of whole wheat toast with a side of freshly cut strawberries.”
I barely listened to the chirpy voice but turned around in my chair. “And you are?” I checked out the woman in front of me. Her hair was so blonde it was almost as white as her big smile. Taller and thinner than the national average. And her suit. St. John, a recent collection.
Maybe I wasn’t that far off with the outrageous salary I’d offered Help. Hey, it was New York after all.
“I’m Sue! Dean’s PA.” She was still bubbly. “I’ve been working for you for almost two weeks.” Her smile was still creepily intact.
Right. On second glance, she did look familiar.
“Nice to meet you, Sue. You’re fucking fired, Sue. Collect your shit and leave, Sue.”
Sue suddenly looked crestfallen. I was actually relieved for her. Until now, she’d looked like a bad plastic surgeon had sewn that eerie smile on her face.
Her cheeks paled under her heavy makeup, and her mouth fell open. “Sir, you can’t fire me.”
“I can’t?” I arched an eyebrow, feigning interest.
I woke up my Dell—fuck MacBook and fuck all the hipster posers who preferred Macs, Dean included—and double-clicked on the proposal I was working on. I was staging a hostile takeover, a surprise attack on a company that competed with one of our holdings, and fucking Sue was keeping me from finishing the last tweaks. My breakfast plate was still clutched between her French-manicured fingers, and I was hoping she could leave it on my desk before she left.
I clicked on the side comments I’d made on the Word doc last night, after I left Help’s, to make sure my proposal was airtight. My eyes never left the screen. “Give me one reason why not.”
“Because I’ve been working for Dean for two years now. I was employee of the month back in June. And, I have a contract. If I’ve done something wrong, you’re supposed to give me a written warning first. This is wrongful termination of my employment.”
Her panicky voice grated on my nerves like a bad high on a weekend.
I glanced up at her. If looks could kill, she wouldn’t have been a problem anymore. “Show me your contract,” I snarled.
She stomped off in a huff out of the glass box I temporarily called my office. It was usually Dean’s, and the fucker liked glass and mirrors, probably because he loved himself too much not to check his reflection every two seconds. Sue returned after a few minutes with a copy of her contract. It was still warm, fresh off the printer.
Goddammit, she wasn’t lying.
Sue had the right to thirty days’ notice and all kinds of fancy shit. This was not a standard FHH contract. I’d drafted the original myself and used every loophole known to man to make sure we had the minimum legal obligations to our employees in case of termination. This PA chick had signed a contract I wasn’t familiar with.
Was Dean fucking this girl?
My eyes skimmed over her whip-thin, malnourished body again.
Probably.
“Ever been to LA, Sonia?”
“Sue,” she corrected through another unnecessary huff. “And once,” she added. “When I was four.”
“How would you like to fly there so you can help Dean while he’s working in LA?”
Her face turned from annoyed and sad to confused then elated.
Definitely. Dean was fucking her.
“Really? But doesn’t Mr. Cole have your PA to assist him?”
I shook my head slowly, my eyes still on hers. A huge smiled tugged at her lips, and she clapped her hands, barely containing her excitement. Thrilled. Such a simple creature, our little Sue was. Exactly how Dean liked them. He was stupid enough to mistake Help for someone like Sue.
I knew his ex-girlfriend better than he did.
“So I get to keep my job?” Her voice was breathless.
“It’s in the contract.” I smacked the papers she’d printed, eager to kill the conversation before she killed my remaining functioning brain cells. “Now move it. You have a flight to catch.”
As soon as she left my office, I picked up my phone and called my PA in Los Angeles. People were disposable. I’d realized it from a very young age. My mother certainly was when my dad replaced her with Josephine. Of course, he’d never acted like a parent, so it was easy to believe that I was disposable too. That’s why the idea that no one around me was of much importance was ingrained deep within me.
Not my friends.
Not my colleagues.
Not my PA.
“Tiffany? Yeah, collect your stuff and your last paycheck. You’re fired. I’m flying someone else out to replace you tonight.”
I wasn’t fucking her.
She had a standard contract.
Goodbye.
I saw her on the security monitor near my laptop the minute she walked through the etched glass doors into the reception area of FHH.
My new PA arrived at eight a.m. sharp, but to say I wasn’t impressed was an under-fucking-statement. I’d expected her here at least fifteen minutes earlier. I’d talked to Sue at seven thirty, and I had better shit to do than wait around for Help. But I should’ve known better. This girl had always been a headache.
I couldn’t ignore her when I saw her at that seedy bar, McCoy’s. For one thing, she’d been dressed like she was about to climb over my lap and give me a twenty-dollar lap dance. For another, her shoes were too small and the bra peeking from her uniform was two times bigger than her boobs. Meaning she wore shoes that weren’t hers and a bra that used to fit before she’d lost so much weight.
I couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible for her situation.
Okay, a lot responsible for her situation.
I’d driven her out of Todos Santos. Then again, no one told her to land her fine little ass in the most expensive city in the whole
fucking country. What was she doing living in New York anyway? I had no time to ponder this as I pressed the intercom button.
“Receptionist,” I barked—I didn’t know her name, and fuck if I cared—“direct Miss LeBlanc to my office, and make sure she’s got Sylvia’s iPad or a notebook.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but do you mean Sue?” the old woman asked politely. Through the glass wall, I saw her already standing up to shake Help’s hand.
“I meant whoever that chick was who served me breakfast,” I growled.
I got back to staring at my screen when Help knocked on my door.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Three Mississippi.
After ten seconds, I leaned back in my seat and knotted my fingers together. “Come in.”
She did.
She came in wearing a red-and-white ladybug dress—I shit you not—and yellow leggings. I also saw that the heel to one of her shoes was glued on crooked. At least they were the right size this time.
Her hair was still light purple. Good, I liked it that she no longer reminded me of Jo. And her roots weren’t showing anymore. Great, that meant she’d made an effort for me since my visit last night. She’d tied her hair into a loose French twist. Emilia stared at me defiantly, not even offering a hello.
“Sit down,” I instructed. It was easy to be cold to people. Cold was all I knew.
My last real hug was when I was a kid. My mother. Shortly before the accident that stole her freedom. My stepmother, Jo, pretended to hug me. Once. At a charity event. After my response, she never did it again.
Help sat down, and my eyes glided over her legs briefly. She still had a nice body, despite looking like she could use a good meal or three. She had an iPad clasped in her hand. Her eyes were on me. They bled suspicion and disdain.
“Do you know how to use an iPad?” I asked slowly.
“Do you know how to talk to people without inspiring their gag reflex?” she responded, mimicking my tone and cocking her head.
